Erica Garcia Thomas, DBA
The magic of an SEO audit helps you see where you stand in your marketing efforts and gives you a starting point to understand where you attract your website traffic from on desktop and mobile devices. Implementing an SEO analysis is an art and a science; when done well, it lays the groundwork for your SEO strategy, resulting in customers finding your website more easily through search (Google).
Market research is helpful when developing competitive positioning models and strategies, as it provides a snapshot of your potential for risk and success. A Website (SEO) audit is a specific form of market research. It is beneficial when designing a business strategy, planning for a marketing campaign, and understanding your audience.
To improve your website's performance, you need to focus on your digital tools, data, content, and competitors. It's crucial to keep an eye on your competitors' content, reach, and rankings on a regular basis. A good starting point is to examine how your website appears in search engine results, especially on Google.
The SEO Audit:
1. Clarifies what aspects of SEO to address for your business.
Setting a starting point for your lead-generation efforts is crucial when discussing SEO. Just like the starting line of a race, knowing where to launch from and charting the course in front of you are strategies that are essential for a win.
An SEO audit's insight is priceless because it provides a data foundation to measure future growth. You will learn about your site's authority score, load speed, meta descriptions, and backlinks, all of which factor into your search rankings.
Through an audit, you can decide if investing in Google Ads or Facebook Ads is your next step or if you want to overhaul what you have entirely. Either way, the data from an audit will guide you as you look forward to anticipating growth.
2. Shows you what content your customers are most interested in.
Today, marketers avoid making decisions based on feelings. Instead, we plot strategies using research, industry tech tools, and data-driven decision-making. Many companies use A/B testing to test different versions of marketing materials, and that is an example of gathering data!
3. Reveals what audience you are truly drawing to your site and from where.
Targeting audiences involves identifying specific groups of people to market to. Sending personalized marketing messages means tailoring messages to individuals based on where they are in the buying process.
Effective marketing requires reaching the right person with the right message at exactly the right time in their buying process and your website plays a crucial role in facilitating this process. -Dr. Erica Garcia Thomas
If you focus on social media for marketing but only 3% of website visitors come from there, consider adjusting your strategy. In that case, you are better informed about diversifying your tactics and prioritizing other channels alongside social media.
4. Guides You in Evaluating Your keywords.
Keywords are a cornerstone of SEO strategy. They impact your blogs, articles, and landing pages and determine your competitiveness in the SERPs. According to a 2023 HubSpot report, 39% of marketers see optimizing on-page content with keywords as their main SEO strategy. Knowing your competitors' keywords and choosing the right ones for your business is crucial to your online success.
5. Generates new ideas for building your business and customer base.
Once you know what you've been doing and how it has worked or not, you can innovate and try new tactics to grow your reach. Gone are the days of making business decisions simply by responding to a feeling or one person's opinion.
Data, insights, and market research are vital to succeeding in the digital world. Good SEO makes it easier for customers to find your website when searching on Google, and it isn't easy to do as the world of SEO is vast.
Hire a technical, data-driven expert with a wealth of experience to conduct your SEO audit and give you the truth about your search results, keywords, content marketing, and website. Elevate 1 Consulting offers data-driven analysis, website (SEO) audits, website design, and maintenance. Contact us to learn more.