SEO Audits Only Work with C-Suite Buy-in
The first step in any content marketing strategy is seeing where a site is at SEO-wise.
Consider this: A proactive business person, wants to stay on top of their business, their competition, their customers and leads. So, they go out and hire an SEO consultant or company and have them go over the company’s complete online presence.
They are given access to Google analytics, and any Adwords campaigns. They are allowed to peek under the hood of the blog, keyword strategies, content strategies and whatever else they have.
The results? An in-depth report that’s broken down into the following categories:
- Accessibility
- Indexability
- On-Page Ranking Factors
- Off-Page Ranking Factors
- Competitive Analysis
Also included is a “To-Do” list of items that need to be addressed ASAP as they are actively driving down page rank. Finally, recommendations focusing on SEO best practices and, hopefully, content strategy.
And then… that comprehensive report is dropped into some desk drawer and promptly forgotten.
That’s because if that “proactive business person” isn’t in the C-Suite or the business owner, or someone who “get’s it,” the results of one of these extensive technical audits will require a lot of work to fix. In some cases hundreds and hundreds of reworked web pages of work.
I have been performing these audits for years, and I can report it’s almost a 50-50 split on them being acted upon or virtually ignored. Usually, it comes down to who is doing the asking.
SEO technical audits help with overall site and page rank, with user engagement, and with building sales funnels. However, they only work if they are acted upon. That’s why it’s important that SEO’s, when asked to do the job, they then need to ask, “who is doing the asking?”
What has your SEO audit experience been like? Love to hear all about it.