When it comes to getting a site audit to improve your website’s performance, the first step is deciding who you want to hire for the job. It’s important to note that not all website auditors are created equal; some may specialize in certain areas such as SEO, content quality and usability, while others may have more general web-based skills.
Before you hire someone for the job, it’s important to do some research and get references from previous clients. Be sure to ask potential candidates specific questions about their experience with website audits so that you can get an understanding of their level of expertise. Additionally, look at websites they have worked on before so that you can get an idea of what kind of changes they recommend in terms of design and functionality.
Choosing The Right Marketing SEO Consultant
Once you have chosen the right candidate for the job, be sure to set clear expectations regarding scope, timeline and deliverables. Be prepared to provide feedback in order to ensure that your website is performing optimally once the audit is complete.
We’ll assume for the moment that you haven’t received a penalty notice, but have just realized that business has fallen off, and you’re not sure why. You’re doing the same things you’ve always done, but traffic and/or sales are down drastically, and you don’t know why.
A Site Audit May Be Needed
Normally, a full-blown, page-by-page site audit won’t be required, in order to spot the main problems. Often, an experienced eye can spot some indicators with a quick glance at a few on-page items and your analytics, in combination with your responses to a few key questions on a discovery form.
If you have a very small website, say, less than 50 pages, most copywriting professionals can tell you after a quick walk-through, most of the things that need to be fixed, in order to whip your site into shape. Depending upon what they find, that should give you a pretty good idea of what sort of talent you need to hire.
If your site is large, a more detailed audit will probably be called for, to gather enough information. Again, the audit results should tell you whether you need extensive coding, new content, a lot of conversion rework, etc.
Who to Hire For Your Site Audit
If your computer melts down, you’re not going to take it to a software specialist to replace the power supply. So if your website has a terrible conversion process, you shouldn’t hire someone that knows how to do a site audit in order to bring in more relevant traffic.
It just makes sense to fix the problems that will bring the most benefit, right? So think about this:
Suppose you’re getting 10,000 unique visitors per month, and have a 1% conversion rate. That equates to 100 sales. If you manage to increase your traffic by 50%, without changing your conversion rate, that will mean 150 sales.
But if first, you fine-tune your conversion process and can improve that to 1.5%, the 10,000 visitors will deliver 150 sales. Then you can go after more traffic, and when you get your visitors up to 15,000, you’ll be seeing 180 sales. Together, that would mean an 80% increase in sales.
What’s important to realize is that improving your conversion rate can be accomplished more quickly, and often with less cost, than increasing your traffic. But it’s equally important to remember that there are two different skill sets involved.
So if a poor conversion rate is your real problem, you need to hire an SEO consultant or content specialist that can increase that rate. Address all the issues with your site that can make a difference, but prioritize them in terms of ROI. That doesn’t mean you can’t work on several different issues simultaneously, but hire the right specialist for each job.
Conclusion
An agency may have all the specialists you need, in-house, but a solo consultant will very rarely be proficient in all aspects that need attention on a site. Most are really good at one or two things, competent in a couple more, and may only know the basics in one or more. The most reputable consultants will suggest a more capable colleague to handle areas they’re not really good in.
First, find out what needs to be done, set priorities, then be sure you’re looking for the right skill set for the job.
10 Responses
Enjoyed speaking with you over the phone here is my email and the name of my website
hello mrs. Gabriella Sannino I was looking for some help with generating more traffic, are you for hire
Clint, you’re welcome to contact me directly through our SEO consultation page. We can set up a time to speak. Depending on your time line, I’m sure I can help. 🙂
All too often, websites start a slow but steady decrease in traffic and success due to a variety of reasons. Most often, these things can be fixed remarkable easy, but it just takes a skilled eye and writer to analyze the site and make all of the necessary changes. Hiring an SEO consultant or content specialist is definitely one of the best decisions a site runner can make.
Well, “penalty notice” there are no notices when website is penalized, just an outcome of loosing rankings. Site audit should be done on regular basis – ever 3 weeks to 1 month. There are always minor updates that might affect SERP. Outsourcing SEO work can be tricky and most of the time, website owners fall for a “cheap trap” services.
Thanks for commenting, Carl. But I’m afraid you’re very mistaken about no penalty notices being given when a site is penalized. If you have your site registered on a Google Webmaster Tools account, that is where penalty notices are announced to you if a manual action is taken against your site.
As for audits being performed every 3 or 4 weeks, I suspect you may be misunderstanding what a site audit entails. I could agree with checking your link profile that often, in addition to staying on top of all your site maintenance tasks. But a proper site audit is a detailed analysis of all aspects of a site. They’ll also often cost anywhere from $2.5k up, so unless you’re rolling in dough and unable to find a hole to throw it in, a monthly audit would seem excessive.
As an aside, losing rankings is much more often a result of filtering, rather than an actual penalty.
No I am not mistaken, there are several types of message in Webmaster Tools. Google send 10 times of messages, but none is mentioning penalty – some are related to craw and server errors, others are related to unnatural links, some are related to hacking, etc, but you will never read direct penalty message, even website is penalized for unethical SEO.
Very well I know that is SEO audit, I am SEO since 1999. Well I doubt that anybody is doing audit by hand, but mostly with software. Company might charge $2.5k, but generally even whole websites audit would not cost that much.
Depends how rankings are achieved, but loosing 2-3 positions from Google dance is absolutely normal, at the end of the day, competition is not sleeping. Loosing more than 10-20 results usually means something else.
Carl, maybe I should have specified… a DECENT SEO audit. I know people that regularly charge $7-10K for very detailed page-by-page audits on some sites, and the client is getting valuable reports with actionable data – worth a good deal more than the cost.
Frankly, your earlier statement about GWT penalty notices not existing pretty much calls into question anything you might have to say. “I am SEO since 1999” doesn’t mean much in SEO circles. Especially if you haven’t learned the basics in those 14 years.
Here’s what one of Google’s penalty notices looks like (and by the way, they’ve been around for quite a while): http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2237534/Unnatural-Links-Recovery-Emerging-from-a-Manual-Penalty
No point to refer to unofficial sources of information, though SEW is a great portal. Here is the official article: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/07/new-notifications-about-inbound-links.html . At the end it doesn’t matter there is no point to prove something it is 500k vs 180k !
Carl thanks for dropping by and sharing your opinion yet, I have to say I don’t understand your point.
First you mention “there are no notices when website is penalized” Doc showed you otherwise, as I’m sure I can find many more example of such notices existing. Then you mention being in SEO since 1999 yet you think a full site audit shouldn’t cost more than $2500… Honestly, I don’t know of any professional SEO worth their salt that would do a full site audit (especially a large site) for less than $2500, nor have I heard any professional SEO ONLY using “software” for a detailed audit. Last but not least you conclude with “No point to refer to unofficial sources of information” Seriously? All you have to do is search for Google Penalty Notice and you can see there’s more than one site discussing this phantom.