Many consultants have a love-hate relationship with their websites.
For one thing, they’re often emotionally invested in their websites. Their site tells their story. It’s the hub around which they’ve built their businesses. It’s where all their cool content can be found.
On the other hand, for many of them, their sites are kind of just sitting there. They don’t get nearly the traffic they would like—and they don’t have a clue what to do to drive more traffic to them.
This is why suggesting to a consultant that she should look into SEO services to see what they can do for her can be tricky. Deep down, she knows she needs help with her site, but she hates to make changes to “her baby,” especially if she’s already shelled out a lot of money to have her site developed in the first place.
Sound familiar?
The smart approach would be to hire an SEO consultant to do a detailed analysis of the site to diagnose the problems and recommend specific changes to help the site rise in the search results, which in turn would lead to more traffic. This way, the consultant learns exactly what to change and exactly what to keep the same, saving a lot of guesswork and needless expense.
What is an SEO audit?
An “SEO audit” is a detailed evaluation of your website that looks at all aspects of the site as they relate to search engine optimization (SEO).
A good site audit looks at, and reports on, two primary areas: (1) the content and (2) technical aspects related to usability.
Let’s look at these two areas separately.
SEO in Marketing: Content is King
The most important aspect of your site, when it comes to persuading your site visitor to take the action you want, is the content (the text or copy) on the site.
Your site could look amazing, with beautiful scrolling images and all the latest bells and whistles, and still completely fail at its most important job: conversions. No matter what type of conversion you’re hoping for (having the visitor sign up for your e-mail list, contact you to schedule a service, or purchase a product), it’s the words on the screen that are either going to convince him to take that action or not.
In addition to this basic persuasive function, the content also has another important job: to help the site rank well in the search engines for the right keywords. In order to do this, the person writing the copy has to first know what general search terms you want to rank for. He then has to do the necessary SEO research to determine which related long-tail keywords you have a reasonable chance to rank for. And he then needs to incorporate those keywords into the content in the right places for the search engine spiders to find them.
A good SEO audit will look at all of these factors concerning the copy on your web pages and will give you feedback about what aspects of the copy need to be improved, both to improve the persuasive aspect of the content and to rank higher in search.
SEO Optimization: More Technical SEO Tactics
While the content on your pages is the most important factor in both search engine rankings and conversions, there are also a number of other usability factors that are crucial to your website’s success.
For example, when I do a website audit of a consultant’s website, I use a 35-point checklist to evaluate factors such as:
- The quality of the company branding created by the site’s header, logo, and tagline
- The quality of the site’s headlines and sub-heads (Are they written to address the site visitor and his problems? Do they use the keywords the consultant is trying to rank for?)
- The readability of the text (Does it use white space and short paragraphs to allow the text to “breathe”? Is it written in a jargon-free, conversational style? Does it use sub-headings, bullets, and other text features that allow the reader to quickly scan the text and get the gist of the message?)
- The informational (non-marketing) content on the site (Does it educate the site visitor about topics of interest to him?)
- The link strategy (Does it have a logical, robust internal link network? Do content pieces link out to reputable sites? Do links to PDFs, etc., open in a new window?)
- The site navigation (Does it make sense? Are tabs in the expected places?)
- Graphics and images (Are videos set to the “off” position as a default? Are images small enough that they don’t slow download time? Is keyword-rich alt text used with all images?)
- Graphic design (Do the font size, style, and color work against the site’s background so that it’s easy on the eyes and readable?)
I evaluate these items and many more and give feedback to the site owner about ways to improve the site visitor’s experience of using the site.
Is an SEO Site Audit for You?
Many websites underperform their owners’ expectations.
In some cases, the site doesn’t rank high enough in search engines to get the necessary traffic. In other cases, there’s enough traffic, but the vast majority of the people who land on the site quickly navigate away and never convert into prospects or customers.
How do you go about changing the situation? Well, obviously, doing nothing won’t help you (you know that old definition of “insanity,” right?).
Trying to figure out what’s not working and making the changes by yourself probably isn’t the right way to go, either—unless you’re also an expert in SEO, copywriting, and usability. But of course, if you were an expert in those areas, you wouldn’t be having these problems, would you?
No, I think the best approach is obviously to hire a competent professional to do a site audit for you. Then, armed with those recommendations, fix the things you’re capable of fixing yourself and hire someone to make the needed changes in areas where you aren’t as knowledgeable.
The good news is that, if you follow this approach, you won’t have to sit around fretting about how poorly your site is performing. In a matter of a few weeks, you could have finely-tuned site that is quickly rising up the search rankings and delivering a stream of new, qualified clients and customers to your inbox.
If you’re interested in having someone audit your website, I’d be happy to schedule a time to talk with you about it. Just hit us up on our Contact page. We’ll get right back to you.
