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13 Reasons Why Your Website Needs SEO Audit Service
There is a rumor floating in the air.
SEO is dead. You should invest in PPC and not SEO.
But, my friend, as I said – it’s a RUMOR.
SEO was here, it is here, and it will remain forever.
That’s why your website needs SEO audit service right now.
According to SEO Tribunal, nearly 93 percent of all online experiences start with a search engine. That means users trust search engines when looking for information.
It is still a reliable source of information that enables users to take actions, such as booking appointments or purchasing goods & services.
Now you may argue – paid ads are also a part of search engines. Users will prefer paid links, displayed on the top of the SERP, over organic links.
Again, a fact in SEO Tribunal says that 70-80 percent of users opt for organic links rather than clicking on paid links.
You see organic rankings on the first page of SERP may take time, but it will benefit you immensely. Leads will pour in like a heavy shower after a long dry spell.
But it will happen ONLY after you optimize your website for SEO. If you think SEO is important for you, hire an SEO expert to for website audit service.
Reasons why you Need SEO Audit Service
Have a look at the reasons why you need SEO audit service, prepare a website audit checklist, and take a step now.
- 1: This is your FIRST Time
- 2: SEO Brings in MINIMUM Traffic (Alert: No First Page Rankings)
- 3: Website Traffic is at an ALL TIME Low
- 4: Penalized by a Google Algorithm
- 5: PPC is too expensive
- 6: Falling Behind Competitors
- 7: Not Generating Quality Leads
- 8: On-page SEO is a nowhere
- 9: Off-Page SEO is a Mess
- 10: Technical SEO is absent
- 11: Poor Engagement & Conversions
- 12: Not Optimized for Mobile
- 13: If you have a Local Business
1. This is your FIRST Time
Everything has a beginning. You are in the stage of launching your business, so an online presence is a must. Starting with a website and social media profiles seem feasible right now.
Since you are just starting, you can take all the steps necessary to optimize your website for search engines. Gradually, after a period of six to twelve months, if everything goes well, your website will rank on the first page of search engines.
To achieve this feat, hiring an SEO expert should be your foremost consideration. An expert will be able to prepare a comprehensive website audit checklist, perform a detailed audit, and begin with the task of optimizing your website.
Whether its site structure, content, backlinks, or promotions; everything will be taken off right from the beginning. It means you can easily establish your authority on search engines, outrank your competitors, gather quality leads, and take your business to another level.
2. SEO Brings in MINIMUM Traffic (Alert: No First Page Rankings)
This is a different scenario.
You already have an online presence, but your website gets bare minimum traffic from search engines.
Other channels, like direct and referrals, must be bringing a good amount of traffic. But still, you are missing out on the major chunk of the traffic coming from the SEO.
LOOK AT THE SCREENSHOT BELOW. 45.3 PERCENT OF THE TOTAL TRAFFIC FOR SALESFORCE IS COMING FROM ORGANIC SEARCH. HUBSPOT IS GETTING 55.5 PERCENT OF THE TOTAL TRAFFIC FROM ORGANIC SEARCH. ALMOST HALF OF THE WEBSITE TRAFFIC – MORE THAN HALF IN CASE OF HUBSPOT – IS COMING FROM SEARCH ENGINES.
So if your website is not getting traffic from organic search, your website is not ranked on the first page of search engines. There are major SEO issues, such as:
- CONTENT NOT OPTIMIZED
- NO FOCUS ON KEYWORDS
- POOR SITE STRUCTURE
- SLUGGING WEBSITE LOADING SPEED
- SPAMMY OR A HANDFUL OF BACKLINKS
- AND MANY MORE
You can also bring a massive amount of traffic from organic search only if you pay attention to SEO. Without any further delay, you must consult an SEO audit service provider.
3. Website Traffic is at an ALL TIME Low
Now let’s assume a different scenario. You know the importance of SEO, and therefore, you have invested a good amount of time and money in optimizing your website for organic search.
