Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical for businesses of all sizes and industries. SEO can increase brand awareness, drive organic traffic, and improve conversion rates when done correctly. In fact, studies have shown that businesses that invest in SEO see higher returns on investment compared to traditional marketing strategies.
But what is it? And how do you know if you’re looking at the right factors when optimizing your website?
What Is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is optimizing digital content to improve its ranking on search engine results pages. The ultimate goal is to increase visibility and drive traffic to a website or digital content.
By conducting an SEO audit of your website or content, you can identify areas for improvement and optimize your content to improve its ranking on search engine result pages. This, in turn, can improve your website’s visibility, drive traffic, and, ultimately, improve your bottom line.
How to Conduct Your Own SEO Audit
When conducting an SEO audit of your website, there are a few steps to take that will allow you to get a baseline understanding of where your content currently sits. With that information on hand, you can create a content strategy to help drive organic – aka non-paid! – traffic to your website.
Conduct Keyword Research
The first step in keyword research is compiling a list of keywords you think your audience might use to find your business/product. This helps give you a baseline of where you currently stand (and if you don’t have a set list of words you’ve been using, that’s okay!).
From there, you’ll need to identify the keywords and phrases your target audience uses to search for your products or services using tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEM Rush, or Moz.
By comparing your list of keywords to the tools’ list of keywords, you’ll be able to see if your existing content is on the right track and if you need to add to or edit your existing content. And if the tools show you vastly different keywords than what you’ve been using, it may signal that you need to overhaul your content.
Evaluate On-Page Elements
On-page elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags play a crucial role in SEO, as these are some of the primary objects that search engines review. To ensure your content is accessible to your target audience, ensure these elements contain the relevant keywords and accurately describe the content on the page.
Assess Content Quality
High-quality content is a critical component of search engine optimization. Make sure that your content is relevant, informative, and engaging (like this post!). Use multimedia elements such as images and videos to make your content more engaging and visually appealing.
A Warning on Keyword Stuffing
While we’ve already spoken a lot about the importance of keywords, you’ll want to ensure that your content isn’t “keyword stuffed,” meaning the keywords are used repetitively throughout the piece unnaturally.
Search engines are getting smarter – and so are consumers – they want to see content that provides value to the audience in an educated, conversational manner – not just the same few keywords over and over again.
Check for Broken Links
Broken links can harm your SEO efforts by causing frustration for users and negatively impacting your website’s ranking. Check for broken links on your website and fix them promptly. If your website has a lot of pages, there are tools you can use that will run through your site and generate a link status report for you. Pay attention to internal links to top-level pages and posts, image links, and outbound links to other websites.
Ensure Mobile Responsiveness
With the majority of web searches now taking place on mobile devices, it is essential that your website is mobile-friendly. Make sure that your website is responsive and displays properly on mobile devices. Websites that aren’t mobile-friendly (even if their content is the absolute best) risk dropping down the search engine rankings, decreasing the likelihood of capturing all-important organic traffic.
Are you ready to get serious about optimizing your website for search engines and crafting an amazing content marketing strategy? The team at Beck Digital can help! Get in touch, and we can talk through what you have, what you need, and where to go from here.
