Your website, in many cases, is the first thing a potential customer sees about your business, so you want to make sure that they can easily access it. When a user conducts a search on a search engine, there’s an algorithm in place that determines the pages which best match the searcher’s intent or answer their question.
By having a good SEO strategy in place, the more likely you’ll be to end up in the top rankings of these search results and generate more clicks to your website. Well-rounded SEO can also help you best your competitors who are trying to rank for the same keywords and phrases as you are.
To understand whether or not your website is drawing in this traffic, it’s important to perform an SEO analysis regularly. Here are a few of the components that should be taken into consideration when performing at SEO analysis.
Page Speed
Google has indicated over and over that site speed is one of the main signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. To be blunt, the faster your pages load, the more it will help your SEO. It also provides a better user experience for customers visiting your site and can subsequently lower your bounce rate and increase the average time users spend on a page. Such impacts can also help improve your keyword rankings.
Most certain engines have page speed tests that will provide suggestions for improving page speed. Google, for instance, utilizes PageSpeed Insights, where users can type in their websites and are provided with page speed and optimization scores for both mobile and desktop. Here is an example conducted for www.Target.com:
Additionally, the analysis will show page stats, as well as suggestions for improving optimization. Small businesses can use this tool to improve their page speed and their overall SEO.
Keyword Rankings
Arguably the most important aspect of SEO, keywords are the ideas and topics that tell what the content on your website is about. They are also the words and phrases that users enter when conducting a search. Thus, the keywords present on your website should match up with your business and what you do, as this is how searchers looking for a business that provides products and services like yours will find it.
In order to understand what keywords make the most sense for your business, you must conduct keyword research. If you’re unsure of where to begin, look to your competitors see which keywords are present throughout their websites. This is also beneficial because you’ll want to create better optimized pages to increase your chances of ranking higher than your competitors in search results.
Once you’ve determined some good, useful keywords, use a keyword tool to check how often its being searched for, as well as if there are other variations of the word or phrase being used. Keep in mind, keywords can also be “long-tail,” which indicate 3-4 word phrases that are specific to products and services you’re offering. You’ll want to do your best to optimize for both.
Be sure to type these keywords into Google and see what comes up in the SERPs (search engine results pages). That way, you can gain a better vision for the types of content you’ll create on your site to rank for said keywords. WordStream offers a free keyword tool to help you get started.
Backlinks
When another website links back to yours, that’s a backlink, and they are an incredibly important component of SEO. This is because backlinks help increase your website’s credibility. They are an indication to Google and other search engines that someone deemed your content valuable enough to link to it on their own website.
Certain backlinks mean more than others. Meaning, the more trustworthy and popular a website is, the more beneficial it is to have them backlink to your site. Moz’s Link Explorer tool can help you see the pages and domains that link to your website.
If you’re looking to gain backlinks, you can submit your website to online directories or comment and post your blogs on blogs and forums that are relevant to your industry. You can also ask to guest blog for these relevant websites, then place backlinks to your site within the blog.
Each of these components plays a crucial role in your SEO strategy, so it’s important to monitor them regularly. Use tools and conduct research to gain insight into what’s working and what needs improvement.
