Conducting regular SEO audits are important as they help you to identify any errors which may be preventing your website from ranking well in SERPs.
They also uncover any opportunities for you to gain more visibility, which then helps to boost rankings, attract more traffic and achieve better outcomes for your website and business.
Audits provide roadmaps for long term strategic improvements that can give you a competitive advantage in the SERPs.
The goals of conducting an SEO audit are to determine how well your website ranks in SERPs as well as to figure out what needs to be done to improve the websites search performance.
What is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is the process of evaluating how well your website is optimised for search engines. It is based on hard data about the technical health of your website as well as the traffic to it and its backlink profile.
Some tools will also allow you to see similar data about your competitors websites.
The key components of a comprehensive SEO are as follows:
Technical SEO: Tools like Google Search Console helps with crawling and indexing
On-Page SEO: Includes keywords, title tags, meta descriptions, images
Off-Page SEO: Relevance of backlinks
Local SEO (if applicable to your business): Includes Google My Business, local citations, NAP consistency (name, address, phone number), customer reviews, local keyword optimisation
Pre-Audit Preparation
Before you conduct your SEO audit, it is important to set clear objectives and goals that relate to your business, not just SEO.
You need to clearly outline what you aim to achieve through improving your SEO.
You will also need to think about whether your objectives and goals are achievable with SEO as these will help to guide your focus on what you need to look into in regards to SEO:
Tools and resources needed for an SEO audit
SEO software
Semrush, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, Moz and more
Google Analytics, Semrush
Any relevant historical data
Ensure crawling tool is properly configured
Semrush, Moz
Technical SEO Audit
Technical SEO audits analyse the technical aspects of a website, which ensures that search engines can crawl, index and rank pages on your website.
This looks at things which could be slowing your website down, make it hard for search engines to understand the content, difficult for pagers to appear in SERPs and it affects how users interact with your website.
Site Crawling and Indexing is a large part of a technical SEO audit as they ensure that all of the important pages on your website are being indexed.
It is a crucial aspect because search engines must be able to crawl and index your webpages to rank them on their SERP - Googles all of this information in its own index, which is checked when someone searches on google.
Site speed and performance analyses the page load time and the core web vitals and is crucial for the overall page experience and is something that Google have used as a ranking factor for a long time.
Google has a tool called PageSpeed Insights to address site speed and performance and you will be able to see the website performance report and core web vitals report.
Core web vitals include:
Largest Content Paint (LCP)
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
The mobile-friendliness checks your website for mobile optimisation and responsiveness. Google indexes the mobile version of all websites over the desktop version.
You use Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to check mobile usability for specific URLs.
To help with SLL and security within your website you will need to ensure that your website is secure with HTTPS and not HTTP as this isn’t encrypted.
This means that your website runs on a secure server using by using an SSL certificate from a third-party vendor.
This helps to confirm the legitimacy of your website and helps to build trust with suers showing a picklock next to the URL in a web browser. HTTPS is a confirmed Google ranking signal.
On-Page SEO Audit
On-Page SEO includes the backend elements of a webpage which is optimised for search engine crawling.
This includes meta descriptions, meta titles, image alt text, compression and more.
The content quality and relevance of a webpage would require you to review the content to be of high quality and relevant to your business.
Your webpage needs to be trustworthy, useful, actionable, readable, adequate length and free of irrelevant information/ images.
Keyword optimisation is another key component of on-page SEO which involved checking keyword usage and optimisation, using tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner, which helps to find keywords which are relevant for your website. You should aim to target one keyword theme per page.
Meta tags and headers are key for each of your webpages, where you can analyse the meta title, descriptions and header tags for optimisation.
Meta tags need to be 60 characters or less and must include the keywords you are wanting to target, they need to convey value, doesn’t overpromise, descriptive and interesting.
The meta description are the descriptions of pages that appear under the title on a SERP and should be between 155 and 160 characters, again including keywords and they need to be actionable
Internal linking structure evaluates the effectiveness of internal links within your website and they may take a user to other pages within your website.
Anchor text should be specific to the page that you are linking to as well as containing keywords as this make a better user experience.
Off-Page SEO Audit
Off-page SEO audit is done through improving your websites unpaid search engine ranking on SERPs without making any changes to your website. This includes link building, guest posting and social media marketing.
The backlink profile analyses the backlinks within your website for quality and relevance. The more backlinks a webpage has, the more authoritative it is to Google.
The goal here is to get as many authoritative and relevant websites to link to your content.
Social signals reviews your websites presence and engagement on your social media accounts. The more pull you gain online, the more authority it builds for Google.
It is best if social media mentions are positive and come from reputable sources.
This is crucial for brand awareness and attracting website traffic. Although social media is a huge benefit, it doesn’t directly impact your search traffic but it does help to establish credibility, which in turn does improve your websites search standing.
Local SEO Audit (if applicable to your business)
Local SEO audits involve practices to help businesses to rank in local search and will be smaller but it will still involve elements from each adult, regarding listings, content, on page and technical SEO.
You can check the accuracy of local listings and your Google My Business profile through checking if the information showing is correct, update any photos and videos if needed, respond to reviews.
All of which can help you to rank higher when people search for relevant products or services in your area.
You can analyse local keyword rankings and reviews through researching any new keywords that could be relevant to your business and add these to your local SEO strategy.
To do this, you can use Google Keyword Planner, which suggests relevant keywords for your business.
Analysing Results and Reporting
To compile and present to findings from the SEO audit you can use visual aids such as charts, graphs, screenshots and videos to highlight key data found.
If you’re using a software for the audit, you will be able to find visuals from there, which will help you easily identify any critical issues.
For ease, you can categorise any issues with your current SEO into: quick technical fixes, longer- term technical projects, on-page content optimisation for existing pages, new content creation opportunities and link building, digital PR initiatives.
From this you can then assign them as low, medium or high priorities based on each of their impact on the overall SEO performance of your website.
You can now develop a clear action plan in order to address them systematically.
Common Mistakes in SEO Audits
Here are some of the common pitfalls that you should try and avoid during your SEO audit:
Lack of clear goals and objectives
Neglecting technical SEO issues
Broken links
Slow page load times
Incorrect redirects
Ignoring website usability and user experience
Site navigation
Mobile-friendliness
Page layout
Content readability
Overlooking keyword search and optimisation
Not analysing competitor strategies
Failing to track and measure results
Some tips for conducting both thorough and accurate audits
Clearly define the goals before starting the audit:
Optimise page titles and meta descriptions
Conduct a comprehensive technical SEO audit
Prioritise page speed and user experience
Look for reliable internal links
Perform comprehensive keyword search and optimise content accordingly
Analyse competitors strategies
Implement tracking and measurement tools to monitor your websites performance
Conclusion
Conducting regular SEO audits is crucial for constantly maintaining and improving your website’s performance. By addressing technical, on-page and off-page factors, you can improve your search engine rankings.
If you have any other tips you’ve found through doing your own SEO audits
