Web Presence Auditing
Every website is different and the major search engines
like Google, Yahoo and Bing look at your website uniquely. When it comes to understanding your website and how we can customize a marketing campaign for you, we need to understand YOUR website, and particularly what issues your website may have that impact your rankings in the search engines.
What is a Website Audit Report?
A Website Audit Report allows you to get a professional health check on your website covering Web Design and Web Structure Analysis, Page and Link Errors, Page Title and Meta Description Issues, Back links Analysis, URL Architecting, Duplicate Content Analysis, In-depth target keyword analysis, and much more! When you want to invest in an online marketing campaign, particularly SEO, it is important to have a deep analysis of your website completed ahead of time so we can customize your marketing campaign. Running a long term online marketing campaign is a serious investment and should be well researched ahead of time. As with anything of great importance, due diligence with proper research ahead of time will always produce better results in the long term.
Why is a Website Audit Report Necessary?
A Website Audit gives you the opportunity to discover issues within your website that could profoundly impact the marketing campaign in a negative way. We need to understand the potential issues ahead of time and let you know what they are. Issues found could range from the simplest to the most complex, but would remain unseen by untrained eyes or remain unnoticed by busy business owners. Some issues that a Website Audit addresses are as follows:
Keyword Analysis
Website audit reports are performed to identify issues with the website that would negatively impact your ability to rank your website higher in the search engines. However, it is of extreme importance that we take into consideration WHAT you are trying to rank for when someone types in a search phrase into the search engine. Do you plan on showing up if someone is going to “Google” the search phrase “Texas accounting firm”? Before running a website audit report we need to identify what your target search phrases are. What do you want to show up for when someone types in that particular phrase into the search engines. Ideally, a website audit report is to prepare your website for an SEO marketing campaign, and therefore we preferably have a “finalized” list of search phrases that you want to rank for. When we have this list we will further analyze the relationship of those search phrases to your website content, and also dig deeper into the competition level of those keywords. If there are any issues with the search phrases you want to target we will let you know. This is a vital part of the website audit report because choosing the right search phrases to target is a large part of creating a successful marketing campaign.
Content Issues – Duplicate and Non-Relevant
In relation to the search phrases you want to target, does your website have a significant amount of content talking about the subject matter of the search phrases you want to target? If someone landed on your homepage would they immediately be able to identify that your website is relevant to all the search phrases you want to target? Is all the primary written content on your website unique and not duplicate content from another website? Do you have a lot of non-relevant pages about other products, services, or industries other than the search phrases you want to target on your website? When it comes to analyzing your website’s content vs. the search phrases you want to target, there is a lot to take into consideration and we will report to you any issues we find in regards to this on the website audit report.
Crawl and Indexing Errors
Ever wonder how Google knows about your website? Google has little robots they deploy to go visit your website and they “crawl” your website. Their robots act like a human clicking through to different pages on your website. After their robot is finished crawling your website they “index” certain pages of your website in their database. Only pages indexed in Google will show up when a user does a Google search. Why is this important? Well, if you have a 100-page website and only 5 of your pages are indexed in the Google database, you have a serious problem. What causes pages not to index in Google? The answer could be poor content, duplicate content, broken links on your page, and any other issues preventing the Google robot from crawling particular pages. Our website audit report will analyze and report on such issues.
Page Error Issues
Do you know if you have broken links on your website? Many times pages or the location of pages within your website are changed, and all of the other pages with links to the “changed” page are not updated, and thus all of the other pages linking to the changed page now have broken links. When judging a website’s ease of usability, we always look at the number of links as a good indicator. When users click on a link on your website and are directed to an error page, this can cause the user to leave your website out of frustration and not return. As part of our site audit report we will analyze your broken links and report to you on any issues we find.
Back links Analysis
If you know much about SEO, then you know that the number and quality of websites linking to your website has an impact on your rankings within the search engines. As part of our site audit report we will analyze your current back links and let you know if we find any issues other than a lack of back links.
Website Structure Issues
Most people do not think about the page or URL structure of their website when they build it. When the search engine robots visit your website they are wanting to see a recognizable structure to your website. If you can image trying to analyze how all the pages on your website are linked together, it would look like a giant spider web, and the question is … does the spider web make any sense? By the page and content structure on your website, is it easy to identify what your website is about? Our website audit report will analyze the structure of your website and report on any issues found.
Design Platform, Navigation and
Call to Actions
Websites are built based on a certain language, such as HTML, PHP, ASP, etc. Furthermore, websites are often times built on top of entire “systems” that are made up of a particular language. Certain languages, on particular systems could make or break an SEO campaign, therefore it is very important for us to analyze this aspect of your website. In short, if your website does not allow us to make the necessary changes we want to make because of how it is built, then we will have issues. The “calls to action” are also important to analyze. Is your navigation user friendly? Is it easy to find the content you are looking for within your website? Does your website clearly display links to your contact forms, phone number, and other important ways in which the user on your website can interact with you or purchase your services/products? All of these will be analyzed and reported on within the site audit report if we find any issues.
