SEO audit: a complete guide to the basics

As mentioned, an audit provides your company with insight into your keyword strategy. With that perspective, you can discover your most and least valuable keywords, as well as new keywords. Intuitive experiences also signal to search engines that your site is valuable to users. If you’re looking for a free site audit tool, SEOptimer is a great choice for you. It scans your website to find any issues that could be holding your site back from high rankings in search results.

  • Yes, an SEO audit helps us determine how our website is performing.
  • Technical SEO involves optimizing the technical aspects of a website to meet search engine standards and improving organic rankings and user experience.
  • You’re losing valuable potential customers and for something unrelated to your product or service.
  • Pay attention to errors like “Submitted URL not found (404)”, “Duplicate without user-selected canonical”, or “Alternate page with proper canonical tag”.

Using Chrome DevTools To Diagnose Site Issues In An Audit

Creating a website audit report that clearly communicates the site issues found (and what to do about them) is an easy job when you have the right tools. Website audits usually evaluate a site for its content and technical performance. For example, SEO Anomaly Google’s primary goal is to serve the best and most trustworthy content to users from reputable sources. Sites that comply with data privacy requirements will most likely be viewed as more authoritative than those that don’t have these essential legal policies.

For instance, Google’s algorithm can index the wrong version of a page and it will get into the SERP. Or the whole website may be poorly indexed and considered spammy due to the huge number of duplicates. Essentially, orphan pages are lost pages, no longer connected to the internal linking structure of the website.

An SEO audit is the process of analyzing a website to identify issues that affect its organic visibility in search engines like Google. All of these factors are compiled and organized into an audit document for consumption by the business owner or marketing manager. SEO audits can just be a list of issues but often includes a proposal from the SEO auditor to complete the work.

seo audit

If you rely on a 3rd party to host your photos or other files, you may need to ensure the platform keeps you in control of your assets and how they are delivered. Enterprise organizations often have many informational pages, like PDFs, articles, product bulletins, blogs, etc. An effective SEO auditor will use various software and digital marketing skills to evaluate your website’s content and content strategy from an SEO perspective. An enterprise SEO audit aims to determine how a business can best utilize SEO as a marketing channel. It should help determine what a successful SEO campaign would look like for the current website and outline the scope of the resources needed. An enterprise SEO audit must also consider the overall competitiveness of the industry.

seo audit

Run a crawl and check if  your website appears on Google

At the highest level, the comprehensive SEO audit covers everything. It includes elements from the previous levels and adds competitive analysis, backlink assessment, and an in-depth examination of your entire digital footprint. This level suits businesses committed to dominating their niche and outperforming competitors. In the end, all we create on the Internet is for other users. With that in mind, good website will constantly see an increase in traffic, more and better links, more social mentions, longer time on website and smaller bounce rates by the visitors.

seo audit

An SEO audit is one of the key actions of an SEO professional or website owner. It involves checking various aspects of your website to measure how well it is conforming to organic search best practices. But there are certain best practices involved in an SEO audit to ensure you can maximize your visibility and performance on search engines. By addressing these, you improve visibility, drive more organic traffic, and make sure your website is optimized for search engines.

seo audit

Start by checking your page speed using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool. A page speed audit helps you identify exactly what’s slowing down your site and how to fix it. Then review it manually to check for issues like missing or duplicate URLs. That’s why proper internal linking can help boost your topical authority.

Site Audit will let you know if GoogleBot can crawl and index your site. SEO is a powerful tool that can define your online presence, organic traffic, and business trajectory. Whether you’re just getting started with SEO or looking to refine your existing strategy, having the proper support can make all the difference. At Cadence, we specialize in creating tailored SEO strategies that bring the best results. Technically, the clicks from organic search are free, but ranking your website to get those clicks requires time, effort, and potential financial investment. You might need to invest in SEO tools, hire experts, or spend significant time learning and implementing SEO strategies yourself.

Every agency — and even SEO audit tool — varies when it comes to what they audit. In almost all cases, however, an SEO audit includes a technical analysis of your website. It’s the basis for assessing your site and developing your next step. A competitive audit analyzes your site, as well as some of your competitors’ websites.