SEO audits are the absolute starting point for yearly marketing maintenance, new website launches, and website optimizations alike. Why? Because SEO audits set the groundwork for successful content ideas, better website UX, and SEO best practices. If you want to rank at the top of Google search results, convert more customers, decrease bounce rates, and beat the competition, you NEED an SEO audit to have a strategic, iron-clad content strategy.
Why You Need an SEO Audit for Better Content Strategy in 2022
1) SEO and Content Are like Peanut Butter and Jelly
Or in our life, Bravo and ice cream; manicure and pedicure. In short, SEO and content strategy really go hand-in-hand. It’s kind of a chicken before the egg scenario, but we always say strategic SEO comes before content strategy. That’s because SEO provides the data-driven information you need to create content people actively search on Google. SEO audits present the opportunity and content delivers the solution to your audience. Yin and yang.
2) SEO Keywords Provide Strategic Blog Content Ideas for Posts Your Customers Want to Find
Let’s start with the basics. SEO audits are wonderful because they deliver a list of relevant short and long-tail keywords for your business. These are words and phrases your audience and the prospective audience actually search for. Because content is laborious and expensive, to say the least, start with blog ideas you know generate traffic to all but ensure a positive ROI.
For instance, if an SEO audit reveals “Sustainable” as a top keyword for your green lifestyle company, you could publish a blog titled “Top sustainable brands in 2022” Or, you could write another blog that’s more niche like, “Sustainable clothing companies” and “Sustainable organic cotton T-shirt.” That way, you can tap into more than one stream of organic SEO traffic. And as your content becomes more specific or niche (like the latter), you’ll get closer to people at the end of your sales funnel—the ones ready to make a purchasing decision!
We suggest you take your SEO keywords and create a content calendar. Then, brainstorm with your internal team to come up with different headlines for your blogs. Round up the best ones, put them in your calendar, and start writing!
- Publish blogs of at least 800 words. Usually, 800–1,200 words are best. You need to provide substance for your readers so they don’t bounce off the page.
- Always use keywords in the URL, title, alt tags, metadata, headlines, and body copy. We suggest downloading a plug-in like Yoast to improve your content’s SEO and therefore, strengthen the visibility of your content
- Break up text with images and videos—always completing alt and title tags with keywords and synonyms.
3) SEO Audits Reveal Content Opportunities from a UX Perspective for Your Core Website Pages
SEO keywords aren’t just for blogs. They’re also for the core pages of your website and overall messaging hierarchy. What do we mean by this?
Say, you’re starting with a simple website for a women-owned business. You may have a home, about, contact, and shop page. But your website could generate more organic traffic and deliver content people search for if you add a few more top-level pages like a blog, specific product and services pages, and a resource section. An SEO audit will propose exact titles for these pages based on internet search traffic. You can then rejigger your content and post supplemental content as you’re able.
SEO audits also show which pages currently get the most traffic on your website—and which ones don’t. This can help you decide which pages to improve, delete, consolidate, or redo entirely. Google actually rewards sites that regularly clean up content like this—revamping the old to be new and improved and deleting stale content. Just make sure you add an editor’s note to these blogs saying when the post was updated from its original publish date.
4) Get the Scoop on Competition
We always include competitor analysis in our SEO audits. This illuminates what rivals have going on in their digital marketing efforts. That way, you can glean inspiration and one-up the competitions’ content and site structure to steal more traffic. We know. It sounds diabolical. But it’s all is fair in love and SEO traffic war.
At the end of the day, you’re trying to provide the most useful information for your clients, patients, and/or customers. Spending the time to craft this content and deliver the best of the best online is the name of the game.
5) SEO Audits Help People Find Your Content Organically
If you’re wondering why you need an SEO audit, this is a big reason. Data-backed content strategy is super important for your business’s bottom line. But how much of it do you want to pay for versus earn organically? If you answered, “as little as I have to,” then you can use your SEO audit to bring in free, organic content through design, web dev, and content tweaks and additions. The more you use the findings from your SEO audit to produce high-quality content, the more search algorithms will favor your website in the rankings—free and organically.
SEO audits provide content and UX ideas, check the health of your website, and lay the groundwork for data-driven content strategy. If you haven’t done one in the past year—or ever—it’s high time! Get in touch. We’d love to help.
