Website & SEO Audit Service

Your site needs a plan to understand why you’re not ranking where you should be. Without having a complete picture of your site, what’s missing and the foundation you have, it’s difficult to create strategies that will be fruitful. 

Since only 5.7% of pages rank in the top 10 search results in the first year of publication and over 90% of pages get zero traffic from Google, you need a plan in place. 

Our site audit services are the basis for any plan to drive more organic traffic to your site. 

Elements of an SEO Site Audit 

When we start analyzing your site’s search engine optimization, we’ll look at a lot of categories, including: 

• Content 
• On-page SEO  
• Off-site problems 
• User experience 
• Technical SEO audit 

Multiple elements are included in this audit: 

• Keyword analysis 
• Title tags 
• Meta descriptions 
• Images and video 
• Loading time 
• Sitemap issues 
• Internal linking 
• Crawlability 
• Content structure 
• Competitor analysis 
• Schema 
• Header usage 
• Image alt tag optimization 
• Mixed content issues 
• Duplicate content 
• Backlink analysis 
• Anchor text usage 
• HTTP status codes 
• Load time 
• Mobile-friendliness 
• Redirect loops
• Robots.txt files
• More 

Technical SEO is an important part of every audit. When you own a site, pages may be removed and redirected over time. Some content or service pages, for example, may no longer be relevant, but they may bring in traffic and have a lot of links pointing to them.

When we perform a website SEO audit, we analyze the technical aspects of the site, too.

A single, silly mistake can cause you to lose traffic and revenue. Redirect chains, which are so easy to make, can lead to an infinite loop. Plugins or a developer building a site may change your robots.txt to be “noindex,” and crawlers will never index the site. 

We look for these common technical SEO errors that are easily overlooked and complex, hard-to-find issues, too. It’s our job to scrutinize all aspects of your site and make corrections to give your site the opportunity to rank as high as possible.

A “one size fits all” approach is not what we offer. Situational analysis, with a focus on your site’s and marketing’s goals, is ideal. We focus on areas that are a top priority at the start, allowing for a comprehensive SEO strategy to be planned and executed. 

What’s a Website Audit Service? 

A website audit service has a lot of overlap with an SEO service because performance often relies on the website itself. You can drive traffic to your site, but what happens if the traffic never converts? 

SEO is just one piece of the puzzle. To get results, you have to look at the complete picture. 

Elements of a Website Audit 

When we analyze your site, we’ll dig deep into the following categories: 

• Traffic 
• Functionality 
• Site health 
• User engagement 
• User experience 
• Website performance 

A single bad experience on a site can lead to 88% of visitors being less likely to return to your site. Even more important, you may have top rankings and high levels of traffic with only a small percentage of leads turning into sales. 

Small changes can increase sales with your existing traffic quickly. One study found that 70% of businesses didn’t have a call-to-action (CTA) on their site. If your site isn’t telling visitors the steps to take next, such as what number to call or to click to buy, you’re missing out on revenue. 

These elements and more are analyzed with our site audit services, including: 

• Navigation 
• Usability 
• Load speed 
• Bounce rate 
• Content analysis 
• Code quality 
• Dwell time 
• Mobile-friendly design with mobile-first indexing in mind 
• Call-to-actions 
• Low and high converting pages 

As you’ve probably noticed, there’s a lot of overlap with a website and SEO audit. Combining the two into one large analysis allows us to correct issues on your site faster and more efficiently. 

Tools can be used to help speed up the process of a website SEO audit and automate tasks that don’t need manual input.  

SEO Audit Tools 

Algorithm updates can cause a high-traffic website to lose a large portion of visitors overnight. Tools can help gather information rapidly to get a better idea of a site’s SEO and weak points. This leads to a better understanding of potential changes that need to be made. 

We use tools to help speed up the audit time, but they’re only a part of the process. 

Manual analysis of the data that’s collected is required to understand which changes are a top priority and which will have the biggest impact on your site’s SEO. 

A few of the tools that are used in an SEO audit are: 

• Ahrefs 
• Chrome DevTools 
• Google Search Console 
• Google Analytics 
• Lighthouse 
• Majestic 
• Moz 
• SEMrush 
• Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider 

You’ll find a few, free SEO audit services that cover the basics, but they’re not in-depth enough for most websites. 

