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Greater Boston SEO Content and Technical Audit Services
A Deep Dive into Foundational Issues Affecting Organic Search Rankings
Schedule Your Free Consultation Today - Discover the Hidden Issues Affecting Discoverability and Your Website's Ranking
Many factors go into driving qualified traffic from the search engine results to your website. Search engine optimization, including on-page SEO and off-page SEO, contributes greatly to visibility. Complying with Google’s algorithm and modern SEO best practices is essential, but how does your website stack up? Unsure? You’re not alone.
Most business owners, entrepreneurs, and even CEOs and CMOs, don’t know what’s required for website content to rank highly. That’s where expert Boston SEO audit services come in. Working with SEO experts helps ensure that your site’s technical SEO is up to the challenge of meeting your marketing and SEO goals.
Want to jump to the head of the line? Get in touch today and schedule your free consultation.
Why do you need a website audit, though? Isn’t it enough to pepper keywords throughout your content? Won’t clever PPC ads keep traffic coming through your virtual doors?
As an experienced SEO auditor and digital marketing specialist, I can tell you emphatically that’s nowhere near enough. A technical audit will surface your website’s strengths but also where it falls short, and most websites do. Consider the following statistics.
Eye-Opening SEO Audit Statistics
More than 200 factors affect Google’s algorithm when it comes to determining a website’s ranking, ranging from content broken links to missing title tags and everything in between.
Three of the top factors in determining Google’s search results are links, content, and RankBrain.
91% of online content gets no organic traffic from Google because it does not rank in the SERPs.
Almost 50% of searchers will click on a search result based entirely on: 1. its position in the SERPs and 2. its meta description.
Up to 80% of searchers ignore sponsored listings/ads and click on organic search results, so you cannot depend on PPC ads to drive traffic where you want it.
Almost 50% of all Google searches are for information related to local businesses or services in the searcher’s immediate geographic area, so an SEO audit is incredibly important to increase organic traffic.
Don’t fall victim to these statistics. It’s time to transform your website’s performance and ranking on the search engine results pages. Contact me today to schedule your free SEO audit and eliminate what’s been holding you back.
Why Do You Need an SEO Audit?
Website audit services are essential to ensure that your site ranks highly in the search engine results pages and to correct issues that might be downgrading your performance. It’s about so much more than using comprehensive keyword research, creating quality content. An SEO site audit can help you identify critical issues, including:
- Duplicate content
- Missing meta tags and missing meta descriptions
- Low link quality
- Incorrect URL structure
- A lack of relevant keywords
- Low content quality, veracity, and authenticity
- Poor site speed
- Poor internal linking
- Almost 200 other factors!
The truth is that most websites perform poorly in terms of organic search visibility. A comprehensive SEO audit service helps surface the reasons why you’re not seeing the traffic you should.
Get in touch today to schedule your audit and you’ll receive more than just an in-depth SEO audit report – I’ll help you transform your website and build the strong online presence required for measurable success in today’s world.What Does an SEO Audit Service Include?
To understand what’s included in SEO audit services, it’s important to establish what an SEO audit service is in its place. It’s nothing more than a collection of processes used to identify hurdles, roadblocks, and errors that are keeping your site from ranking well on Google and other search engines.
It’s really about answering important questions and then understanding (and often correcting) the reasons for those answers. What questions? Here are some of the questions that I ask regularly when conducting expert website SEO audit services.
- Is there anything keeping your website from being accurately crawled, indexed, and rendered by Google bots?
- Are there any on-page SEO problems affecting your website?
- Are there potential issues lurking in your off-page SEO?
- Are there problems on sites that link back to you that could be causing issues?
- Are you delivering a positive user experience for mobile and desktop users?
- Is your content optimized with the right keywords and phrases?
- Is your website content robust enough?
- Do you have any duplicate content on your website?
- Do you have accurate reporting to track website performance over time and make the necessary course corrections?
- Are 404 or 301 issues affecting your site’s ability to rank well?
- Is your site architecture up to the task?
- Are there image issues (size, load speed, quality) affecting your SEO efforts?
