With SEO’s blend of technical and creative elements, it’s no wonder how challenging us newbies tend to find it.
The truth is, it’s challenging because we don’t have the platforms to practice it and gain skill.
Sure you can watch the videos and do the courses, but to actually jump in and make a difference takes actual skill, skill that you won’t gain from just watching videos.
With today’s project on our marketing portfolio journey we’re getting hands-on experience with the easiest (so far) SEO task that you can perform right after learning the fundamentals and purposes of SEO.
The goal.
To perform an SEO audit on a website, apply the fundamentals of SEO and give strategies that could improve the website’s visibility.
The tools.
The website we’re auditing.
Funny enough the website I chose to audit is none other than that of a marketing agency, this should be fun…
Further screenshots of the website’s homepage…
The current status of this marketing agency’s website:
- The domain authority is 12.
- Not visible in SERP’s for any keyword.
- Not visible in local search.
From looking at it, I don’t think the website is doing a lot of converting.
The audit checklist.
- Mobile friendly – Passes the mobile test.
- Internal links – Enough to provide strategic navigation experience for users and assists with website crawl.
- Broken pages – A few broken external links that could be impeding the website’s authority.
- On-page SEO – Needs to be optimized much better.
- Site structure and user experience – Feels like there was no consumer persona or consumer journey created beforehand and as a result the experience is lacklustre. Although the crawlability of the website is good the user experience could be a big negative for the conversion rate.
- Page speed – Needs improvement.
The problems.
- The header of the homepage, the first thing you see when you reach the website, has absolutely no selling proposition.
…and it fills up the whole screen which is strange because it’s a basically a big space of nothing.
For a smaller business you should really avoid having just the slogan and name of the business as the first and only thing visitors see, that’s just asking them to bounce. The average time visitors spend on a website is just under 54 seconds, so you better get to selling!
- The first CTA immediately takes you to a bland contact us page.
- The on page SEO is simply non-existent,
for example here’s how many times these keywords used by competing websites are mentioned here:
- Marketing agency X1
- Marketing X3
- Digital marketing X0
- Conversions X0
- Leads X0
You get my point, they are not competing on these keywords at all. And also, how are they convincing prospects to work with them?
- There’s no about page, nothing about the team, what qualifies them or even any of the successes they’ve had.
The entire EAT(Expertise. Authoritativeness. Trustworthiness) requirements are not met.
- There are ZERO blogs.
That’s it!
That’s how the professionals would do it.
See for yourself:
Backlinko SEO audit checklist.
If you’re new to SEO and still trying to get the hang of it then this is the project for you.
Just pick any website, follow the checklist and perform the audit.
You’ll get to see first-hand how the elements SEO work and why they’re so important.
GOOD LUCK!
