Written By:
Kayley Blanchard
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) for today’s organizations. A well-optimized website will drive organic traffic, and these visitors will ultimately convert into paying customers. If you’re interested in finding out if your company’s website is optimized with SEO best practices in mind, you’re likely considering a professional SEO audit. But is an audit worth the money?
Here, we answer the following questions:
- What is an SEO audit and what does it include?
- Is an SEO audit worth the money?
- How do you choose the right agency to perform your audit?
What is an SEO audit and what does it include?
An SEO audit is a complete analysis of your website that identifies SEO issues that might be impacting your website’s ability to rank well in organic search results.
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What an SEO audit includes will differ slightly depending on the agency that you work with, but all audits should include a full picture of your website’s hierarchy and all issues negatively impacting performance in search results. Some areas that an SEO audit should focus on include:
- On-page SEO
- Organic rankings
- Technical SEO issues
- XML sitemaps
- Google Search Console
- Page speed
- Mobile-friendliness
- Indexability
- Internal & external linking
With an SEO audit, you can get a better idea of your website’s SEO strengths and weaknesses so that you can begin the issue resolution process.
Reasons Why an SEO Audit Is Worth the Money
1. It will save you time and money.
For marketing managers, and all other professionals, time is something that is hard to come by. If you don’t have the time to run an audit yourself, you’ll need another member of your team to conduct the audit. However, you might not have a highly skilled SEO professional on your team, and hiring an in-house SEO team can be a long and costly process.
By purchasing a professional audit from an agency, you’ll not only free up time for yourself and your team to focus on other tasks, but you’ll also save money that you would otherwise be spending to hire and onboard new employees.
2. Your site’s performance will improve.
By having a list of issues and opportunities to improve your website’s health, you’ll be able to resolve these issues yourself or work with an agency to resolve them for you. A healthy, well-optimized website is more likely to rank organically for valuable keywords relevant to your business. As you begin to rank for more keywords, your website traffic will improve as more searchers come across your website in search results.
3. You’ll gain insight into what your competitors are doing.
A professional SEO audit provides a closer look at what your top competitors are doing. The agency that you work with will perform a full competitor analysis, noting the keywords that your competitors rank for, the blog headlines that have been successful for them, their website hierarchy, and their overall marketing strategies.
With this information, you’ll know exactly what your competitors are doing that your company is not. You’ll be able to improve your own company’s marketing strategy by building upon some of your competitors’ successes.
4. The ROI of an audit is high.
The price range for an SEO audit varies based on the agency you work with, but regardless of the price, the investment is well worth it. According to research by BrightEdge, more than 40 percent of online revenue comes from organic search. By investing in a comprehensive analysis of your website’s health, you will improve your website’s appearance in organic search results and ultimately generate more revenue for your business.
5. You’ll be able to make the case for SEO.
It can be difficult to get key decision-makers at your organization to buy into SEO. They might not see the need, or they might be more interested in traditional marketing tactics like print and mail. After purchasing an SEO audit of your company’s website, you’ll be able to speak to the negative effects that SEO issues are having on your website’s performance and explain why an SEO strategy is so important for the success of your business.
Choosing the Right Agency to Audit Your Site
SEO audits can help you to identify opportunities to boost your website’s performance, gain insight into your competitor’s marketing strategies, and ultimately make your business more money. Even if you think that your website is perfectly healthy, you might be surprised by what an audit can reveal.
While an audit is immensely valuable, it’s important that you partner with the right agency to perform your audit. Look for a knowledgeable and experienced agency that you can trust. Consider an SEO audit with a reputable agency like Pepperland Marketing.
Our SEO audit service is an end-to-end solution in which we use the latest and greatest white hat SEO techniques to improve your website’s visibility in search results. Talk to us about our audit services to learn more about how we can work together to help your organization meet its business goals.