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How to Analyze a Website for SEO
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Maybe your website has been doing good – or great even – with clicks continuously coming in, site visitors steady in number, and your website on page one of Google search.
But what happens when your numbers start to dwindle? Inevitably, they will at one point – there will be a time when blind spots begin to appear, causing a drop in numbers, search – or simply, revealing areas for improvement. This is normal, don’t worry; maybe it’s time to analyze your website for SEO!
Analyzing your website for SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is the vital process of pinpointing which parts of your website can be improved on to increase your site’s visibility on search engines. This could range from your website’s content, to keywords, its design, and even links.
It’s important to regularly check up on your website’s SEO status and keep an eye out for spots for improvement – this helps keep your online presence fresh, up-to-date, always on the radar, on top of your online traffic game, and ahead of old and new competitors popping up.
Is it time for an SEO audit? Here are a few factors to consider about your website, as well as things to do and questions to ask, to keep your site’s SEO in tip-top shape!
How visible are you on Google?
First, you have to check where you rank among Google’s search results. This will determine how much work you have to put in for you to gain top visibility when users search about your industry, your name, or keywords related to you. Is your website at the top? Great! That’s half of your problems solved.
However, if you rank second, third, or last, (or worse, are found at the second page), then a more detailed SEO audit is in store.
For context, you can see how your website ranks within your country and the world using Alexa.com or other SEO checking websites. The analytics given by these websites can shed some much-needed light on the overall performance of your website – how many visitors it has daily, how much time they spend browsing your pages, the bounce rate (percentage of visitors who enter and then leave right away), and even which keywords are doing all the work.
How fast is your website page speed?
It may go unnoticed, but how fast or slow your website loads is a very important trait to consider when it comes to SEO powers. The overall quality of your website increases with a speedy, breezy, and easy-to-use browsing user experience on your website, thus bringing in more visitors, and even getting them to stay longer on your site.
It also affects your conversion rate, as well as your ranking on Google’s search engine. PageSpeed Insights by Google allows you to analyze your page speed, and what’s causing it, from there.
How is your content?
Let’s not forget one of the most important parts of a website – what’s actually inside it. Your body, text, messaging, and content are crucial in keeping your SEO healthy. Your content has to stand out on its own and remain fresh, relatable, not too wordy, long, easy to understand, and grammatically accurate.
Being unique is important, especially since you want to set yourself apart from competitors in the same industry. Tip: Google Analytics can help you find the pages of your website that captures the most readers. From those results, study what kind of content makes your visitors tick – and make more of those. Always ask: Is this something people would want to come to our website for and read about? Also, use as many top keywords as you can when writing content.
Also, speaking of up-to-date – make sure your website has no broken links or 404 page errors. This could lead to a severe drop in visitor rates, or an increase in bounce rate, since users might opt to just leave the site totally if they keep on getting redirected to empty pages. You don’t want your users to get lost! Tools like Google Webmaster Tools, SEMRush, DeepCrawl can help in spotting any “page not found” errors on your website.
How catchy are your descriptions and how accurate are your URLS?
How you craft your URLS (Uniform Resource Locator, the address to a spot on the Internet) is key in analyzing your website for optimum SEO. Ideally, your URL should be concise, made up of around 4-5 words that capture what the page is all about in a clear, simple snapshot. So if they’re long and wordy, analyze how you can make it snappier.
Mastering keywords is key in crafting a good, snappy URL. If you slap on a bunch of unnecessary, long words, you’ll be giving the search bot a harder time to find your page.
Meta descriptions (the subheads of your content) are also key in luring visitors in, especially if it makes use of snappy keywords. Keep it short, concise, but catchy enough to catch your attention.
Also, don’t forget the headings! A simple title could be the make-and-break of keeping that bounce rate healthy. Write them in a way that would get a visitor to click on them – and make use of high search volume keywords – these are the most commonly-searched words of users on various search engines.
How is user behavior?
A question you must ask yourself regularly as well is: How are users behaving on my platform? You can use Google Analytics for this – they can provide an analysis on how visitor traffic is doing on certain pages of your website, how long people stay there, what their pattern is when viewing your content, or even how they choose to read.
The data they give is helpful, such as how many users are using their mobile phones or desktops to browse? What time of day is traffic at its highest? Which pages have the least traffic? Where are your visitors coming from – social media or organic Google search? What buttons are they pressing the most? Which call-to-action links are the most attractive?
If your users are clicking the FAQs button often, maybe you could make information clearer. Are they clicking tabs with articles that have to do more with Beauty than Food? Consider upping your content for that or putting those stories in your top landing page. Are they checking in your website more often during lunch or dinner? Maybe you could be more active on your social media channels during that time to further increase your user numbers.
Study these answers carefully and regularly, and experiment on how this information can help you utilize your website further.
Do you need help with a professional SEO Audit to skyrocket your rankings in Google?
Have you been doing SEO for a while, but your website is still struggling to achieve top rankings, traffic and sales? If yes, you may be in need of a professional SEO Audit. If you are a local or an international company and need help formulating an effective SEO strategy, check out our Local SEO or International SEO services to learn more. We have SEO experience since 1998 and have helped hundreds of companies achieve top results in Google. You can learn more about our SEO agency here and how we achieve outstanding results for our clients.
Feel free to contact us and we would be happy to give you a free consultation and discuss your project in further details.