With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1173482
At least once a year, we have our car serviced to ensure it is running smoothly. Prior to purchasing a home, we get an inspection to avoid any possible costly repairs. However, many businesses forget to conduct routine checkups and maintenance on their websites. Yet plug-ins could be outdated and there's a higher possibility of spam, errors and re-directs clogging up your speed resulting in less traffic to your site. SEO (search engine optimization) tactics which work one year could become obsolete the next year. Christian Thomson, CEO and founder of Marwick Marketing, says an SEO audit can reveal whether or not it's optimized to achieve a company's traffic goals. And if not, figure out what can be done to improve it in order to increase performance. "The online world is becoming more and more competitive. It is so important for businesses to have a yearly website audit performed to minimize risks of their site being hacked, slowdowns, technical issues and more," says Thomson, whose eight-year-old digital marketing company has the distinction of being among the top five per cent of the fastest-growing such agencies in Canada. "The issue lies in business owners' not understanding the shifting dynamics of the digital online world." He cites how in 2019, Google updated its algorithm eight times more than in 2018—that's a lot of changes. In fact, the way Google finds your website changes almost daily. With social media, website design and function and SEO campaigns to target specific people, not having an ideal run- ning SEO can leave a small business vulnerable to being taken over by its competition. As part of its 2019 digital strategy, Company Capital, a provider of online loans for small busi- nesses across the country, had an SEO audit performed. "Marwick's team went through all of the vari- ous SEO checkpoints, described them in simple English and explained what it would take to rectify any shortfall," says Bruce Marshall, CEO, Com- pany Capital. "This has been a great one-time investment into our overall digital marketing strat- egy for 2020 and beyond." At the end of the audit, Marshall received an in-depth, comprehensive 20-page report high- lighting the results of the audit and what changes need to be implemented to optimize the website. "An SEO audit should ensure that your website is strong and that there are no obstacles impeding search engines from finding the pages of your site," says Thomson. ■ 604-390-0065 Christian@MarwickMarketing.com MarwickMarketing.com The procedure ensures your digital presence is actually reaching customers FINAL HAVE YOU DONE AN SEO AUDIT THIS YEAR? C R E AT E D BY BCBusiness I N PA RT N E RS H I P W IT H MARWICK