Checking the health of your website is something that should be done before you SEO. It’s also something that should be done after you SEO, and at regular periods throughout the life of your site. Just as with the health of a living organism, the health of your site needs to be checked to ensure not only that it is prospering, but that it is prospering in the way you want it to.

Your SEO consultant will look at the relative health of your site as a first step before search engine optimisation. If your website is compared to a living creature, this initial check is to determine its ability to train. Some sites are natural greyhounds, already having the foundations of SEO which will need a little tightening before the site is ready to go. Some possess less of this natural capability, and will require more work.

After the initial process of SEO has been completed and your site has been launched, another series of health checks will take place. The first will be to see how your site is coping with its new exercise regime. The search engine optimisation plan prepared for a site in isolation from the rest of the net often needs to be fine-tuned once the outside factors on the World Wide Web come into play. A few weeks after these adjustments are made; another health check needs to be performed. Further health checks will be made further and further into a site’s development to ensure that everything is still on track.

What should your health check involve? Your site’s health can be assessed by looking at a number of factors. Your ranking is primary in this, particularly exactly where you appear on the page in search engine results. Often, ranking above the fold, or in the first visible section of the results, is just as good as being number one. The flow of users through your site needs to be analysed, to see if users are following the right paths and if there are any blocks to communication. The keywords users entered for and the page users exit from is important, as well as conversion rates. The number of sites linking to yours, and any recent changes in these links is also important.

Once you have the information on your site, you need to analyse it. Having an expert on board can be helpful at this point, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult about website analysis. The main thing you are looking for is that users are entering on the keywords you expected and behaving the way you want them to.

The need for regular health checks on your site is one of the many reasons to keep in touch with your SEO firm. Analysis of how your search engine optimisation plan is working requires as much expertise as the initial optimisation. You may also find that SEO professionals have the experience needed to predict the changes your site needs. You can talk to our experts at SEO Consult when considering the long-term SEO health of your site.

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