Before we start performing any search engine optimization (SEO) work for any client, we perform an SEO audit. This identifies the areas where your site is weakest and allows the development of an SEO strategy / action plan to help your business on the Web. Audits as part of an ongoing SEO contract are included as part of the campaign.
We also perform standalone site audits that provide you with a whole host of recommendations and a game plan for moving forward. When you pay for this SEO service, you’ll receive a full written document with an hour-long conference call to explain it in more detail. When completed, you can use these recommendations to perform the work internally, use us, or take to another SEO firm: you own the work, so the choice is yours.
Should you decide to choose us to perform any SEO work based on your audit, we’ll discount your contract accordingly as we will have already performed the first step of our process.
What Your Paid SEO Site Audit Includes
Generally, an SEO site audit will look at both on-page factors and off-page factors that highlight some basic to-do items as well and more detailed advanced SEO recommendations. The areas we analyze include:
- Technical Factors. We’ll take a look at how the site is coded, including broken links, 301 redirects, url structure, canonical redirect usage, duplicate content, and more.
- Keyword Selection. The building block of all SEO efforts. Are you optimizing your site for the right keywords? If not, you can spend a great deal of time and money for very little effort.
- Tags. How well are you utilizing unique titles, meta descriptions, header tags (e.g. <h1>, <h2>…), alt tags, and other tags that either factor in greatly to the search engines’ algorithms or impact click through rates onto your site?
- Copy. Are you utilizing keywords in your site copy? We’re not talking about spamming – the site needs to be valuable for users, and the search engines can see through much of this type of writing anyway.
- Backlinks. The number, quality, and relatedness of other Web sites linking back to you plays a huge factor in how well the search engines rank your site. Additionally, these sites can send much quality referral traffic your way.
- Analytics. If you provide us access to your analytics (e.g. Google Analytics, WebTrends, Omniture, Mint) account, we’ll use this information to gain a historical perspective of your traffic and which keywords have been the most valuable to you. We may make recommendations on how to improve the data you get out of your analytics account as well.
- Search Engine Results. We’ll review a basket of high value keywords to see how you currently rank to identify where you have the most potential to gain results.
- Competitors. Through looking at the search results, we’ll identify your biggest competitors from an SEO perspective. Looking at how these competitors are optimizing their sites can provide great insight into what you should be doing to gain better rankings.
- Conversion Optimization. Not technically SEO-related, we’ll look at how well your site is optimized for conversions – a phone call, on-site purchase, newsletter sign up, form completion, or whatever action is meaningful for your business. The report will include simple recommendations for how to get more conversions out of your existing traffic.
Note: we always strive to communicate at the most basic level, but didn’t go into a great deal of detail here for the sake of brevity. If these terms sound foreign to you, check out our Internet Marketing Terms Glossary.
The beauty of an audit tailored to your site is that it lays out a plan, which, if implemented correctly, more than pays for itself. It also provides you with a snapshot of where you currently stand, what challenges you face, and what your opportunities for growth in natural traffic are. It’s a great way to judge whether or not actual implementation is worthwhile or not – and even whether you should optimize your current site or wait until you launch a new version.
Why Pay for an SEO Site Audit
Direct Online Marketing™ SEO Site Audits offer an incredible amount of value for a variety of reasons, including:
- Strategic, Technical & Actionable Advice. The audit stands on its own as a planning document.
- Tailored to your Business. You can have a cookie cutter report that explains how well your site performs for the SEO basics, but getting under the hood properly will yield the best information.
- Understandable. SEO jargon is no good for you to help you try and explain things to management. That’s why we write plainly and go over everything with you in a conference call.
- Cost. Our site audits are incredibly affordable and will save you time in planning the next moves for your site.
Order an SEO Site Audit Today
Don’t jump into SEO without a plan or you may end up hurting your efforts more than helping them. To learn more about how you can start increasing – and converting – more of your natural traffic or to find out more about our SEO site audit, call 800.979.3177 or fill out the fields below.
