SEO is one of those internet acronyms that a company might hear about, and then wonder if they should care about it.
The answer is always, yes.
If you aren’t optimizing your website and web content for search engines, then you’re likely missing out on valuable relevant organic traffic that can help you grow your business.
So, what is SEO?
SEO — search engine optimization — involves every layer of building your website and landing page, from the technical side of things to the specific words you are using in your content. When combined, these layers lead to an increased awareness from Google and other search engine algorithms. More awareness leads to your website showing up more in organic search results, putting your company in front of the people who are seeking the services or products you offer.
Let’s take a deeper look into three key layers you should consider when starting an SEO audit.
1. Strategy and goals
Any decisions on where to spend your company’s time and resources should relate directly to your business goals. SEO is no different. It is important to set out with specific strategies and goals to measure your success when you set up an SEO audit.
For example, you might want to get a blog set up on your website to provide valuable content to your customers and potential customers. If you do that, but disregard the SEO practices, you likely won’t get many people reading your blog. When working with clients, we start by creating a hierarchy to organize goals, strategies and tactics.
An SEO audit should include research on pain points and key words that are relevant to your target audiences and tests to ensure the user experience to your website is frictionless. To complete the picture, you should create engaging and ongoing content, promoting it on social media and linking back to your website.
By setting a strategy that includes SEO and engaging content, you increase the chances of connecting with your customers and prospects.
2. Keywords
Keywords still play an important role in how your site is found, no matter what you hear from digital marketing bloggers. The way search engine results pages (SERPs) look at keywords has changed dramatically over the years. Even with those changes, it is still important to think of keyword topics and trends that are hyper-relevant to your content.
There are any number of tools on the internet to come up with keywords that are relevant for your company, but you must decide what is most relevant for you, and audit the list of keyword options you have. Personally curated keywords will give you a boost over just plugging in keywords that are randomly generated.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is crucial to your SEO efforts. If your technical SEO isn’t up to snuff, you could end up with a broken page and many frustrated website users. When we take our clients through an SEO audit, we work through the checklist of technical essentials, from meta descriptions on every page to ADA accessibility.
Conducting an SEO audit is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a detailed and ongoing process that should be a regular part of maintaining and updating your website. Whether you are updating a single page, or redoing your whole website, don’t underestimate the importance of SEO in attracting customers to your business.