Curated from an eZineArticle by: J.A. Moffett:
One of the first steps to start proper SEO work is to have a SEO Audit performed on your website. The SEO company you choose for your SEO creation should be able to do a proper audit.
What is a SEO Audit?
A SEO audit is a full analysis of your website, that will analyze, measure and report the factors that influence your search engine ranking. A part of the audit is a SEO expert putting your website through its paces, to point out any areas that you need to focus on to increase your rankings. At the end of the audit you will receive a list of recommendations and possible actions to rectify your situation.
What that audit measures
A SEO audit performed by a SEO company will measure the performance of your website, the most important aspect of the audit is the technical part. Your website could be stuffed with rich content and still have a low ranking, here is where the technical aspect of the audit can benefit you most. The technical aspect measures:
1) The clarity of your content and the code you used for the website creation. The audit will confirm if the creation code you used for your website is SEO friendly, this will allow the company to help you clear any unwanted code and increase the visibility of your content.
2) The page load time. This is the time your webpage takes to load. Even though no evidence have been found to suggest this influence rankings, your SEO company might believe that this might be the case. Other than the effect of loading time on a search engine, people do not want to wait ages for a site to load, they would rather move on to a new one.
3) Ease of navigation. Even though navigation is not measured by search engines it is measured by potential customers. A site that is difficult to navigate or search will create less and less return customers.
4) The URL of your website. It is important that a URL are not too long or contain any odd characters. The most effective URL's are those that contains keywords.
The benefits of a SEO audit performed by a company.
1) Optimized keywords. The SEO audit report provided by the SEO company, will include suggestions on how to choose and optimize keywords that are related to your website and products.
2) The best possible URL Structure. The audit report will provide you information regarding the URL of your website and how you might be able to improve it.
3) Content order. The audit will show you the proper way your content must be arranged to create the ultimate rankings. Companies providing SEO will know exactly how to fix this dilemma.
4) Your target market and ROI. A proper audit will show you exactly what your target market is at the moment, if this does not fit with your marketing the SEO company you use will be able to modify your website to reach your target audience.
