How to Audit Your Own Website

Posted 13th February 2017

How to Audit Your Own Website

Before you hire an SEO company, you should do a little prepping yourself. This includes an audit of your website. Learn how to before getting an SEO company.

SEO can be a dark art to understand. And less than half of small businesses don’t think they’ll get new business opportunities from search engine traffic.

They’re missing out. And you may worry that you’re missing out.

So maybe you want to hire an SEO company like Mind Metricks to help you. But there are things you can audit yourself to get started.

Read on to find out more.

What do search engines look for?

The primary goal of any search engine is to give users the best results. So it serves up sites that will provide the most relevant information.

The exact science behind this remains a mystery. But there is a range of known factors that affect your ranking.

-How authoritative is your site on your subject?
-Is your site easy to use?
-Does it quickly provide answers to the user’s questions?
-How long does your page take to load?
-Does the site structure make it easy to navigate?
-Are there plenty of external links to your website?
-Do you have a healthy social presence?

While you’re performing your SEO audit, you’ll need to take all of these factors into account.

But the user and search engines have different requirements from your site. So you’ll need to audit for both perspectives.

Put your user’s experience first.

Your user needs to be able to complete actions on your website. It needs to be as clear and easy to use as possible.

Open your website and position yourself as a first-time visitor. Imagine that you are one of us here at Mind Metricks.

Now browse your site. Is it easy to navigate? Can you filter products, if you sell physical items? Is the ‘add to cart’ option obvious?

Take a look at the design of your site. Great, relevant images and a clean design will enhance the user experience.

Think of your website like a storefront online. You wouldn’t invite customers into a dirty shop full of broken furniture.

So make sure the site is easy to use, welcoming, and clear. Ensure it reflects what you do. So don’t use pink fluffy unicorns if you’re a funeral home.

How do search engines approach your site?

Search engines can’t read your design visually.

So a pretty design won’t save your site if there are things wrong with it.

A good way to improve the SEO on your website is to improve the inbound links. Quantity is good, but the quality is better.

The search engines can tell if the link is a good one. And more links from other sites imply that your site is worth linking to and thus worth visiting.

But it also looks at how fast your page loads, and what internal structure links the page together.

Remember these all link back to the user experience. The underlying structure of your site, the bit the search engines look at, is crucial to a good experience for the user.

And search engine algorithms can vary between engines, and they can change over time. So put user experience at the heart of your SEO audit.

Can Mind Metricks give me an SEO audit checklist to start with?

Yes.

Use a third-party link checking tool. If you find a lot of bad inbound links, contact the websites. Ask them to remove the links.

Then start finding opportunities to generate good inbound links. Consider press coverage, or networking with others in your industry.

Make sure you have descriptive title tags, meta descriptions, and written content on all of your pages.

Ensure the keywords you use on each page are reflected in the URL.

Check your URL on GTmetrix. You’re aiming for a ‘B’ rating or better.

So if your site is loading too slow, consult a developer for advice on reducing load times. Simply resizing images can be a quick solution.

But if you still need help with your SEO, contact Mind Metricks. We’ll help you with those search engines.