Sometimes we have a perfectly designed website, with details taken care of to the millimeter but, however, it is not working. We want to tell you, first of all, that nothing is wrong. SEO errors are very common when we are starting in the world of the web and positioning.
that is why it is important to carry out an audit of our website to find out where the errors are and to solve them step by step. Do you want to see how? We tell you in this post.
what is a web audit (SEO)?
A web audit or SEO audit is nothing more than an analysis of our website. Once we have analysed the errors and made a report with them, it is also part of the audit to correct these errors and implement the necessary improvements to make our website more optimal.
For our website to appear at the top of Google or any other web browser it is not enough to get it there once and do nothing to keep it there. For the optimisation to continue working and for the traffic to keep flowing to our website, we must continue to take care of it.
taking care of our website is an essential task that we cannot forget, as it is one of our most important tools to attract users and get them to end up becoming customers, as well as being the main stage where we show our products or services to consumers.
You know what they say about perseverance being the key to success and SEO positioning is no less important.
If we work to fix the errors that are leading to poor optimisation of our website, we will achieve not only a better SEO positioning but also better traffic and customer acquisition. Therefore, our company's profits will increase and we will all be winners.
Before starting the audit of our company's website, we should know that this study will focus on whether our platform meets three basic requirements for it to be of quality:
- Usability: The usability of our website is an essential feature not only for SEO positioning but also for the user himself. Therefore, detecting errors that are failing in the usability of our website through the audit will be very helpful. For example, to know if there are links that we are using in our publications that no longer work, if our website takes too long to load due to the weight of the images we have placed on it, if the display of our website is adapted to all devices from which it is visited (many websites cannot be viewed correctly from a mobile phone), etc.
- Optimisation: As we have already mentioned, if our website is not working properly, it will firstly affect the optimisation, i.e. the web audit will detect which errors are causing our positioning in Google to fall, for example. Google will position us higher or lower in the search results based on multiple requirements: the bounce rate, the number of external and internal links we use in our publications, if other blogs with authority link to our publications, if we make a correct use of keywords, etc.
- Security: This is one of the aspects that most concerns users today: web security. When we enter a website, especially those where we are going to make a purchase and provide banking and personal data, we choose those that our browser marks as secure. Therefore, our role as website owners is to prevent any third party from entering it for fraudulent purposes. We must be alert and know how to detect any sign of vulnerability to our website to ensure that it remains a safe space for our customers.
Steps to do a web audit
Now that we know what the web audit will focus on, it is time for us to carry out one. In order for the study to be effective and help us improve our website, we must follow a series of steps:
- Verify: We have to make sure and verify that the main URLs of our website can be crawled by users and that when entering them in the search engine or linking to them they do not appear as broken links. If the positioning of our website is based on how other authority blogs are linking to our posts or users are sharing content, we cannot offer a URL that will not work because users will lose interest in us.
- Check: As we have said before, checking the loading speed of our website is a fundamental aspect to offer a website with usability. If our website does not load correctly or the images cannot be seen because they are too heavy and take too long to load, the user will not find it very attractive to continue browsing it. On the other hand, if we check these aspects, we will be ensuring that the visibility of our platform is correct.
- Study: Yes, studying the structure of our website is also essential to detect errors. This will be known by taking into account both the user's experience when browsing our website and by checking the internal links that we place in our publications. A clear and structured organisation of our website will help the person to know where they can find what they are looking for. That is why it is also important to check if the internal links work because if the reader is consulting something and wants to access the linked site they will be lost if the search gives them an error and they will end up abandoning the navigation.
- Evaluate: Google or any other search engine will take into account the quality of the content we offer to position us better or worse. This means that we must evaluate the content we are publishing, if we are making a correct use of the keywords and if they fit the content we are publishing and the line of our brand.
- Attract: OK, we already know that what we want to achieve with our website is to attract customers, but are we attracting the right audience? If we have many visits to our website but very few purchase actions or expressions of interest, it means that the audience we are attracting is not the right one, as they are not interested in our content.
- Analyse: This is an essential step: not only do we have to analyse ourselves internally, we also have to analyse external factors: competition and market trends.
If we analyse how our competitors are performing (in terms of SEO positioning) we will be able to see where we are failing and we will know how we can improve. It is also important to analyse market trends as we must update our website as they change so that the customer can always find what they are looking for.
- Perform: Once we have studied, analysed and evaluated other factors we can perform an off-page SEO analysis and detect opportunities that will influence the external positioning of our website as it is essential to take it into account in addition to the internal analysis. If you are interested in knowing how to perform an off-page SEO analysis and how it works, we leave you here our post talking about it.
Why perform an SEO audit
It is clear, isn't it? If we carry out a web audit we will be able to know what mistakes we are making when it comes to positioning our website. And, in turn, if we correct the mistakes we will be able to improve the optimisation. If we improve the optimisation, we will improve customer visits and the benefits for our brand. It is a chain procedure that will help us to improve if we start to get down to work, because having a website is not everything if we are not making the most of it.
what about you, what are you waiting for to start optimising your website? If you have any doubts about how to get started, at Occam Digital Agency we are always ready to help you, just let us know!
