Reviewing the visual web design
There are many different ways to design a website and this is certainly not an area where there is only one best design, so unless we do user-experience testing too and get unanimous negative feedback on your existing design, it’s very unlikely that we will recommend a website overhaul.
Instead, for every audit we go through a checklist of factors that are important both for your visitors and for Google. Our analysis of the visual design includes:
- Is your site responsive, i.e. does it look good on monitors, tablets and mobiles?
You can use Google’s mobile friendliness test to check whether it passes Google’s quality criteria for this. A site that passes everything on their test will appear higher in Google’s organic search rankings and around 50% of internet traffic is mobile based currently.
- Do the colour scheme, font size and layout allow visitors to easily read all content on the site?
This includes visitors who may have poor eyesight, or who are colour-blind (1 in 12 men and around 4.5% of the population as a whole are colour blind).
- Are images a good resolution and the right dimensions?
Having compressed images that are the correct dimensions helps your website load faster. According to DotCom Tools 53% of visitors abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load, so everything you can do to reduce load time is a bonus and this starts with your graphics.
- Are there any other flaws in the design?
When one of our graphic designers looks at your site, they will take into consideration who your target audience is, what colour schemes other sites in your industry use, what symbolism you have used (intentionally or unintentionally) and if there are obvious flaws in the design that might put your visitors off making a purchase or picking up the phone and calling you. They will then make clear suggestions on what to improve.
On-page SEO - structure and code
The invisible elements of code that your web developer adds to your site can make a huge difference to how well you rank with search engines. Many web developers unfortunately are oblivious to the subtleties of SEO. For example, Google consider a <h1> title the main heading on the page and also value relevant <h2> and <h3> sub-headings.
To see the source code for a particular page in most browsers you can press Ctrl + U on a PC, or Option + Command + U on a Mac. If you look for text between <h1> and </h1> that’s your main heading. There should only be one <h1> per page, which ideally contains relevant keywords. You may find your site doesn’t have a <h1> tag, or has multiple, or has other issues like using <h2> tags to say things like <h2>Main menu</h2> and this sends a message to Google to say that “Main menu” is an important heading on your site, which unless you’re a restaurant, it probably isn’t.
This is just one example of a wide range of different elements of code that we review. For each error that we find, we will also provide instructions on how to fix it.
When analysing your website structure, we run reports to identify missing pages, pages with errors, and pages with missing or duplicate Meta Titles and Descriptions. We also consider how different pages link together and look at the % of links different visitors click (providing a visual of this for your home page as shown above) and whether some links could be relegated to the footer, or other ways your link structure could be improved.
For ecommerce sites we test the functionality up to the point of entering credit card details, as your sales funnel can make a big difference in terms of your conversion rate too.
All of this is designed to identify and fix important mistakes in the site code and structure to ensure that your site is telling search engines the same thing that you want it to.
Identifying the best keywords by country
If you have an established website with plenty of organic traffic, then your priority is likely to be targeting relevant keywords that have a high search volume and figuring out how to beat the competition for those coveted first few spots in the search results.
On the other hand, if you have a new website with less of an authority, balancing SEO challenge and search volume is more important. When targeting different countries, it's common that some domains will have a stronger web presence than others. In this situation, a different approach is needed in each target country, simply translating keywords is not enough.
We analyse your site and your competitors’ sites to identify the best potential keywords and provide reports with the following information for each keyword:
- Monthly Searches – The number of monthly searches from Google for your target country.
- SEO Challenge – How competitive the keyword is. This percentage is based on the average domain strength of the top 20 websites that appear for this keyword, giving it a good degree of accuracy.
- Web Address – The URL of the top ranking page on your site.
- Position – Your website’s existing position with Google if it’s in the top 100 results.
- Priority - Whether the keyword is 1st, 2nd, or low priority for you, based on our manual review of it. High priority keywords will then be used as our focus for both on-page SEO and link building.
Does your content convert visitors into customers?
Scroll down for a free content audit of your own site.
Different areas of your site serve different purposes and we will analyse your core landing pages based on their specific purposes and how they help achieve your overall business goals, as well as looking at duplicate content issues.
When reviewing your content quality, we look at:
- Home page – Your home page serves a multitude of different purposes. It is an introduction to who you are, the products or services you offer and what makes your company unique. Most of all it is a doorway to the rest of your website. We will review your home page and suggest new text to use where necessary that will encourage as many visitors as possible to visit the rest of your site.
- Product or service pages – Your product description pages need to be written with your target audience in mind. If you provide a complex, technical service like IT security, typically you would be expected to adopt a more formal tone. If you run a vegan restaurant, a friendly informal tone might work better. For many eCommerce sites, product listing pages are more important than the individual product pages.
As well as looking at the overall tone of your product descriptions, we also check each landing page to be sure it has an obvious call to action. We also check that it’s targeting relevant keywords that are used in the Metatags, URLs, h1 headings, text on the page, ALT tags, etc.
- Blog – Your blog shows that you’re an expert in your field, builds trust with your target audience and targets keywords that a product page can’t. See our guide on writing a company blog for more information.
-
Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions – Every page has its own Meta Title and Description and we will provide a report showing the Metatags for all the most important pages on your site, with optimized Metatags for your most important pages. These appear in the search results on Google and other search engines, as well as when someone shares that page on social media. They are a crucial component of on-page SEO and it's relatively simple to optimise them.
Backlink audit to remove toxic links
A Backlinko study found:
Pages with lots of backlinks rank above pages that don’t have as many backlinks. In fact, the #1 result in Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2-#10.
The #1 result also gets twice as many clicks as the #2 result. This makes high authority, reputable, language-specific backlinks essential. They are like the helium balloons in the image shown here, lifting your site up in the search results for your international audience.
The problem is too many spammy or toxic backlinks weigh your site down like a heavy weight. To avoid this, our link building audits identify which links to disavow - effectively telling Google ignore these links.
In addition to auditing your backlinks, we will also recommend the best link building strategy going forward and can help build links in multiple languages, should you wish.
Auditing large websites
When you have an enterprise size websites with tens or hundreds of thousands of pages, this changes the focus.
Instead of analysing every page, our enterprise SEO audits focus on the priority issues that are holding you back. This might include technical SEO factors, content that spans multiple pages, or backlinks.
Our international SEO audit services
Our SEO audits are an integral part of our international SEO consulting services. For enterprise level websites, we can deliver the audit on an Agile basis, so that you can start to implement the most important changes quickly and see immediate benefits. In order to track the benefits of each audit, we will measure keyword positions, traffic, and conversions and report on the results.
Your report will also include recommendations for an ongoing international SEO strategy designed to deliver high conversions.
To request a free initial site review:
Get in touch
.webp)
.webp)
