Search Engine Optimization has been around in some form or other for a while now, using keywords and other elements that are in play to drive traffic to your site. Obviously the end game is to drive traffic there with the goal of conversions, but for the moment, you are simply trying to audit your site to see how effective your SEO strategies are. If this is your first time ever conducting an SEO audit on your website, you should investigate tools such as the free audit on sites like SEO Guru Atlanta.
Here you will enter the URL and the audit will yield a number that tells you how well your current SEO strategy / strategies are working for you. Sound simple? Well, it is and it isn’t. There are some technical aspects to SEO that the average layperson won’t understand simply because of the terminology employed. However, don’t let that dissuade you. Here are a few tips you can follow and some advice that will put you on the right path.
The Evolution of Search Engine Optimization
In the very beginning it was all about keywords and keyword phrases and so many website owners simply stuffed their pages full of useless keywords that told the visitor nothing. Pages looked much like keyword clouds of today, but they had no useful or informative content on them. They were simply pages with keywords (called keyword stuffing) and then a pitch to sell a product – a sort of ad that you clicked on that brought you to a ‘buy now’ page.
Google Didn’t Like Those Nefarious Tactics
Google didn’t like that one bit as it was an underhanded way to get people to stop by your site. So, they started looking at how to rank your site so that it would come up highly in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and then when visitors clicked through to your site from the SERPs they landed somewhere with useful information that actually told them something.
How Does This Information Relate to a Site Audit?
Okay, now onto what this means for your very first site audit. If you have been following updates on Google’s continually evolving algorithms, you know that a number of things also impact SEO. Backlinks are only a small part of SEO ranking, albeit a very important part, but so is the use of video, social media, informative content, graphics and other strategies that work together. It is here that you need to see whether you have been using the best elements for your site and also how well they are working to gain you rank. But of course, you also need to understand how Google ranks your SEO.
Interpreting Your Score
A free SEO audit tool like the one mentioned above is the easiest way to get your SEO score. But, here is where the next problem begins. How do you interpret that score and how can you fix it? Chances are you may not be doing as well as you could if you are going it alone without professional help. The tool tells you how to perform your website’s first audit, will give you a score and if you need to make improvements you might want to consult with an SEO specialist. No one ranks highly right away so don’t be too concerned. Just get the help you need to fix your SEO blunders and soon you’ll be ranking higher.
