SEO Audit.

SEO Audit

Why SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and these three little words are the backbone of most of the traffic that a website or piece of Internet content receives. By some estimates, as much as 80% of the traffic a website gets will be from a search engine. Some estimate that the numbers are even greater, particularly for certain websites. As such, it’s important that every website owner gives some serious consideration to SEO and how it may be affecting his or her website when it comes to the traffic they are, or are not, receiving on a daily basis.

How Does SEO Work?

Search engine optimization is easy to explain, yet difficult to master. When someone types terms into a search engine, the engine goes out into the Internet and brings back a collection of websites that meet the criteria of the terms used. Once the search engine has completed the search, it then ranks the pages in order according to an algorithm. This algorithm takes into consideration things like keyword choice, how often the keywords are used (also called keyword density), subject matter, phrasing, backlinks, traffic and a dozen other things. Each search engine uses its own algorithm, and it weighs each particular item differently.

The goal of search engine optimization is, essentially, to make a website seem like the best possible choice and to make sure it gets ranked as highly as possible during the whole search process. Since search engines are responsible for so much traffic, and they set the standard for which sites get seen and which don’t, SEO is what website owners and content creators need to use in order to give themselves a leg up over their competition who isn’t using SEO.

What is an SEO Audit?

Because many website owners and online content producers are writers, graphic designers and other professionals that don’t deal in search engine optimization, many companies offer an SEO audit. This is similar in theory to a tax audit; the company of professionals with all of the know how when it comes to proper SEO technique and content will go through a website or a given piece of material and point out where there are gaps, mistakes or room for improvement. It’s often given as a free service, typically as an opening to offering professional SEO services from a company’s experts to correct the holes discovered in an SEO audit.

Why Use an SEO Service Provider?

An SEO audit is a useful tool for exposing the holes and gaps in a website or a piece of content that is holding it back from getting onto the front page of the search results. However, while the top spot of the first page result is still coveted real estate in the virtual world, not everyone knows how to get to that spot. And just because an SEO audit has revealed that there’s a problem with keyword choice, number of backlinks or even the competition rate on the subject matter, that doesn’t explain to the website owner how to fix it. After all, just because someone knows their car has thrown a rod, that doesn’t mean they can repair it, or that they even know what that term means.

It’s for that reason that so many people choose to allow the company that has audited their website or web content to go through and tinker with it to make it the best it can possibly be. Once a service has already audited a website, it has gained a familiarity with it that puts it a cut above other individuals that might offer the same services. Furthermore, if the site has been audited then the problems are already a known quantity for that company. Why go somewhere else and require that company to start over from scratch?

How Hard is SEO?

If search engine optimization was easy, then there would be no reason to build entire companies around providing the service in the first place. Understanding SEO in theory can take a lot of research and time, but learning how to really and effectively make it work can take even longer. It also takes time in the classroom as well as time in the field, so to speak, tweaking websites and following up on what the actual rules are that are used by certain websites and search engines. For many individuals that need SEO services today, they don’t have time to settle in and learn to do it themselves. That’s why they find experts, first to audit the site, and then to fix the errors found, if those errors are serious enough to keep a website off the front page of the search results.