- How strong is your site security and is a lack of security hampering visibility?
Struggling to achieve SEO success? Expert SEO site audit services can help, from boosting your position in search engine rankings to driving organic traffic right where you need it. Reserve your no-obligation consultation today!
The Tools Required to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit
Conducting an SEO audit requires more than just expertise and experience when it comes to technical SEO and a deep understanding of Google’s algorithm and ranking factors. It also means having access to the right tools and knowing how to use them. Some of the most important tools in SEO auditing include:
A high-quality SEO audit tool
Access to Google Search Console
Access to Google Analytics data
The Google Schema Markup Testing Tool
Access to a tool that measures your website’s performance, like Google PageSpeed
My SEO audit services have helped clients large and small throughout the Boston area and beyond identify and then correct critical problems crippling their search engine optimization and visibility through organic search. I can do the same for your business. Get in touch today to schedule your no-obligation consultation and learn more about how an SEO website audit can transform your situation.
The SEO Audit Process: A Guide to Understanding How SEO Audits Work
How does a trusted SEO partner diagnose and then remedy problems with your website’s ability to attract organic traffic?
How Many Website Versions Exist?
One of the first steps in the SEO audit process is to determine how many versions of your website exist and then eliminate all but one. Why would there be multiple versions? They can exist for any number of reasons, from testing purposes to partial publishing, and more. There should only be a single version of your site accessible no matter how your visitors type the address into a browser or link to it, including HTTP://yoursitename.com, HTTP://www.yoursitename.com, HTTPS://yoursitename.com, and HTTPS://www.yoursitename.com.
If there are multiple versions out there, it’s important to use 301 redirects to point visitors (and search engine crawlers) to the canonical version of your site. Most importantly, make sure that your SEO team is using the canonical version of the site in your marketing strategy.
Test the Crawlability of Your Site
Once the canonical version of your site has been established, you need to use one of the many search engine crawlers (also called search engine spiders) to see how Google might index your site.
Multiple crawlers exist, and they’re not all created equal. Some come with a high price tag, while others are free. Some offer in-depth analysis, while others just hit the high points. If you’re trying to conduct an SEO audit on your own, make sure you choose a highly accurate crawler.
What should your site index include? Everything, from external and internal links to page speed, CSS, images, subdomains, and more. These results should be published in a report for easy access later.
This process should give you a benchmark of your current rankings. Compare that to your competitors and you’ll have a rough idea of how much work must be done to improve your standings with the search engines.
Mobile-Friendly Matters
Today, websites must be friendly to those using mobile devices. Mobile access has outstripped desktop access for several years at this point, so it’s a good bet that most of the visitors your site receives are using a smartphone or tablet, rather than a desktop computer or laptop. A mobile-friendly website:
- Automatically resizes to fit the viewer’s screen size
- Uses simple but effective menus for easy navigation to replace bulky body content
- Uses brief forms that require only minimal amounts of information
- Showcases calls to action
- Makes it possible to search the entire site from one location
- Makes it easy to reach customer service
- Uses buttons large enough for fingers, but not so large that they dominate the page design
- Doesn’t use pop-ups
- Streamlines text into small, digestible chunks with no bulky blocks
- Loads quickly even on slower cellular connections
Check Your EAT Score
EAT stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. This score is created by Google raters, not search engine spiders, which makes it a bit more challenging to ascertain. Humans use subjective reasoning instead of black and white logic, but it’s still possible to ensure that your site presents the right image to your target audience.
Let’s break EAT down into its constituent components.
Expertise
Expertise is a rating of how well you know your stuff. For instance, a consumer finance professional who doesn’t show skills related to consumer credit, credit cards, financial planning, and other important areas won’t score very highly for expertise.
Authoritativeness
This one is a bit more subjective, and it can also take time to establish. Google wants you to be an authority within your industry. Blog posts, customer/client reviews, credentials, and other factors all play roles here.
Trustworthiness
Google wants to display only the most trustworthy results for consumer searches. Establishing trust can be achieved by implementing an SSL certificate on your site, showcasing relevant, genuine customer reviews, complying with PCI-DSS regulations if you accept credit cards, and more.
