Forty years ago, the world we live in today existed online in the movies. We have cars that drive themselves, supersonic airplanes, and almost all of us carry the internet right in our pockets. And because of that, everything and everyone seems to have a website these days – even your neighbor’s dog, Bruno.

Over 65% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, but almost 91% of websites get NO organic search traffic from Google at all.* 

How can you beat those incredibly depressing odds? 

With excellently executed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and a regular audit of your website using some of the best SEO audit tools out there. 

SEO Matters, Big Time

In 1993, two years after the worldwide web was rocketed into existence, there was a grand total of 130 websites. Today, in 2022, there are over 1.9 billion websites, and that number is rising fast.

In 1993, if you did a search for “how smart is an octopus?”, you’d be lucky to come up with any results at all. Now, searching for that same term will return 26.3 million page results in 0.92 seconds.

That’s an incredible amount of competition to go up against if you’re trying to get your humble site on octopuses seen by a wide public.

SEO, and the application of its principles, is how you can launch yourself to the front of the SERP pack. It’s no longer enough to just make a website and toss it online. Search engines have gotten smarter and smarter as they’ve grown and with each passing year they understand more of the intent behind a search query and which websites are likely to give a searcher the answer they seek. If your website can’t provide the best answer to a search query question, then it simply will not be seen.

The algorithms behind modern search engines are highly guarded secrets but if your website content is tailored for your user, it should rank well. It’s important to make sure your website is a high-quality site that is built for human users and not for search engines.

How is an SEO Audit Different

Website audits are no small task. You can audit a website for things like security issues, quality of backlinks, quality of content, etc, but all of these things are different from an SEO audit.

An SEO audit looks at how well your website matches up against best practices for search engines, namely Google. Its purpose is to highlight as many foundational issues affecting organic search performance as possible.

A website audit template, along with the best SEO audit tools that the internet has to offer, will ensure that you’ve built the best possible way for searchers (or potential customers) to find your website.

Why the Best SEO Audit Tool Isn’t Enough

SEO is big. It’s a lot. There are a lot of components and a lot of things to think about when you’re conducting a website SEO audit. SEO experts charge a lot of money for the services they provide because they know that the process of a website SEO audit is confusing and scary to many people.

SEO audit tools will do most of the complicated legwork for you: scrubbing pages and URLs for keywords, identifying issues with tag optimization, highlighting broken links, assessing the amount of crawlable content, determining load speed and responsiveness, and much more.

But you can’t hand a toolbox to a child and expect it to build a house.

In addition to using the best SEO audit tools you can find, you also need a website audit template that will guide you through how to use each tool appropriately to get the most out of your audit. A website audit template is the blueprint you’ll follow when using SEO audit tools to improve your website.

How Often Should You Audit?

Experts estimate that Google changes its search algorithm about 500-600 times per year. We’re marketing experts, not mathematicians, but even we know that’s a seriously high level of change. And that’s exactly why you should be doing an SEO audit at least once a year, if not twice a year, or even once a quarter.

The flow of online search traffic is constant, but its direction is not. The direction of the flow constantly changes based on these algorithmic changes and if you don’t audit, or don’t audit enough, you could find yourself facing away from web traffic that could have been yours.

SEO Audit, Done. What’s Next?

You’ve done the leg work and your website SEO audit is now complete. Congratulations! But your SEO work isn’t done just yet.

Now that you’ve gone through your website and identified potential issues and hurdles to your web traffic, it’s time to optimize! Meaning, that it’s time to actually act on what the audit turned up. 

Sometimes this can be the simple task of cleaning up broken links or ensuring that page keywords appear in the URLs, but other times SEO audits turn up inappropriate or unhelpful website content that needs removal or rewriting.

Don’t have time to write the content yourself? Or just don’t feel sure that you’re on the right track? ViralOctopus actually has a few content creation Gigs that can help you whip your website SEO into shape. From our Premium SEO Cornerstone Content Gig to our SEO Content Marketing Gig, we’ve got your content needs covered, with all eight of our arms.

What can be measured, can be improved. Don’t waste another day with website SEO that’s letting you down. Why? Because the best place to hide success is the second page of a Google search.