Major analysis can also be done on three of the most important aspects of a site’s SEO and content: 

1. Keyword analysis 
2. Competitor analysis 
3. Content quality analysis 

Let’s look at how to properly audit all three of these elements. 

Keyword Analysis 

Every day, there are 3.5 billion searches completed on Google. Annually, up to 20% of searches are new and weren’t searched the year prior. When we conduct keyword research for a site, we look for keywords that: 

• Offer potential to drive traffic 
• You can compete for in the search rankings 

But we also start with a full keyword analysis. Audits are about what you’re doing now and what you can be doing differently. 

When we conduct an analysis for you, we’ll be looking at:

• Keywords that bring traffic to your site 
• Search phrases that bring traffic to your site 

Traffic can come from organic search or paid search. The idea is simple: If you know what queries are driving traffic to your site, you can optimize your landing pages properly. 

Decisions can be made that will help: 

• Find new markets to explore 
• Optimize ad spending 
• Increase conversions 

A full analysis of your keywords can help an SEO expert or PPC manager: 

• Uncover new trends 
• Eliminate spending on keywords that aren’t converting 
• Prioritize time spent on optimization 

While time-consuming and repetitive, it’s important that an in-depth analysis be performed to help better understand your audience, boost spending in the right places and scale back spending in others. 

Competitor Analysis 

We want our clients to have a competitive edge. Others in your industry are working to increase their market share, and perhaps some of these companies are already leaders in their industries. 

You can use their SEO efforts to better understand what: 

• Works 
• Doesn’t work 

Is the competitor on social media? Do they focus strongly on their SEO performance, or do they purchase their traffic? 

An SEO audit report helps you understand what others in your industry are doing so that you can build off of their success.

When analyzing the competition, we’re able to pull out valuable information, such as: 

• Top-ranking keywords 
• Optimized keywords 
• Most shared pages 
• Most popular content 
• Where competitors are paying for advertising 

Your competitors might also be marketing and appealing to different customer segments than you are.  

A full link audit can also be conducted. The audit will provide insight into who is talking about your competitors and how they’ve been able to achieve their rankings. This information can help shape your marketing strategy using proven techniques that are working for others in your niche. 

Content Quality Analysis 

Content audits have grown increasingly important in recent years. Search engines and users both demand high-quality content. If your content is missing the mark, you’re going to lose money. 

Ideally, a content audit will be done annually to have a better understanding of how your content marketing strategy is working and can be improved. 

An audit may include: 

• Top-performing content 
• Low-performing content 
• Full content inventory 

The audit can determine: which content should be updated, missed keyword opportunities, which topics resonate best with your audience, and which posts are no longer relevant for an audience.

You must make a good first impression, and pruning posts or content that are no longer relevant may open opportunities to appeal to visitors. 

The audit can: 

• Identify pages with high traffic and low conversions 
• Generate ideas for new content 
• Locate gaps in your sales funnel 
• Identify overlapping content 

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are used to provide a qualitative assessment and evaluation of the content. An SEO site audit should look at your current content, how it’s ranking and what changes you can make to maximize the benefits of your content.

How Long Does an SEO/Website Audit Take and What’s the Process? 

If you contact us for an audit, several factors need to be considered first: 

• What type of audit should be performed?  
• Is an SEO agency already working on the site? 
• How many pages does the site have? 

We provide completion estimates on a case-by-case basis so that you’re never waiting longer than expected for your SEO audit services. Typically, an audit can take 2 to 6 weeks, but we don’t believe in the “one size fits all” approach. 

There’s also the question of whether you want us to carry out the changes that we recommend. 

When you first contact us about our service, we’ll: 

• Consult with you on your goals 
• Examine your site 
• Recommend audit services based on our findings 
• Conduct an audit upon your approval 
• Provide you with an SEO audit report
• Discuss our findings with you 
• Proceed with correcting issues that we find if you request us to do so 

A full, comprehensive SEO audit can reveal significant issues with your site, or your site may have been well-optimized and minimal changes need to be made – we don’t know for sure yet. 

Click here to speak to one of our site audit specialists to increase your site’s rankings and revenue.