How to Perform an SEO Check-Up

Behind every search engine query is a potential customer. However, if your website is not able to be found online, how will customers know that your business exists? An SEO check-up can provide insight into the health of your website’s search visibility so that potential customers can be led right to your business.

What Is an SEO Check-Up?

An SEO check-up is a comprehensive evaluation and analysis of a website’s search engine optimization (SEO) performance. It involves a systematic review of various elements that influence a site’s visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal of a check-up is to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement within the website’s SEO strategy. 

By conducting an SEO check-up, businesses and website owners can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their current SEO efforts, allowing them to make informed decisions to enhance their online presence and better align with search engine algorithms. Ultimately, an SEO check-up serves as a strategic tool to refine and optimize a website’s online visibility, driving organic traffic, and improving overall search engine rankings.

The Importance of SEO Health

The importance of SEO health cannot be overstated in today’s dynamic digital landscape. SEO health is a direct reflection of a website’s ability to perform well in search engine results, influencing its online visibility and accessibility to a target audience. A website with robust SEO health is more likely to rank higher on search engine results pages, attracting organic traffic and potential customers. 

By regularly monitoring and maintaining SEO health, businesses can ensure that their online presence remains competitive and aligned with ever-evolving search engine algorithms. Additionally, a healthy SEO profile contributes to a positive user experience since search engines prioritize well-optimized, relevant content. 

In essence, investing in SEO health is fundamental for businesses seeking sustainable online success—it not only enhances visibility and reach but also establishes credibility and trust among users and search engines alike.

How to Perform an SEO Check-Up

It can be hard to figure out what the best resource is to use for your SEO check-up. There are free resources all over the web as well as software and plugins designed specifically for auditing your website’s SEO performance.

The Best Free SEO Tool

AHREFS is a free tool that provides valuable insights into your website’s SEO health. AHREFS is reliable and provides up-to-date SEO data through tracking metrics such as site health analysis, on-page SEO recommendations, backlink analysis, content analysis, and competitor benchmarking.

The Best Paid SEO Tool

SEMRush is a paid tool that provides valuable insights into your website’s SEO health. It provides all the benefits that a free tool supplies; however since it is a paid resource, it comes with other benefits that can help you outside of just SEO standing.

Elements of an SEO Report

Once you have figured out which tool you want to use for your SEO check-up, go ahead and run a test on your website. After a couple of minutes, you will receive an SEO health score from 0% to 100%, a description regarding your overall grade, and any factors that are holding back your website’s performance.

Google considers more than 200 factors when determining how to rank search results. It is important to look at the biggest “bang for your buck” factors that will play the biggest role in SEO health. 

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are HTML tags that provide a brief summary or description of the content of a web page. These descriptions typically appear in SERPs beneath the title and URL of a page. The main purposes of meta descriptions are to give users a preview of what they can expect to find on a particular page and to encourage them to click through to the website. This is a great time to confirm that you are using meta descriptions for every single one of your web pages.

Title Tags

A title tag is an HTML element that defines the title of a web page. It is displayed on SERPs as the main clickable headline for a given search result. In addition to being visible in search engine listings, title tags are also displayed in the browser’s title bar or tab when a user is viewing the page. In your check-up, confirm that your title tags are utilizing best practices and are SEO-rich.

Keywords

Keywords are specific words or phrases that people use when searching for information on search engines. Keywords play a crucial role in helping search engines understand the content of a web page and match it to relevant user queries. Strategically using the right keywords can enhance a website’s visibility in search engine results and drive targeted traffic. Use this time to see where your site is ranking on your targeted keywords. You might discover some optimization opportunities if you are falling short in rankings.

Backlinks

Backlinks, also known as inbound links or incoming links, are links from one website to another. When a website links to another site, it is considered a backlink for the receiving site. Backlinks are a crucial element of SEO and play a significant role in determining a website’s authority, trustworthiness, and search engine rankings.

Page Speed

Page speed refers to the amount of time it takes for a web page to load completely. It is measured in seconds and represents the total time it takes for all the content on a page to be fully displayed in a user’s browser. Page speed is a crucial factor in user experience and has become increasingly important for SEO health. It directly influences how users interact with a website and can impact search engine rankings.

404 Errors

A 404 error is an HTTP status code that indicates that the server couldn’t find the requested web page. In other words, when a user tries to access a page that doesn’t exist on a website, the server responds with a 404 status code, and the user sees a “404 Not Found” error page. This error is a standard response when a server can’t locate the requested URL.

You can also discover any 404 errors in your Google Search Console dashboard and take care of any redirects to correct these.

Other Things to Consider

There are many other factors that need to be addressed to provide top SEO health for your website. Other factors include:

• Mobile usability 
• Alt text
• Internal linking
• Content structure
• Social media widgets
• Image optimization

How Often Should I Conduct an SEO Check-Up?

How often you should conduct an SEO check-up is dependent on your business’s goals and strategy. However, companies of all sizes tend to perform a check-up either every quarter or every other quarter. 

If you perform a check-up too often, you could be wasting valuable time. But if you don’t perform a check-up audit enough, your SEO health could be dwindling without you even knowing.

Boost Your SEO Game with PHOS Creative

Getting started with your first SEO check-up can be overwhelming and feeling confident that you are getting it done right adds another layer of difficulty. Having a professional help you get set up and run your first check-up is the best way to get started. Let our experts at PHOS Creative run a thorough audit for you and help you enhance your SEO strategy by giving our team a call today!