EVERYTHING IS GOING GOOD, AND THE ORGANIC TRAFFIC IS COMING IN FOR RELEVANT KEYWORDS. BUT SUDDENLY, YOUR WEBSITE RANKING SLIPS TO THE THIRD OR FOURTH PAGE OF SEARCH ENGINES. ALONG WITH THE RANKINGS, TRAFFIC ALSO CRASHES DOWN TO THE LOWEST LEVEL.
This is the point where you need an SEO expert who can diagnose the problem and restore organic traffic to the highest level.
But what is the cause of a sudden drop in organic traffic, you may ask? Some of the possible reasons are:
- USE OF UNETHICAL SEO PRACTICES, SUCH AS BLACK HAT TECHNIQUES
- OUTDATED CONTENT THAT LOST ITS IMPORTANCE IN THE PRESENT
- A CHANGE IN SEARCH ENGINE ALGORITHM THAT GOVERNS THE RANKINGS
A change in algorithm is the most plausible cause of a drop in organic traffic. This brings us to our next reason to opt for an SEO audit service.
4. Penalized by a Google Algorithm
When Google released its Rank Brain algorithm in 2015, a lot of websites noticed a significant drop in the traffic. It was the first time when Google implemented artificial intelligence in its algorithm. The whole purpose was to boost query-specific, relevant results to the users.
JUNE 4 2019 GOOGLE BROAD CORE ALGORITHM UPDATE
According to Google, Rank Brain is the third most important ranking factor. The websites that solely targeted keywords, without adding valuable content, experienced a drop in rankings.
Therefore, it’s possible your website experienced a drop in organic traffic because of a Google update. And it’s not just because of Rank Brain; it can be Mobile-friendly Update, Fred, Hummingbird, or the latest Diversity Update.
What’s the solution? It’s simple. You need to realize that your website has been penalized by a search engine update. After this, you have to consider important aspects of the update, such as query-specific results and user experience, in the case of Rank Brain.
Now you know what remedial measure you must take to revive the health of your website. All this may sound complicated for you. To simplify things, you can hire an SEO expert who will perform an extensive website audit to revamp your website from the ashes.
5. PPC is too expensive
Do you know the cost-per-click (CPC) for particular keywords, especially insurance, can go up to $54.91? Yes, it is $54.91 per click, and not per lead! The acquisition is still not guaranteed.
For PPC campaigns, you must invest in advertising, content creation, account setup, and agency fee. Overall, you will end up paying a hefty amount of money.
However, we are not saying that you will not get the returns but at a high cost.
At the same time, SEO can generate better returns than PPC campaigns.
It can bring in 15 times more clicks than coming from PPC ads.You don’t need to have an advertising budget for SEO. You just need awesome content, SEO expertise, and sufficient time.
Some advantages of SEO over PPC are:
- MORE TRAFFIC VIA SEO THAN PPC
- SEO LESS EXPENSIVE THAN PPC
- BETTER CHANCES OF LEAD GENERATION IN SEO
- SEO AIDS IN BUILDING AUTHORITY AND INCREASING BRAND AWARENESS
- SEO CAN TRIGGER EXPONENTIAL ORGANIC GROWTH WITHOUT MUCH INVESTMENT
A balanced combination of SEO and PPC can help you in outranking your competitors. How? Read on to know more.
6. Falling Behind Competitors
In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin approached Yahoo to sell their PageRank system (which later became the core of Google) for $1 million.
Yahoo refused, and today, it’s nowhere close to Google. Therefore, never take your competitor for granted, especially when it comes to SEO.
In organic search, if your website rank is lower than the rank of your competitor’s website, you will receive less traffic to your website. And less traffic means fewer leads and lesser conversions.
To rank higher, you have to work on numerous aspects, such as keywords, content, backlinks, etc.
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of SEO.
Your website content must revolve around the main keyword, and content should be relevant to your audience as well.
A lot of tools, such as SEMRush and MOZ, assist in managing SEO campaigns. But you also need an expert who knows how to work with these tools.
7. Not Generating Quality Leads
A user searches a query on a search engine, clicks on your website’s link (if it ranks on the first page), browses the website, gets convinced, and shares his or her contact information with you. After a long process, you get a qualified lead.
