What Is An SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a comprehensive analysis of your website’s performance and how well it is optimised for search engines. It is a process that identifies any existing SEO issues, potential issues and any areas for improvement that can boost your online visibility.
Why Is An SEO Audit Important?
Search engines look at different ranking signals to determine whether a website deserves a top spot in search results. And, with constant updates to its algorithms, SEO audits ensure that your website stays up to date with the latest best practices.
Additionally, over time, websites can develop issues that hinder performance for both users and Search engines, such as broken links, slow loading times, or outdated content. An SEO audit helps identify areas where your site may be lacking or underperforming, allowing you to make necessary changes.
By regularly analysing your site’s performance, you can also discover new opportunities for optimisation. This includes identifying new keywords that could drive traffic, optimising existing content, and ensuring all pages are properly indexed.
What Does An SEO Audit Cover?
SEO audit involves various on-page and off-page elements. Most SEO audits look at:
- On-Page: meta descriptions, titles, heading hierarch, images, internal links and content.
- Off-Page: external factors like backlinks (links from other websites pointing to yours)
- Technical SEO: crawlability, indexability, site architecture, mobile-responsiveness, loading times and other aspects that may affect a user’s experience.
- Local SEO: local citations, Google My Business listings, and ensuring that your NAP (names, address and phone number) is consistent.
When Do You Perform An SEO Audit?
SEO is an ongoing effort, and so should audits. Ideally, SEO audits should be performed every 3 to 6 months, but there are some scenarios that may indicate the need.
- Sudden decline in traffic
- Increase in bounce rate
- Lower leads or conversions
- Drop in Google rankings
Tips For Performing An SEO Audit
- Choose Your Tools: Reliable SEO tools like Google Search Console, SEMrush, or AHrefs can be used to gather data on your website’s performance. They help identify areas that need improvement, track keyword rankings, your backlink profile and technical elements.
- Have a Checklist: While the steps can vary, it is important to have a checklist to cover all critical elements during your audit, including on-page, off-page, technical, and local SEO factors. This ensures you stay organised and don’t overlook important steps.
- Review Duplicate Content: Check for duplicate content across your site to avoid potential penalties from search engines.
- Does Your Site Have Any Manual Actions? Log into Google Search Console to check for any manual actions against your site, as these penalties can significantly impact your rankings. Address any identified issues to improve your site’s visibility.
- Look at Core Web Vitals: Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that are used to assess how functional and user-friendly your website is. These include factors like how quickly a page loads, visual stability and how quickly the website responds to user interactions.
- Look at Page Experience: Consider the overall user experience on your site. Is it easy to navigate? How does it perform on different devices? Is the content easily digestible?
- Review Your On-Page Elements: Examine on-page elements such as meta titles, descriptions, headings, and internal linking structure to ensure they are optimised for relevant keywords and accurately reflect the content of your pages.
