Why Regular SEO Audits Are a Must for Your eCommerce Site

Is It Time for an SEO Audit?

A successful SEO strategy requires maintenance, much like a car or, for that matter, a relationship. Successful relationships (and cars) are built upon making sure all parts are working together smoothly. That’s why If you want to maintain your web presence and keep your site’s organic rankings intact, it’s crucial you “check in” with an SEO audit (ideally) for eCommerce sites every six months.

SEO audits are an essential but often neglected part of an SEO strategy. A site that is not being regularly optimized for search will be missing out on valuable organic traffic. Here are some essential elements of an SEO audit:

1. Fix errors.

There are many reasons you can have errors on your site, from Google Algorithms changes and updates, changes in Google Webmaster guidelines, broken links, outdated content, indexability errors, and more.

Identifying and fixing site errors will improve crawlability as well as consumer confidence, resulting in higher PageRank.

2. Follow new rules

The rules of SEO are constantly changing. In order for your marketing strategy to stay compliant, it’s imperative to keep up to date when search engines change their algorithms or when, for example, Google updates its webmaster guidelines. The easiest way to keep up with the changes and not missing anything is having a professional on top of it.

3. Discover what’s working and what isn’t

The whole point of SEO is to direct traffic to your site and boost conversions. An audit allows you to discover what content is actually driving the most traffic (and what content is just taking up empty space). An SEO audit for eCommerce sites can also tell you who is linking to your site and if there are any toxic links impeding your rankings. Because of this, cleaning up your link profile is a great way to boost search results.

4. Give yourself a better grasp on SEO benefits and best practices

Building a more in-depth understanding of the components of a well-functioning SEO strategy will make you feel more engaged with the process. This will also help you improve upon the system you already have in place.

The twice-a-year audit and site analysis metrics are great tools to help you see the steps you need to take for better results and better ROI.

How to perform an SEO Audit

I´m going to share a guideline on how we perform SEO Audits for our customers:

1. Overview: An easy way to understand and summarize your entire site, including overall recommendations. We look deep into Indexed pages, landing pages, brand search, and branded terms, we make a Google´s Cache Check, and we segment mobile search for brand and key landing pages.
2. On-Page Optimization: We grab the most important pages and check content against primary keywords and variations like Title Tags, Pages titles and Meta Descriptions, heading tags, images texts and alt text, optimized and descriptive URLs.
3. We will analyze your 5 main competitors and then evaluate their overall SEO strategy to assess their strengths and weaknesses.
4. Content: Checking and updating your content is a must. Check for your Homepage content, for your top organic landing pages, its formatting, and search for any duplicate content.
5. Accessibility & Indexation: Do you have any Robots.txt in place? What about your XML sitemap?
6. Site Architecture and Internal Linking: How´s your site structured? Are there any dead ends or broken links?
7. Technical Issues: We also check you are using your 301s correctly, we go into Google Webmasters Tools and identify any errors, test your site speed, and the correct setting for your Rel Canonicals.
8. Mobile: Duh!
9. Analytics: Is every page tracked correctly, filter your internal IP addresses and identify any event tracking
10. Off-Page: Last but not least, we check your page and domain authority, your social media profiles, and we do a backend analysis and a competitor analysis.

What will be delivered:

After the audit, we’ll provide a basic competitor analysis to compare authority against competitors based on some keywords, along with suggestions on improving the main On-Page elements, and a report with the technical issues found and their potential solutions. Our main goal is to provide you with tools and opportunities to grow your traffic organically, remain competitive, and reach more potential customers!

As you’ve seen, an SEO audit for your eCommerce site is key to enhancing your overall online business performance and creating the perfect eCommerce growth strategy. Contact our SEO experts today to get started!