It’s important to note that EAT matters more to some websites than to others. For instance, if your business is in the medical, financial, or legal industry, then EAT will play a larger role in your overall score and visibility than an e-commerce store that specializes in girls’ fashion accessories.
How to Check EAT
As mentioned, verifying EAT on your website is more subjective than objective. However, there are a few things that can help ensure that you’re complying with SEO practices and Google raters’ preferences. Answer the following questions:
- Is your website optimized with personalized information?
- Does it include accurate contact information and location information (phone number, physical address, etc.)?
- Does your website content include fact-checked, verifiable, accurate information that offers value to your visitors?
- Does your website contain any duplicate content?
- Does your website include any low-quality content?
- Are your meta tags and meta descriptions accurate, optimized, and high-quality?
Run a Google Search on Your Brand
Not sure how well your website is ranking? Run a Google search or two. First, you’ll want to run a site root domain search to see what pages on your website are ranking. To do this, search for site: yourwebsite.com.
This should display a list of your website pages that Google’s indexed. Pages that don’t show up should be inspected for issues preventing them from being crawled.
On-Page Technical Considerations
A technical SEO audit involves checking many things, mostly on-page elements. These include quite a few factors we’ve already discussed, including:
- Duplicate content that’s compromising your SEO strategy
- Page titles and tag titles that aren’t relevant or are too long
- Meta descriptions that are too long, unoptimized, or poorly written
- A diluted page hierarchy for the website as a whole with page placement that doesn’t make much sense
- Poor use of keywords within your page content
- Poor internal and external linking
- Poor site speed that’s causing your visitors to bounce
All About Keyword Rankings
Keywords are the foundation of good on-page SEO. However, you need highly-targeted keywords that potential customers use to find products or services like yours and aren’t oversaturated. While a competitive analysis can help you avoid targeting those keywords and phrases most frequently used by your competitors, you’ll also need to dig deep to find accurate, target keywords.
Where should you use those keywords, though?
Your Website Content
Every page on your site should be optimized using those target keywords. This includes existing pages, of course, but also new pages that you create, whether that’s for content marketing, showcasing new products or services, or establishing your authority through blogging.
Your Page Structure
Every page on your site should have an effective structure and your keywords should appear throughout that structure. Here are some of the primary elements:
- Meta descriptions and meta title tags – These should be custom created for page SEO and should never be afterthoughts.
- Titles – Every page title should be optimized and planned for impact not just on Google’s search spiders, but on website visitors.
- Page Content – From your “About” page to product descriptions and blog posts, the body content must be correctly optimized. Your content strategy should focus on achieving a density that boosts your search positions for those keywords but doesn’t come across as keyword-heavy.
- Images – Don’t neglect the images that you use. Image alt tags, captions, and descriptions all give you additional opportunities to use your keywords.
Internal Linking and Backlink Analysis
For a technically sound website, you need to go beyond what most content strategies cover. You need to use link-building campaigns that ensure the site is linked to high-quality, high-authority websites. Also, note that your link-building efforts should consist of more than backlinks. You also need outbound links and internal links.
- External Links – Make sure that each page on your site focuses on just one keyword to maximize the value of your external links. Otherwise, you’re sharing link value across different pages, which dilutes the benefits you’ll receive.
- Internal Links – You should target different internal pages with different subjects. Linking to the same subject/keyword across multiple pages dilutes the value you see from these efforts.
SEO Audits Go Beyond What an SEO Agency Can Do for You
SEO audits offer critical benefits, helping you identify where your website is falling short in terms of modern best practices. With a comprehensive SEO audit report, it’s possible to drill down into your site’s structure, content, and other factors to make essential adjustments that allow you to boost visibility in the search engine result pages and drive better performance.
With over a decade of experience auditing websites for startups, SMBs, and S&P 500 organizations locally, nationally, and internationally, I can offer the solutions you need to boost your rankings in Google and other search engines. Don’t take chances with your online presence – get in touch to learn more about the auditing process and to schedule your free consultation.
