Running a successful e-commerce business demands the precise execution of a well-developed business e-commerce marketing strategy. The main goal of any Internet business is to drive traffic and drive up its revenue, either through advertisements, conversions, or both. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play.
Developing and implementing a good SEO campaign makes all the difference, as it helps your business establish an online presence and leads to more traffic and more conversions. However, SEO isn't a sprint; it's a marathon, and even an established and working SEO strategy requires further optimization and refinement over time, which is done through SEO audits.
In this guide, we'll discuss the importance of SEO audits and which steps you can take to ensure the effectiveness of your strategy. Before we start, let's discuss what e-commerce SEO audits are.
What Is an E-commerce SEO Audit?
An e-commerce SEO audit is a process of analyzing the online visibility of your business in search engine results pages (SERPs), analyzing the performance of your e-commerce SEO strategy, and implementing the recommended improvements to increase online visibility.
This process involves analyzing your SEO strategy and identifying and subsequently improving the areas of your strategy that aren't performing as expected. This is mostly done by assessing different metrics, such as crawlability, indexability, page loading speeds, backlink performance, user experience, mobile-friendliness, content, and internal links.
SEO audits also provide you with the necessary data acquired during the process, allowing you to implement different improvements into your strategy. This includes e-commerce keyword research, content audit data, and backlink performance and management.
Why You Should Perform an SEO Audit?
The main goal of SEO audits is to detect, manage, and alleviate any potential issues with your SEO that might be hindering your e-commerce website's SERP performance. However, audits don't provide you with step-by-step guidance on how to resolve said issues, but the data they provide can serve as a very effective roadmap that would allow you to improve your SEO.
The goal of SEO audits is to optimize your website and allow Google algorithms to position your e-commerce store higher in the organic search results, which are the most common sources of traffic. This is important because the higher your online store ranks in the SERPs, the greater the chance the organic traffic will go to your website rather than your competition's.
For some perspective, the first page on Google receives more than 90% of traffic, with more than 30% of that traffic going to the first page in SERPs, 25% to the second page, and some 20% to the third. Only about 2% of the overall search volume on Google Search Results reaches the 10th page.
These numbers underscore the importance of a well-developed and implemented SEO strategy, as it would provide you with a competitive advantage over your competitors by increasing your organic traffic, bringing more potential customers, and increasing your conversion rates.
Key Areas for an Ecommerce SEO Audit
A comprehensive SEO audit inspects several different aspects of your e-commerce website, and in this section, we'll cover the most important aspects to focus on. Please note that audits tend to be specific, so if you're having issues with conversion rates, focus more on your on-page SEO, relevant keywords, and further optimizations of your page and its content.
Technical SEO
A technical SEO audit implies a rather comprehensive analysis of the technical aspects that potentially negatively affect your website's SERPs. These include inspecting the overall site architecture, its coding, site structure and navigation, homepage, redirects, and many other aspects.
The main purpose of this audit is to check the website crawlability and indexation and any issues that could prevent search engines from indexing your website, its schema markup, internal and external links, site speed, page speed and load times, broken product images, and many other items.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO refers to optimizations, or lack thereof, of your website for indexing. This audit specifically focuses on ranking factors such as target keywords, meta descriptions, title tags, alt text, high-quality content, and other stuff associated with your product pages, product category pages, and subcategories, as well as URL structures and product descriptions.
However, the audit goes beyond mere inspections. It also concerns itself with removing duplicate content and fixing broken links, either internal or external, the latter of which is replaced with higher-quality backlinks.
As for content marketing, cookie-cutter, low-value content should be replaced with structured, higher-quality content that contains all the necessary long-tail keywords and is backed by an adequate link-building strategy.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to all the aspects of your website that aren't directly associated with its internal function. It's all the content that you release into the world, with the end goal of directing more traffic to your e-commerce platform.
This includes swapping your backlinks with links to web pages of similar thematic relevance and the same or higher domain authority. It also implies social media engagement with searchers and your target audience, sharing links to various products and product- or service-related content. It's a powerful SEO tool, and neglecting it could really impede your marketing strategies.
Benefits of Using an SEO Marketing Agency for Audits
SEO is a long game that requires meticulous planning and strategy. Doing it yourself while also trying to run your business could pose a challenge even for the most driven individuals, which is why most companies without an internal team outsource their SEO to marketing agencies, such as Orchard Marketing.
Outsourcing makes sense because a marketing agency specializes in the analysis and assessment of your SEO efforts and provides valuable, actionable information and recommendations for enhancing your SEO strategy. Hiring an SEO marketing company for your online business also grants you access to their expertise and knowledge in the field, which would make your strategy more effective.
This is particularly true if we take the financial resources and time necessary to conduct internal SEO audits. Hiring an SEO marketing agency allows you to not only save time but also focus on the profitability and growth of your business.
Summary
SEO audits aren't just beneficial to your e-commerce business and your overall SEO efforts; they're necessary, as they reveal any potential issue that might affect your store's performance. If you're looking to learn more about SEO audits, fill out contact information to have someone contact you about an audit, and jump to our website and see some of our success with other clients.
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