On the internet, everyone has an equal opportunity to be seen and to reach users from around the world. So long as this free internet exists, then everyone, from the biggest companies to the smallest blogs, can get site visitors just like anyone else. That being said, there is so much content out there that instead of competing for site speed or data allowances, web content creators need to focus on bringing in the crowds. This is known as the attention market. There are a variety of ways you can get visitors to your site, but one of the most prominent is through search engines. The first page of a search result will receive nearly all of the traffic, and the top spot alone will receive up to a third of all of the traffic from that search. This leads to a massive amount of people clicking on your site, enjoying your content, and even purchasing from you.
To get to this coveted top spot, however, you need to use two methods. One, PPC advertising through each search engine’s PPC program. With Google, this will be done through Google AdWords. The second method is through SEO. SEO can help you rise naturally through the search engine result pages (SERPs) and let you enjoy a higher ranking for much longer. This second method is long-term and can be very worthwhile, but getting there is not easy. One of the first steps to improving your search ranking is to improve your website with an audit. 
Ensure Your Website is Up to Standards
The first step to any website audit is to ensure that your website’s specs are up to standard. Google does notice things such as site speed and security, so it is important that your website:
- Has an SSL Certificate
- Is mobile-friendly
- Works on all platforms
Audit Your On-Site Content
Once you know that the overall performance of your website is ready to go, it is time to next perform an audit on your content itself. If you have a small site, this can be easy to do. If you are a large website and have thousands of pages, however, this can get tricky. Thankfully, there are enterprise SEO specialists like Click Intelligence out there, who can clean up your website and help it be its best self moving forward.
Off-Site SEO Audit
Party of any SEO audit continues to your off-site SEO. This is important because Google now considers the quality of the site that backlinks to you when determining your ranking. If you went through a lot of SEO effort a few years ago, and a lot of poorly ranked sites now backlink to you, this can actually be hurting your ranking. That is why you or an agency will need to go through and see what sites link to yours and request links on bad sites to be taken down.
User Experience Audit
Finally, have your friends and family go through your site to ensure that it is easy to use and easy to continue using. The longer users spend on it, the more likely you will get a sale, subscription, or sign-up.
There are so many reasons you need to perform a website audit. Start today or hire a digital marketing agency to do the work for you. The better the audit, the more you know how to improve your site’s performance and ranking.
