Is your small business’s website performing as well as it could be? If you’re not sure, or even sure what its potential could be, it is likely time for an SEO audit.

A search engine optimization (SEO) audit is an evaluation of your website’s health. The goal is to assess the different factors that contribute to ranking in a search engine results page (SERP). An audit like this can help your website understand where opportunity lives and provide actionable recommendations for improvement.

Some key benefits of conducting an SEO audit include:

Identifying and Addressing SEO Issues
To find the opportunity a site has, the first step is evaluating what isn’t quite working. There are some main parts that get analyzed when assessing this.

Technical SEO
Discuss what on the backend isn’t working. Your website’s structure, code, or performance could be hurting your rankings. Things like website speed, mobile-friendliness, or XML sitemap errors could be contributing factors. As Google puts more emphasis on Core Web Vitals and meeting a minimum standard, so too should you with your website.

On-Page Optimization
As important as the backend is, so too is what a searcher sees. Make sure your website’s content, keywords, and meta data are optimized for search engines. This includes making sure your title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and image alt text include keywords that consumers are searching for so you can connect with them.

Link Building
Having other (credible) sites linking to you helps build a healthy backlink profile. Analyze your site’s backlink profile to identify ways to build high-quality backlinks, getting reputable websites to link to yours to increase your authority.

Improving Search Engine Rankings

Once you have the opportunities identified, you want to pivot into making changes. But it bears the question - why is it so important to see improvements within the search engine rankings?

Increase Organic Traffic
When you address SEO issues and optimize your website, you attract more traffic from organic sources. This means more people that maybe didn’t realize they wanted or needed your product or service are now being introduced to your business, resulting in more potential customers.

Boost Visibility
When your site is more visible in SERP, it makes it easier for potential customers to find you. The more space you take up, especially as the SERP landscape changes with more features, the more likely you are going to be the final destination for someone searching for a product or service.

Target Relevant Keywords
While it’s great to see increased clicks, what matters even more is what people are searching for when they are coming to your site. You want to be showing up for searches that are highly relevant to the experience your site is delivering. This will help ensure that the traffic coming to your site is high value and will improve your conversion rate.

Enhance User Experience
While many might think that SEO ends once a user gets to the site, they would be wrong. It's important to provide a user a good experience, encouraging them to continue interaction until they are ready to make a purchase.

Improve Website Speed
In addition to being a big indicator for Core Web Vitals, site speed (specifically page load) being optimized improves a user’s experience and can help reduce bounce rates. A faster website results in happier users and a bigger chance of conversions.

Enhance Navigation
The taxonomy of your site is a big ranking factor in terms of passing authority to pages. But in addition to that, making your site easy to navigate makes it user-friendly and makes visitors more satisfied. A clear navigation structure helps users find what they are looking for quickly, and avoids frustrated customers.

Create High-Quality Content
If the content on your site isn’t good, then it’s going to be hard to get a customer to stay on it whether or not you are optimized! That’s why it’s so important to develop valuable and informative content tailored for your target audience. Think blog posts, videos, articles, and other forms of media that can engage your ideal customer base.

Improve Return on Investment (ROI)

At its core, the point of the website is to drive business. By improving organic search, you can help the ultimate goal: improving your bottom line.

Generate More Leads
The more organic traffic you have, the larger the opportunity there is for more leads and conversions. This ultimate can translate into more sales and revenue.

Reduce Marketing Costs
It seems like everything can cost some money these days. Thankfully, SEO is a cost-effective way to generate leads and sales when compared to other channels. By optimizing your website for SERP, you can reduce your reliance on other paid channels. And, by optimizing your website, you can make the paid channels even more effective and efficient.

Maximize Your Marketing Efforts
Make sure that what you are doing with SEO is aligned with your other marketing efforts. This way you have the opportunity to maximize your results. A well-optimized website can enhance the other efforts you are doing - onsite or off.

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At HostingCT, we know running your own business can be overwhelming - so we can help you with your marketing efforts. Our Tier 2 SEO Audit includes a keyword refresh as well as a technical evaluation of your site. Our experts will analyze your website’s on-page and backend efforts to identify areas of improvement. We’ll also provide recommendations for optimizing your keyword strategy in the effort to attract more relevant traffic to your site.

Don't let hidden SEO issues hold your business back. Contact us today to schedule your SEO audit and start unlocking your website's full potential.

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