If you want to maximize the results that your online business will get from SEO, then you must find a reliable company to collaborate with. It’s basically impossible to get top-quality results by taking care of SEO internally. But to ensure that an agency will be able to produce the best results for your business, you will need to check the quality of the SEO analysis process, starting with the SEO audit.
In this article, you will find all the information you need about a top-quality SEO analysis process. And you can use this information to understand the level of an agency. You will also be able to learn why is this part of the collaboration essential. Just having this information will help you have a better collaboration with an SEO agency and give you peace of mind once you find the right partner.
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An SEO Audit Is a Mandatory First Step of Any Collaboration
The first thing you need to learn about is the SEO audit. Keep in mind that every time you want to start a collaboration with an SEO agency, you need to make sure that the first step will always be an audit. Yes, this service is that important. It will basically determine the quality of the results that you can expect to get from the collaboration. How so? Well, there are several reasons for that.
The goal of an SEO audit is to gather information. A reliable agency will first try to gain a thorough understanding of your business and website. And the audit is the best choice to gain that type of information. An SEO agency will find out the current SEO state of your site through an audit, and that will reveal the SEO optimization that your site will need first.
The site audit will also provide a part of the information that will be needed to create a personalized strategy for your business. But the information needed for this goal won’t come only from an audit. The SEO analysis process will need to cover a couple of other factors as well. Still, the information from the audit remains essential for this purpose as well.
What Steps Should Be Included in the SEO Audit?
To make sure that you work with a reliable agency, you will need to make sure that the quality of the SEO audit is top-notch. And part of that task is to make sure it includes all the steps mentioned below. There are many different things that an audit must check. And all of them are equally important for both the understanding of your website and the creation of the custom strategy. You can find some more information about audits here.
Technical Audit
The first part of any audit should focus on the technical part of your website. In essence, this type of audit will determine the functionality of your website. And it will also check how much is your website focused on the convenience and satisfaction of the visitors. So, what exactly will be checked in this part? Well, several factors should have priority.
The first thing that any technical audit should check is the functionality of all the links and pages on your website. A broken link could mean the loss of many customers. So, such situations must be avoided. For this reason, the audit must check if all the links work properly and make a list of the ones that have problems.
Besides the functionality of the site, the audit must also ensure the convenience of navigation. And this part should check the loading speed of your site, mobile optimization, and even the structure of the navigation – the map of the site. All of these will reveal if the visitors have a hard time surfing your site or not.
On-page Audit
The next part of the audit must focus on everything else besides the technical part of your website. That includes every type of content that can be found. Keep in mind that the quality of the content is by far the most important factor that search engines, such as Google, will use to determine the ranks of a website.
So, it is mandatory to ensure that the quality of the content that can be found on your website is top-notch. For this reason, the audit must check the quality of the content. If you never used any SEO services in the past, then the chances are that the quality of the content will not be top-notch or uniform. Also, you probably do not have any proper keywords integrated.
Off-page Audit
Many online business owners do not realize how important this part of SEO is. Most search engines also take the online presence of a website into consideration while determining their ranks. So, the audit must also gather information about this part. And the main part of this process is to find all the backlinks of your website and observe their quality.
2 main factors determine the quality of a backlink. The first one is the quality of the content used to create the backlinks. If there is no content used, that backlink will have almost 0 influence on the ranks of your business. And the second factor is the online presence and authority of the host websites where your links are posted.
To create a proper custom SEO strategy the information gathered by the off-site audit is essential. The SEO agency will decide which parts are the strengths of your website and which ones are the weak points. And this information will help the agency determine the focus of the strategy.
The SEO Analysis Process Must Include Your Business and Industry
Besides the standard audit, the SEO analysis process must cover 2 other factors. A reliable SEO agency will strive to gain as much information about the industry and your business. This information is mandatory to personalize the SEO strategy as much as possible. And it can also be used to find the best keywords and SEO methods for your site.
In some cases, the agency will ask for your collaboration. Keep in mind that every business is different. So, it is possible for an agency to not fully understand the uniqueness of your business without your input. For this reason, it is recommended that you provide the information asked by the SEO agency as fast as possible.
After all the information is gathered, the agency should create a personalized SEO strategy for your website. But not all the agencies on the market will use the method mentioned in this article. So, you should spend some time to find a reliable agency that has your interests in mind. And that will spend the time and effort to accomplish all the goals mentioned here.
Making a Personalized Strategy Based on the SEO Analysis Process
So, what exactly should a personalized strategy look like? Well, the first thing that a personalized strategy needs are a set of keywords. And based on all the information gathered, the agency will prepare a list of potential keywords that would fit the current needs of your business. And you will have to choose the keywords you want from this list. Of course, this part should be discussed with the agency, and the decision should be made together.
The next step is to use all the information gathered through the SEO audit. The SEO company should start by providing you with solutions for all the technical problems found on your website. The next part of the plan will include the possible changes to the content on your website. And lastly, the agency must decide which backlinks should be eliminated and which ones should be optimized. All these represent the short-term focus of the strategy.
The last part of the strategy should include long-term recommendations. Here, the agency will recommend to you the quantity of content that should be regularly posted on your website and the number of backlinks that should be created. You can also find an alternative method in this article.
Regular SEO Audits Are Essential for Any Long-Term Collaboration
Yes, the role of the SEO analysis process is not over yet. This process still has an important part to play in your SEO collaboration. Keep in mind that all SEO strategies must be adapted and optimized over time. The more time passes, and the more optimizations are done, the lower the effectiveness of a strategy.
So, a reliable SEO company will take this fact into consideration and regularly update the strategy. But to do that, it will need new information about your website. And the best way to gather that information is through an SEO audit.
So, the best option is to discuss with your SEO agency and establish a regular frequency for the audits. In the beginning, a frequency of 3 months is recommended. But after a year or 2, it can be lowered to 6 months. This method will allow you and the agency to maximize the effectiveness of the audits and properly update the strategy over time.
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