An SEO audit is a process of analyzing a website and determining which parts are working well and in alignment with what Google wants, as well as potential trouble spots that might lead to demotions or penalties.
The SEO audit is the first critical step of improving your website's performance. It looks at how well you're optimizing your website for search engines, and creates a plan that will leave measurable results.
The purpose of the audit is to identify as many foundational issues as possible affecting organic search performance. The SEO audit will involve exploring your website's relevancy, ranking, titles and meta descriptions, as well as your content strategy and SEO-friendly URL structure.
- Technical SEO issues
- Website structure issues
- On-page SEO issues
- Potential off-site problems
- User experience issues
- Content gaps and opportunities
- Competitive marketplace insights
he best solution for your website's well-being is checking to make sure that it gets the proper amount of maintenance. And, with an audit, you can confirm its health and ensure that it's optimized for performance.
What an SEO Audit Should Be:
A comprehensive audit will take a "big picture" approach to look at your website. It'll also look at both structural and content components in order to assess how they affect your SEO visibility. If there are missing pieces, you could be missing out on the correct recommendations for your site.
You may not be reading between the lines, but your audit should be easy to understand. As a business owner, it's important that you can connect the dots as to how SEO issues are affecting your online priorities, goals, or revenue. Any and all recommendations should clear up and ladder up to your overarching business objectives.
After you've completed your SEO audit, make sure to review the recommendations and make changes! We recommend that each recommendation include the predicted impact and effort associated with each recommendation. Your output should correctly convey an easy-to-follow roadmap.
What an SEO Audit Should Not Be:
The great thing about small businesses is that you can get high-quality without spending a lot of money. You pay for what you need, and that's it. No wasted money or time spent on things you don't need.
An SEO audit takes time. It's important to give the process enough time to properly uncover the root causes of any issues affecting your website's health. Depending on the size of your website, a proper audit can take anywhere from 2-6 weeks to complete. Don't make major changes without extensive planning and consideration.
While technical aspects are required for all websites, a situational analysis needs to be performed at the outset of an SEO audit in order to focus on areas of need for that site.
- How many 301 (moved permanently) are found on the site?
- How many 302 (moved temporarily) are found on the site?
- How many 401’s?
- How many 403’s?
- How many 404’s?
- How many 5xx?
What Is Analyzed in an SEO Audit:
An SEO audit is a process of analyzing and evaluating each part of your site, so you can find the areas that need improvement. This will also include assessing your competitor sites, so you can get a competitive edge in the market by knowing what features are important to keep in mind when competing with other digital marketing channels.
At the outset, SEO audits will vary slightly depending on the needs of each site. However, each one should cover technical hurdles such as submission errors (SEO webmaster tool), sitemaps, and metadata. At a high level, an audit should look at accessibility, indexation, and optimization.
When it comes to SEO, our experts analyze 193 different elements for your site. They include:
- Technical Audit
- Indexation analysis
- Status Codes
- Redirects
- Page Speed
- URL Structure
- Robots.txt
- XML Sitemap
- Canonical Tags
- Duplication
- Crawlability
- Legacy Domain Issues
- Off-page Analysis
- Mobile SEO analysis
- International SEO analysis
- On-Page Audit
- Site Content Structure
- Keyword Research
- Page Copy Theme Analysis
- Keyword Use
- Meta Data Analysis (Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, Heading Tags)
- Schema
- User Experience
- Images & Video
- Internal Linking & HTML Sitemap
- Server Log Audit
- Crawl Budget Analysis
- User Agent Analysis
The auditing process allows us to make accurate and impactful recommendations that are specific to your needs. Our audit will give you a comprehensive analysis of how your website's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats affect the quality of your visitors' experience.
What you are likely to encounter during and after an SEO audit:
Taking a good look at your website's SEO is a long process. Sometimes it can take up to six weeks for an SEO specialist to learn everything about your site and what needs to be done - but this doesn't have to be the case! Business owners can choose from bi-weekly or weekly check-ins that keep them in the loop on the project's progress.
As a dedicated one-stop website audit firm, we're always on the lookout for opportunities to help our clients. When we find something that should be addressed right away, we'll send it over as soon as possible. This provides more time to correct any visibility issues while the rest of the audit is completed.
After your site is audited, you'll have an opportunity to talk in person with our team. They'll walk you through the findings, recommendations and roadmap to completion. They'll also analyze your site's health and offer a comprehensive report that's customized for your unique situation.
Having a website audit is important for several reasons. Here are just a few:
-Hire professional writers who can provide the content you want and the services your business needs.
-Gain insights into where your customers are coming from and what they're looking for.
-Find opportunities to improve your sites and find out where it can be improved.
Your website is the central point of your brand – so, it's important to make sure everything is in order. It's also important to note that your website is living and will continue to evolve as you implement new ideas and product launches. In any given year, content can be added and/or removed from a website. As a result, audits should occur on a regular basis. We recommend that websites be audited at least once per year which includes identifying those critical issues so they can be fixed as they come to light.
With SEO, you have to be on your toes at all times. There are multiple aspects of SEO that are important to best compete in today’s market, from auditing and technical SEO to updating your content and tracking global Google search trends. All of these should be complementary to the work done during the initial audit, making the difference between a thriving business and one struggling.