An SEO Audit Is Key to Building Your Search and Local Presence

Our team is passionate about the power of a well-optimized website. We’ve seen sites go from little to no traffic to receiving consistent visits and conversions from organic sources—all thanks to proper search engine optimization. Today, I’ll be touching on how we approach our SEO audit and introducing a tool that gives local, service-based businesses an additional competitive advantage online.

We view a business’s website as its core platform. Unlike social media, it is a marketing tool you own and control. Your website needs to do a number of things in the design and functionality department, but even before that—it needs to be discoverable. If your brand is only found by “who you are” (that is, your business name) and not “what you do,” you’re missing out on potential customers. Before we embark on any engagement, we conduct an “SEO Audit” to determine the best path forward, which includes 5 core components:

1. Determine whether the site has been technically optimized for search engines.
2. Review organic traffic volume, keyword rankings, positions, and relevance.
3. Identify the percentage of organic traffic that is “branded” vs. “non-branded”
4. Audit of local SEO to determine how your business performs in local search/map listings.
5. Present opportunities to drive users with high purchase intent to your website.

Determine whether the site has been technically optimized for search engines.

We start by assessing whether any technical SEO has been done on the site in the first place, before digging into the quality of work. We look for common indicators like whether custom SEO titles or metadata are set or whether Google Analytics or Google Search Console is installed. If the website has been technically optimized, we look for opportunities to improve or build upon that existing foundation. If the website hasn’t been technically optimized, we know we’ll need to begin with our Foundational SEO service.

Review organic traffic volume, keyword rankings, positions, and relevance.

By running the domain through a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs, we can determine the average monthly volume of organic traffic the site receives, the total number of keywords the site ranks for, as well as the relevance or average position of those terms. 

As you can imagine, there is a big difference between ranking in the top 10 for ~50 high-volume relevant keywords and ranking >100 for 200+ keywords that have little to do with your business! We’re looking for quality traffic, not just quantity.

Identify the percentage of organic traffic that is “branded” vs. “non-branded.”

Referring back to being found by “who you are” and not “what you do”—if the majority of your traffic stems from terms directly related to your business name, this tells us there is an opportunity to capture traffic from users searching for terms directly related to your product or service category who aren’t yet committed to a particular brand. 

While heavy branded traffic can be an indicator of a successful brand awareness campaign, it can also mean that you’re having trouble expanding outside of your existing customer base. You likely already know where you fall in that category!

Audit how your business performs in local search/map listings.

This piece is especially important for businesses with a physical location or specific service area as users frequently turn directly to Google Maps to find a service provider local to them. They will naturally review the top resulting Google Business Profiles and likely opt to call the business that has a completed profile and numerous 5-star reviews. 

To determine exactly how a business shows up in their local search area and include that information in our SEO audit, we’ve partnered with BirdEye to utilize their “Business Scan” feature. You can scan your business yourself here!

The resulting report shows where your business falls short in the local SEO department, either by having no representation, inconsistent information across different profiles, or lacking the expected volume and quality of reviews relative to your competitors. Fortunately, BirdEye offers a cost-effective solution to remedy several of these pieces between their Listings and Review tools, both of which we offer to our clients at a discounted rate.

Present opportunities to drive users with high purchase intent to your website.

We then use the above information to present our recommendations, which are put in context of your brand’s budget and goals. You’ll find that our recommendations range from one-and-done updates (fix these technical errors, submit your sitemap to Google) to calls for operational adjustments (reach out to happy customers to increase reviews), and of course—what it would look like for our team to optimize and build up your website to serve as a sustainable source of leads.

We know that search engine optimization can feel like a complicated topic to tackle, so we pride ourselves on breaking things down into digestible steps and sustainable solutions. If you’d like to see all of the above in action, request your free in-depth SEO audit here.