SEO is how google ranks your website for keywords your target demographic is searching for. SEO is made up of a number of factors, and each part of an SEO audit will tell you about these factors which impact your overall score.

The most important factor is domain and page authority (which will be in the SERP analysis explained below). Domain and page authority are dictated by the quality and quantity of backlinks to your website.

Another component to note are page level key words. This contributes to about 20% of your SEO score. (PRO TIP: Most page 1 results mention the key word exactly 1 to 3 times. Google has gotten smart- they don’t like keyword stuffing anymore. Be sure to focus on relevancy and use synonyms.)

Analyses will also explore your social media (number and quality of shares), how well you’re driving traffic to your page and domain level keyword usage. Domain level keywords are important because they frame your business as a subject matter expert- You’re not just creating a one off blog on a given topic.

There are also some backend components to your website that matter. Certain sections of your report will go over suggestions to improve your site like optimizing page load speed.

Your SEO should also analyze current blogs for their readability. (PRO TIP: Make sure you work with a professional for copy and development. Stories with Substance can talk with you today about blog strategy).

When you’re working with an SEO specialist there are a number of deliverables you can get. It can be really confusing to figure out how these deliverables relate to your business – my HR, finance and overall business strategy. Thankfully, we’ve dissected each of these reports for you below.

You will get a list of keywords which align with your target demographic, your value prop and differentiate you from competition. But how do analysts actually come up with these keywords?

Your final keywords should have some search volume- it doesn’t have to be very high. Volume is displayed as a quantity of monthly searches. As a newer website, your keywords should also have lower competition.

As a business leader review the list of keywords to ensure that it is inline with your audience, value prop and differentiation. You know your business best.

It’s also important to work with a specialist for keywords so you can align keywords with particular parts of your sales funnel. You can then build out the blogs and other content tailored to that phase of the funnel.

To analyze search volume and competition, SEO specialists often use Google Keyword Planner. A raw .csv download is shown below.

A SERP analysis is a comprehensive analysis of Google’s page 1 results for each of your target keywords.

You’ll want to understand the format of each of these ranking webpages. The format of your competition page should copy the format of successfully ranking sites for each of your given keywords. So if most page 1 webpages are how to articles, pdfs or videos- you’ll want to follow that same format for your page for that keyword.

You’ll also analyze the domain and page authority for each webpage on page 1 for each keyword and compare this with your site’s authority. Since domain authority is the most important factor in Google’s SEO algorithm, this will give you a clear indication about the competition for a given keyword. 

For example, if you’re a new website and you’re competing with domains like CNN, Wikipedia or Apple Help Desk- you’re probably not going to outrank them and other institutions that have above 90 domain authority.

You can aim to compete on these quires with a long term strategy, but right now you should choose a more unique keyword for organic ranking. (PRO TIP: Consider running a Google Ads campaign for more competitive keywords or to get more immediate results for any keyword).

In the below example you see the average domain and page authority for page 1 sites is significantly higher than the client website’s domain and page authority. The average domain authority is 49 points higher than the client site’s domain authority. The average page authority is 25.8 points above the client site’s page authority. Notably the client site’s domain and page authorities are in the single digits, indicating this website is either new or not getting recognized as it should be. In order to compete in the short term they should run a Google Ads campaign. For the long term, they should create a business profile page to rank for this keyword.

Your audit should include an analysis of your current blogs and how closely they match well-performing content for your keywords. (PRO TIP: You want to make sure your content creators are using keywords but not stuffing pages with them. Use synonyms. Write content that is similar to the content ranking on page 1 already for that keyword.)

Your blog analysis may include performance indicators like number of views and conversion rates, as displayed below.

Your audit should include an analysis of your current blogs and how closely they match well-performing content for your keywords. (PRO TIP: You want to make sure your content creators are using keywords but not stuffing pages with them. Use synonyms. Write content that is similar to the content ranking on page 1 already for that keyword.)

Your blog analysis may include performance indicators like number of views and conversion rates, as displayed below.

PRO TIP: Work with tools like Hootsuite for quantifying engagement. As well, make sure there is strong communication between blog writers and those managing social media- so when you are pushing out blogs you are also pushing out posts with the blog linked to increase views.

Evaluate what percent of your website is coming from social and stats on engagement and shares for blog articles. To do this most effectively make sure that you are currently tracking your social metrics with tools like Hootsuite. You cannot collect information retroactively so it’s important to start tracking now.

Google has a great tool for this. The one metric you’ll want to pay attention to is performance score for both mobile and desktop. This should be above 70 and ideally 90 to 100.

I recommend passing on this report to developers who will know how to implement the suggestions.

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