SEO can seem esoteric to a newbie but once you’ve grasped the concept of the fundamentals (On Page & Off page) you tend to start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. A critical factor that a lot of businesses neglect or struggle with is the initial research. SEO agencies understand the importance of preparing for a campaign and will always conduct an Audit on a website before commencing with a campaign. So what are the key factors to cover when conducting your SEO research?

On Page SEO Factors

The way a website’s pages are optimised can have a dramatic effect on the way it’s ranked. Dealing with some general housekeeping at the initial stages is advised and an SEO agency usually gets the laborious work done first. So what are the on page factors to cover?

  • Title Tags – Do your title tags provide clear and concise descriptions of the pages content?
  • Meta Tags – Look out for duplicate Meta tags, and make sure your Meta tags are optimal form and length
  • Alt Text – Is your alt text descriptive, relevant and not keyword stuffed?
  • Redirects – Are your URLs set up correctly with good SEO practice?
  • Page speed – Could your page speed do with some improvement? This could be due to a number of factors. Perhaps you need to reduce some of your redirects, maybe your CSS or JavaScript needs adjusting or you may need to leverage some of your browser catching.

 

Back Link Profile

A fundamental part of your research should involve analysing your back link profile. Detecting bad links or imbalances in your link profile will give you the intelligence you need to remove these links” known as penalty removals“and also target specific sites for links. Your Back links are responsible for your websites reputation and Domain Authority, and Google will favour websites on SERPs with better reputations. So what should you look for when you’re analysing your back link profile?

  • Referring domains– take a look at your back links and how many websites they are coming from, the more balanced the ratio is the better usually.
  • Anchor Text– Are the keywords used in your content diverse and relevant to the terms you want to target?
  • Domain Authority – initially it’s always to take a look at 3 major factors, domain authority, trust flow and citation flow, it should be your goal to increase all 3 as your outreach efforts commence.

 

Managing Traffic Analytics

Of course a key factor to observe is your traffic and user behaviour. Once you’ve logged this, you can then set yourself KPIs to put you in good stead. These factors include:

  • Organic Traffic: Look to increase organic traffic on a monthly basis
  • Bounce Rate: Aim to decrease your bounce rate with user experience and relevancy.
  • Conversion rate: set yourself goals and aim to increase conversions on monthly basis whether this is emails or sign ups.

We hope this blog serves you well and gives you insight into the methodology used to conduct effective research. If you’d like to no more get in touch with one of our seasoned consultants to arrange a free audit on your website.

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