Routine SEO Audits Can Improve Your Website’s Visibility

Making your website rank high in search results is key to driving new business and increased revenue. After all, your site is the primary way people learn about your business, with studies showing that 97 percent of consumers go online to research local products and services.

How do you know whether your website is as effective as it could be? An SEO audit will tell you.

“To stay atop the rankings, we recommend performing an SEO audit at least once or twice a year,” said David Morrison, S&A Cherokee’s programmer/developer/SEO. “Google and other search engines routinely tweak their algorithms, so optimizing your site is an ongoing process.”

Typically, an SEO audit includes the following components:

• Check on-page optimization. Make sure title tags (headlines) appeal to Web visitors and are not stuffed with keywords. Check that title tags are no longer than 70 characters. Make sure meta-description tags provide interesting content. Provide high-quality, original content on each page.
• Check for broken links. Check to make sure outbound links are still going to live pages. Make sure there are no internal links to “dead” pages that have been deleted. This can have a detrimental effect on SEO ranking performance.
• Check search-engine indexing. SEO can be hampered by improper coding, hacked content or other issues that prevent search engines from reading your Web content. Various tools can help determine if your site’s content is displaying correctly as text.
• Examine your link profile. The number and quality of links pointing at your site play a major role in determining SEO site rankings. Assess the incoming links to see what types they are (directory links, social media links, press release links, etc.), if the sites linking to you are legitimate, and if they are relevant to your content.
• Test the site’s speed. Google is now prioritizing site speed as a ranking factor, so take a close look at your site’s average speed and page-load times. Subtle tweaks may improve your site’s load times.

To discover how S&A Cherokee can help with your SEO and website design needs, contact us for a free consultation at (919) 674-6020.