So if a user spends so much time and efforts before sharing contact information, he or she is interested in your product or service. This means you get a quality lead from organic search.
You can get quality leads from various other sources, such as PPC campaigns, social media, and other channels.
But SEO trumps all over these because organic search gets better with time if you invest the right kind of efforts.
Ignite Visibility conducted a study to calculate CTRs of the search results ranking on the first page. The top three results received a cumulative CTR of 46.96 percent. Therefore, investing in SEO service is the right thing for you if you want to generate quality leads.
8. On-page SEO is a nowhere
The structure and design of the website home page and other pages play a crucial role in search engine rankings. If you can deliver excellent user experience, the probability of conversion increases exponentially. A well-optimized page contains:
- Head, body, and tail keywords
- Engaging headlines
- Rich media like images, infographics, videos
- Error-proof content
- Well-formatted layout
- Proper navigation channels
- Internal links
When you look at your website, do you find all these elements in place? If not, then you must consult an SEO expert.
The expert will prepare a website audit checklist to verify adherence to on-page SEO guidelines.
MOZ PUBLISHED AMAZING CONTENT ON THE ELEMENTS OF AN OPTIMIZED PAGE. WHEN OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR ON-PAGE SEO, YOU CAN REFER TO THESE ELEMENTS.
9. Off-Page SEO is a Mess
If the website’s on-page SEO is good, then you can work on your website’s off-page SEO.
We can say that on-page SEO and off-page SEO are linked with each other.
In off-page SEO, you work beyond the scope of your website.
Some of the aspects of off-page SEO are various forms of link building.
So if you want to analyze links pointing to your website, keywords your website is ranking for, domain authority, and other metrics, you can perform a complete SEO audit on tools like SEMrush, Moz, or Ahrefs.
Basically, it’s about working on authority, relevance, and trustworthiness. When search engines get signals from other sources that your website is credible and trustworthy, the rankings improve automatically.
MOZ EXPLAINS THE IMPORTANCE OF OFF-PAGE SEO FACTORS IN A DETAILED MANNER. HAVE A LOOK AT THE DIAGRAM BELOW TO UNDERSTAND THE INTRICACIES OF OFF-PAGE SEO.
10. Technical SEO is absent
The third branch of SEO – technical SEO –is responsible for keeping your website healthy, functional, and relevant.
The presence of websites on search engines is somewhat dependant on technical SEO. Some of the important aspects of technical SEO are:
- Crawling and indexation
- Website loading speed
- Secure data transfer
- Structured data markup
- Canonicalization
- Mobile-friendly
- AMP-powered
- Duplicate content removal
For most of the business owners, on-page SEO and off-page SEO is understandable and manageable, up to an extent. But technical SEO has its own set of complications. Therefore, it’s advisable to hire an SEO service provider who can optimize your website for technical SEO.
Website speed, mobile-friendliness, and search engine indexing are the most important aspects of technical SEO.
To check website speed, you can perform an analysis on GTmetrix or Google Page speed. For a mobile-friendly website, ensure a responsive design that loads quickly on mobile devices. And for crawling and indexing, register your website on Google Search Console and Bing Webmasters.
11. Poor Engagement & Conversions
When your website content is not up to the mark, it affects rankings in organic search. Not only this, it results in poor engagement as well.
If the user doesn’t like what’s displayed on the website, he or she will leave after a few seconds.
It will result in a higher bounce rate, ultimately, affecting your website rankings.
Poor user engagement is due to:
- Irrelevant & insufficient content
- Keyword-deficit content
- Complex site structure
- Negligible call-to-actions
- Absence of media files
Poor engagement affects the customer journey. A customer, or a prospect, is not able to take a decision, resulting in loss of lead and conversion.
To improve engagement and conversions, you must consider investing in on-page SEO. Since on-page SEO deals with optimizing website content, it will ensure maximum engagement and conversions on your website.
12. Not Optimized for Mobile
Mobile optimization is a vertical of technical SEO.
Optimizing your website for mobile, and for mobile search, is a necessity because around 50 percent of the website traffic comes from mobile devices.
According to Statista, in the first quarter of 2019, 48.71 percent of the global website traffic came from mobile devices, excluding tablets.
