Does your website need an SEO audit? Auditing is a process that reveals errors or
problems in search engine optimization (SEO) that might be costing you website leads, traffic and sales, and a place in search engine rankings and online visibility.
But that’s just part of the story. In this article, we take a close look at what an SEO audit can do for your website.
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What is an SEO audit?
You likely know why SEO is important for every business but what about auditing?
An SEO audit is the best way to make sure your website is being crawled and indexed
properly by search engines. It checks the website for on-page problems and
inspects off-page issues that might impede search engine rankings.
An SEO audit will seek to address the following:
Does the website have a quality user experience?
Is the website optimized for specific and relevant keywords?
Is there sufficient content on the pages of the website?
Are there toxic backlinks pointing to the website?
An SEO audit should also feature the following characteristics:
Comprehensive – An SEO audit should tackle every aspect of SEO
from website structure and content to the visibility and accuracy of results on search
engines. This audit should provide an overview of the website and point to opportunities
which may improve performance.
Understandable – Audits should also be easy to interpret, and SEO agencies should always ensure their clients can properly understand this report.
Actionable – This checkup should be actionable and suggest solutions to problems
and ways the website might be changed and improved going forward.
Marina Turea with Digital Authority Partners advises clients to only work with SEO agencies that can provide clear solutions to whatever problems they highlight.
Why You Want an SEO Audit
A website is the online version of a brick-and-mortar store and a hub
for your business. This is why it’s important that everything looks, feels and
works the way it should, and checkups ensure this is the case.
Content is added to most websites over time in the form of new products, descriptions,
pages and blogs. SEO practices and algorithms are also changing all the time, which is why
audits need to be regular, and problems identified regarding SEO practice during this process
should be addressed as a matter of priority.
What Does an SEO Audit Look Like?
SEO auditing is a time consuming process but an SEO agency can usually complete one
within 4-8 weeks. Agencies analyze each and every aspect of the website,
while providing clients with bi-weekly updates of their progress.
While you can learn how to do a website audit for SEO , most website owners employ an SEO
agency to get the job done right.
Let’s take a look at some of the areas which an SEO audit will inspect during the process:
Indexation Analysis – This checks to ensure whether a website is being indexed properly and
the right information is showing up in the results on search engines.
Page Speed – Slow websites have a high bounce rate – online users are likely
to leave the website rather than wait for it to load. An SEO audit can identify why this is
happening and how the speed can be fixed/improved.
Sitemap and URLs – A sitemap is used to make sure search engines give more authority to
the most important pages on a website. However, this sitemap needs to be checked on a
regular basis and the URL structure will also need to be altered on occasion.
Duplication – Many websites have duplicate content and this is a red flag for search engine
algorithms. Duplicate content is also bad for user experience and an SEO audit can spot this
content which can then be removed.
Off-page Analysis – Off page optimization is very important for search engine ranking, and an
audit will analyze the quality of this effort and assess how it might be improved.
Mobile SEO analysis – Every website should be mobile responsive and pay attention to
mobile SEO. Audits check the quality of mobile SEO.
Keyword Research – Is the website content optimized for the right keywords? Are these
even the best keywords to use? An SEO audit will assess whether the website is
optimized for certain keywords and then perform research to identify better keywords to
use going forward.
Metadata Analysis – Metadata refers to page titles, heading tags, descriptions, and so on, and this is often neglected on websites. An SEO audit will spot all the gaps.
Images and Videos – Are all images and videos optimized for SEO?
User Experience – What an online user experiences when they visit a website is everything.
Audits can assess user experience to see what needs to be changed/improved.
The above is just a list of examples in terms of what an SEO audit will address, but there are hundreds of other factors which need to be considered.
Final Reporting on the Audit and Taking Action
If certain issues arise that can be addressed right away, the business can take action while
the audit is in motion. This means an agency will often advise clients during the audit of any
errors they can fix now rather than waiting until the end of the audit.
At the end of the audit, a full report is compiled and the agency will make a presentation. Top SEO agencies will also suggest solutions at this final reporting stage and offer more services that can fix the problems.
With a roadmap to completion, businesses can use an SEO audit to get the website up to
speed and ensure the user experience is where it needs to be in the future.
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