You can find a mountain of information online about how to perform an SEO (search engine optimization) audit. An SEO audit can offer insight into your website’s SEO performance to help you identify strengths and opportunities. Conducting a thorough audit of your site and developing an SEO strategy based on audit results will keep you one step ahead of the competition. Following the basic fundamentals of SEO will ensure that Google’s algorithm changes don’t have apocalyptic consequences for your rankings.

Helping You Get Mobile-Ready

By now, you’ve probably heard that Google implemented a mobile-friendly algorithm update, Mobilegeddon, on April 21^st. Sites incompatible with mobile took major hits in search rankings as a result. A search engine optimization audit involves a comprehensive analysis of your site, and it works just as well for mobile as it does for desktop.

Generally, more than 50 percent of searches now happening on mobile devices, meaning a mobile-optimized site is a must. A mobile SEO audit will evaluate, measure and report on the variables that influence your mobile search rankings. An audit will reveal how much mobile traffic you get, what visitors see on different mobile devices and browsers, and where you fall in mobile search rankings, to name a few.

Spotting Link Assets and Liabilities

Search engines use the links on your site for several purposes. First, links tell search engines how pages relate to one another. Second, search engines rely on backlinks, orinbound links, to judge the relevance, authority, and popularity of your site.

During an SEO audit, you’ll perform a backlink analysis that will help you gauge the quality and quantity of inbound links to your site. You can then compare your backlink profile to that of your competitors. Additionally, you can do a toxic link analysis to see if your backlinks are coming from the web’s sketchy parts of town—the link farms, private blog networks, and spammy websites eschewed by search engine algorithms.

Calibrating Content for SEO

A lot of companies bounce from one vendor to the next without realizing that some were practicing black hat SEO, or shady SEO tactics that violate the rules of search engine algorithms. Such tactics can devastate your search rankings, but you’ll never know about them unless you do an SEO audit.

Similarly, an audit will identify opportunities in your site’s content for changes that can quickly boost your rankings. For instance, you will see how search engines interpret your website based on the current content, such as the keywords present. Even just a few minor changes can turn your site’s SEO performance around. Additionally, a content audit will help you determine the efficacy of your current meta descriptions, title tags, URLs, and other site characteristics. Again, just a few tweaks here and there can have an enormous impact on your rank.

Conducting an SEO audit is one of the single best things you can do for your search rankings. Becoming mobile-friendly, strengthening (and checking the toxicity of) your backlink profile, and optimizing content and keywords are just a few of the things an SEO audit can do for you.