How a Detailed Technical SEO Audit can Play a Pivotal Role in Your SEO Success

Search engine optimization or SEO has continued to evolve at a faster rate than other marketing channels in the past decade. Even though algorithms keep changing, SEO has remained the foundation of any successful digital strategy—and it’s easy to see why. After all, 51 percent of online traffic comes from organic search.

Moreover, SEO these days has gone mainstream. Everyone is doing it, so it is important to keep up with the new trends to gain an edge over your competition.For instance, search has recently become more visual and dynamic, and voice search and Google Assistant continue to integrate with thousands of devices.Technical SEO is more important than ever in approaching such developments.

Technical SEO also changed over the years. In the early 2000s, it was closely aligned with web development and ensuring that a website’s codes can be crawled and indexed. This is still important, but it’s no longer enough. The widespread adoption of the Internet of Things starting in 2018 has made it important for SEO to optimize for everywhere and everything—and technical SEO audits must keep up.

The importance of technical SEO audits

Technical SEO aims to optimize the technical elements of a website to make sure that search engines can crawl and index its webpages and render them correctly. Doing a technical SEOaudit is essential because it reveals any issues that may be making it impossible for search engines to effectively crawl, index, and render all webpages, so they can be fixed immediately.

It’s all in the details

Most people make the mistake of focusing on tools and data alone when doing audits, without taking into account the website’s needs and goals. But experts recommend a different approach: Rather than finding the best tools for conducting an SEO audit, it may be best to get started by identifying the goals and purpose of the audit.

Moreover, the age of cookie-cutter SEO plans with occasional audits is long gone. A standalone audit may be more comprehensive compared to audits performed as a quarterly review or any aspect of an ongoing program.

Truly effective SEO audits are based on a complete understanding of the site’s limitations and needs. For instance, a local service business will need a different approach than a national ecommerce website. It’s also important to consider factors like resources, budgets, and service types in related markets to differentiate the audit needs of every business.

Today’s technical SEO is different from before

Technical SEO now covers all search engine best practices, allowing no room for any manipulation. Seasoned marketers understand that it drives crawler compliance and performance. Let’s take a look at 4 additional areas that need to be reviewed in an audit:

1. Site content – Make sure that all major search engines can crawl and index the content, particularly by applying log file analysis to determine their structured data and access patterns for a methodical access to the content elements.

2. Conversion – Determine and resolve anything that may prevent users from properly navigating through the website.

3. Structure – Create a URL structure and site hierarchy that enables both users and search engines to go through relevant content. The proper flow of internal links must also be ensured.

4. Performance – Technical SEO has developed into a specialism that is related to performance. While it is nothing new, marketers have realized that technical SEO goes beyond ‘housekeeping’. Performance is determined by the structure, conversion, and site conten

More important than ever

As SEO continues to evolve and become bigger in scope, technical SEO is ever more critical. Only with an in-dept technical SEO audit can you determine if your website and its pages arecompatible with the latest developments in the search landscape, so you can increase your chances of succeeding with your search engine optimization strategy.