The Benefits
The 3 main benefits if having a Website Audit done for you are:
Our Website Audit Report will enhance an SEO campaign because it covers the most important search engine ranking factors: Website design, structure, crawl-ability, indexing, on-page elements such as page titles, meta description, keyword grouping, as well as content, and off-page elements such as back links. Our Website Audit Report ensures we never walk blindly into an SEO marketing campaign for you and it gives you added trust and security in your SEO campaign knowing we did our research before jumping into an SEO campaign.
Our Website Audit Report will also improve the experience of your audience and customers as it covers in-depth assessment of your page architecture, navigation, content, calls-to-action and more.
Why is a Website Audit Report Necessary?
It is interesting to note that enhanced SEO results in improved visibility, rankings, higher CTR (click through rate) and increased traffic. As more and more visitors have a great user experience, bounce rates will go down, engagement will go up and this will help to increase your rankings within the search engines. The cycle continues improving your overall website performance and online marketing.
GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES
In addition to being better prepared to run an SEO campaign, getting a website audit will also protect your website from Google’s algorithm changes. Google is continuously tweaking their algorithms to provide users with search engine results of ever improving quality and relevance.
Two of their major algorithms are called Panda and Penguin. To date, there have been 25 Panda updates since 2011 and 3 Penguin updates since 2012 which has affected 41.4% of search queries. Panda updates are generally targeted at sites with low quality content and Penguin updates are targeting web spam.
Many website owners, webmasters and SEO service providers who are using low quality and web spam techniques, are constantly slapped, seeing their rankings and traffic go down. Our website audit was modeled to take these search engine updates into consideration, which is why our website audit is so extensive. You can always take the short route and do no website audit, and jump immediately into an SEO campaign, but what if you missed something and as a result all of your hard work and investment into an SEO campaign all went down the drain because you were not prepared for future search engine updates.
GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES
Here is one example of a site that was badly hit by the Panda and Penguin updates. You will see how this site was affected by looking how its traffic declined from 2011 to 2013.
Having a Website Audit done for you by a competent service provider like us will help you recover from the negative effects of Panda and Penguin algorithms (if applicable), as well as protect you from future updates. We know this because we have a deep understanding of Google’s algorithm principles and updates.
What are Your Competitors Doing?
Your astute competitors are having their websites audited regularly. Their web pages are found on the 1st page of Google, Bing, and Yahoo search results. Those who are not having their websites audited are lost deep in the SERPs – constantly pushed down by competitors.
It is time to level the playing field by getting your own Website Audit Report now, implement our recommendations to be aligned with the major search engines’ guidelines in order to ensure a successful SEO marketing campaign. This will bring you head-to-head with your competition on search results and potentially beat them.
The Future
Google released the Panda algorithm on February 23, 2011 and had 24 updates since then. The last update was reportedly released on March 14.
Penguin, on the other hand was first released on April 24, 2012 with updates on May 24 and October 5. It has been reported that a next update will come out this Q2 of 2013. The guys at Google have been rolling out both Panda and Penguin updates after the other. These are released regularly with new tweaks and stronger focus on certain elements. There may also be new major algorithm updates in the future like Panda and Penguin but are not yet named.
On top of this, Google introduces many other smaller algorithm changes and update these regularly.
All in all, Google makes algorithm changes 500 to 600 times in a year.
http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
In-depth Consultation
We believe that understanding our customer’s needs, objectives and goals are crucial to providing superior Website Audit Reports and so we take the time to know your business, your target market, your competitors, your brand and keep these in mind as we perform a Website Audit for you.
Why Choose Us?
Choosing us puts you ahead of the curve. Rather than do a Website Audit by yourself, which will require extensive training, you are better off relying on our methodologies and diagnostics developed through our years of experience and expertise.
Summary of What We Do
Market Research and Analysis
We perform manual and software-driven keyword and keyword structuring research, ranking and competition analysis. We identify priority issues and recommend a fix.
Web Design Analysis
We check for possible issues on your website platform and hosting, perform malware checks, analyze your website design, and check for browser compatibility, site loading speed, navigation and content crawl-ability.
Website Structure Analysis
We check for search engine tools such as Google Analytics, Google & Bing Webmaster Tools. We also check for site-maps and URL structure, internal linking and mapping.
Error Troubleshooting Report
We look for broken links and 404 error pages. We also check your Robots.TXT, Robots Meta Tags and indexed pages.
Page Title and Meta Description Troubleshooting
We check for duplicate, missing, and long page titles and meta description as they affect SEO.
Backlinks Report
We check for external links that are pointing to your pages and see if there are issues.
Content Analysis and Optimization Guidelines
We analyze your content, check for quality and duplication. We also check for keyword grouping, do URL mapping and check for issues on your target URLs and URL architecting. We then provide content instructions to optimize your content.
Report Summary and Recommendation
We then provide you a report summary and provide recommendations line by line with priority tags and pricing to set your expectations