As mobile usage is on a consistent rise, the future belongs to those who will invest in mobile SEO and mobile marketing.
Mobile optimization deals with the following aspects:
- Responsive website design
- Mobile loading speed
- Crawling and Indexing
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
- Local search
- Mobile search keywords
Again, you cannot take care of all these aspects at your level, unless you are a technically-oriented person. It is advisable to contact an SEO expert for complete mobile SEO audit service.
13. If you have a Local Business
Local SEO is a must for a local business. It is true because:
- 88 percent of searches for local businesses on mobile devices contact the business within a day
- 97 percent of people learn about the local business via online means
So if you have not registered your presence as a local business, you are missing out on leads, conversions, and sales.
Similar to other SEO strategies, local SEO also has its aspects, such as:
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE
Marking your presence on Google by registering your business and providing necessary details
REVIEWS
Asking customers to leave reviews and ratings, and registering your response against these reviews
PHOTOS
Posting pictures that are helpful and informative
NAP – FILL IN THE NAP
Name, Address, and Phone Number – details to increase chances of ranking in local search
SCHEMA MARKUP
Adding additional information by using schema markups increases chances of ranking in local search
For a local business like yours, skipping local SEO can be detrimental. Your competitors will reap the benefits if you will keep on delaying your plan of implementing local SEO.
The Ultimate Website SEO Audit Checklist
MOBILE-FRIENDLY
Google rolled out a mobile-first indexing algorithm in 2018. It states they will be using mobile version for mobile and desktop searches.
Conduct a mobile-friendly test to know if your website is mobile-friendly or not.
The test will display all the issues that persist with the mobile version of your website.
LOADS UP BLAZING-FAST
Site speed is a crucial ranking factor, whether it’s desktop search or mobile search.
Analyze your website speed with GT metrix.
To increase the loading speed, you should clean up HTML code, compress images, and choose a reliable hosting provider.
SECURE DOMAIN
A vulnerable website is prone to hacking attacks that may put user information at risk.
To secure your website, enable HTTPS protocol, use PCI DSS compliant servers for transaction-based websites, and deploy necessary measures for secure data transfer.
SEAMLESS UI & UX
Remember, we discussed Rank Brain? Google measures user experience to rank your website in the search results.
So analyze whether you are imparting seamless user experience or not. Ensure content is relevant to the keywords, and it satisfies user queries.
SOLID BACKLINKS
Backlinks can make or break your ranks. So it’s necessary to conduct a thorough backlink analysis using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or MOZ.
Backlink analysis will tell you about:
- Backlinks referring to your website
- Backlink opportunities
- Competitor backlinks analysis
- Finding broken links
- Removing spam my links
SUPERIOR CONTENT
Perform an extensive check on the website content.
The content will help you in rendering a seamless user experience, building backlinks, and ultimately, boosting organic rankings.
Pay emphasis on articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, and images.
PERFECT ON-PAGE SEO
Besides writing superior content, you have to optimize it for on-page SEO. Check whether the following aspects are in place or not:
- Keyword in title
- Keyword in the first paragraph
- Internal links
- External links
- Media files
- Subheadings
- LSI keywords
THOUGHTFUL KEYWORD RESEARCH
SEO strategy begins with the keyword research.
A specific set of keywords define a business.
You have to optimize your website around these keywords so that you can rank for particular queries. Conduct in-depth keyword research using tools like MOZ, SEMrush, or Ahrefs.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
You can learn a lot from your competitor, especially how to rank in search engines.
You can either replicate their strategies or implement a better one to outrank them.
Competitor analysis will provide insights into their:
- Most popular content
- Ranking keywords
- High authority referring domains
What’s your reason to opt for SEO audit service?
If you can relate with any of the aforementioned reasons, then you must know that SEO is a necessity to rank your website on search engines.
Just like other online marketing strategies, SEO will bring in customers for you. In fact, it can be a major source of leads for your business.
Find a reliable website audit service provider who can provide expert guidance and take your website SEO to the next level.
Is there any other reason that’s preventing your website from ranking on the first page? Let us know in the comments below.
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