An SEO audit is an assessment of a specific website with the purpose of identifying possible issues that prevent websites from ranking in search engine results. An enterprise SEO audit is the same, except on a much larger scale, i.e., with websites that contain hundreds, thousands, or even millions of pages.
Regular website audits are crucial in devising a successful SEO strategy. This is because finding your website’s strong and weak points will help you develop an SEO strategy tailored to your website’s needs. SEO audits will also contribute to efficiency as they will help you dedicate your time, resources, and budget to the optimizations that will have the most significant impact on your website.
In this article, we will go over the process of performing an enterprise SEO audit, starting with how to prepare for the audit, technical SEO audit, on-page and off-page SEO audits, and analyzing the audit results.
Enterprise SEO audits can be challenging due to the size of the website and the 200+ ranking factors in Google’s algorithm.
This is why it is always a good idea to set some goals and objectives regarding what you hope to achieve with the SEO audit. And we are not talking about “increasing organic traffic,” as this is very broad as a goal, but instead, get more specific with your goals; for example:
Next, find out which of the 200+ ranking factors in Google’s algorithm you need to focus on. You do this by establishing the most important metrics for your business and keeping track of them. Here are 12 of the most crucial SEO KPIs (Key Performance Indicators):
Lastly, establish a benchmark for comparison after you are done with the audit. These are the most important metrics you need to focus on:
One of the first steps into an enterprise SEO audit is doing a technical SEO audit. Start by analyzing your site’s architecture and find out what could be improved. If your website isn’t properly structured, visitors won’t be able to easily navigate through it, resulting in them looking for more user-friendly sites. Approximately one in two users leaves a website after visiting only one page.
Secondly, you need to check if search engines like Google can properly index your pages, because pages that Google doesn’t index won’t appear in search results. To check if your pages are indexed, look for issues in Google Search Console. Along with unindexed pages, you will find a list of reasons why they weren’t indexed. It’s important to remember that not all pages have to be indexed, except for those you want to rank in reach results.
Another thing you should focus on is your site’s crawlability. When conducting an SEO audit, you should simulate how search engines like Google crawl your website to find out issues with your site’s crawlability.
Your website’s speed is another ranking factor for Google. Statistics show that the longer it takes for your website to load, the bigger the chances your visitors will leave your site. After that, you need to ensure you are implementing best On-page SEO practices on your site. The following are some of the most important On-page SEO elements for your website’s SEO:
Each of these tags serves a different purpose and can help your ranking.
Lastly, check your page for duplicate content, as it can prevent Google from picking the original page at the top of the search results. There are two ways to deal with duplicate content:
The kind of content you publish and its quality is the foundation of your website and is, therefore, essential to ranking well in search engines. This is why you need to ensure the content on each page is unique and beneficial to your site’s visitors. Make sure you remove or update any content that doesn’t provide value for your visitors so your audience can benefit from it.
Another integral part of your SEO strategy is the keywords you target. When conducting an SEO audit, you need to target keywords that bring qualified traffic to your website. You should use keywords that qualified leads usually use when searching for information about your industry, company, products, or services. Such keywords should also have enough search volume —i.e., many people searching for specific information.
Enterprise websites usually target short-tail keywords, which are more general and contain only a few words. Remember that it is harder to rank for these keywords, but they can bring in lots of qualified traffic and are great for branding.
Internal links have a few functions which make them essential for your website’s SEO, such as:
By using an SEO tool like Screaming Frog or Oncrawl, you can check for issues regarding internal linking and suggestions on how to fix them, for example:
Part of a technical SEO audit is also looking for broken links and redirects. Because websites are constantly updating their content or deleting old pages, links will sometimes break. It is, therefore, crucial to ensure that your external and internal links are leading to live pages. Having lots of broken pages on your site will cause Google to consider your website as not well-maintained and consequently not rank your pages in the SERPs.
Lastly, images and videos will make your website more aesthetically pleasing and understandable to visitors and help with your SEO (if they are optimized!). Add short and descriptive filenames containing keywords to ensure your images are optimized. These images also need to have Alt tags, as they help search engines understand the images.
Off-page SEO refers to improving your website’s rankings on search engines through activities outside your website. This is done mainly through backlinks. The number and quality of links you use help Google determine whether your website is credible and how high it should rank in search engines.
This is why it’s essential to regularly check for broken or toxic backlinks from spam sites, sites that Google does not index, those with viruses and malware, etc.
Lastly, off-page SEO helps increase brand awareness through content marketing, social media, influencer marketing, guest posting, etc.
The ultimate goal of an enterprise SEO audit is to achieve efficiency and better performance. Through an enterprise SEO audit, you can determine if your website is as healthy as it is pleasing to the eye and, more importantly, guide your team’s time, resources, and budget where they are most needed.
The results you get from an SEO audit will help you discover the strengths and weaknesses of your website so that you can address them accordingly. Remember that it is also essential to prioritize your action items to achieve maximum results, i.e., better rankings on search engines.
Search engine optimization is essential to growing your business through organic traffic. That’s why enterprise websites should practice SEO audits. Regularly conducting these audits will ensure your website ranks well in search engines and you establish yourself as an authority in a particular field.
Co-Founder & CEO
Faton is the Co-founder & CEO of Manaferra and someone who wakes up every morning seeing endless possibilities to progress and help others make a difference, for the better. That thought then translates everything he does to see both the team and clients move forward.
Faton is the Co-founder & CEO of Manaferra and someone who wakes up every morning seeing endless possibilities to progress and help others make a difference, for the better. That thought then translates everything he does to see both the team and clients move forward.
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