What Is An SEO Audit

An SEO audit is very much like getting a tune-up on your vehicle in that they both look at the technical inner workings and assess any changes that need to be made.

It looks at the on-page and off-page elements that will enhance your SEO and up your visibility and conversion rate. These audits are invaluable and should be done regularly to ensure you get everything you can from your current configuration.

So, how does an audit factor into improving your SEO and growing your online presence?

Today, I will explain exactly what an SEO audit is and does and detail how you can improve the reach and accessibility of your digital content with this new tool at your disposal. 

What Is An SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is a set of checks, reviews and processes that aim to assess the current performance of a website’s capacity to rank for its chosen keywords and phrases. The audit then benchmarks that performance against the standard to provide suggestions for improvement. 

This is the basis for a typical SEO roadmap that aims to have a greater chance to rank higher in the future. Every website is different, and an SEO audit will give you a custom view of how well your website is doing in Google searches.

An audit will also help uncover any issues with your targeted keywords, performance, content, site architecture, etc. While some problems may not be directly correlated with SEO, they will impact site health when you resolve them. If you have not conducted one recently, an audit may return an extensive list of fixes to make but don’t get discouraged.

Take your time and if need be, consult with an SEO specialist to make sense of the information and provide your site with the support it needs.

What Is Analysed In The Audit?

Though some SEO audits may differ slightly, they should all analyse basic technical SEO table stakes, encompassing server errors, metadata and sitemaps. If they delve deeper, the audit can help with accessibility, user experience (UX), and indexation.

A Seo Audit Will Give You A Plan To Help You:

• Identify the changes that need to be made
• Get an overview of the current and potential efficiency of the SEO on your site
• Uncover your website’s weaknesses and help you build a plan to resolve them
• Compare your page to your competitors and use those results to help you enhance your page. 

Why is an SEO audit important?

SEO audits are essential because they help to identify specific problems that may be preventing your website from achieving its maximum potential in the search and provide a breakdown of what steps you need to take to get higher rankings and improved conversion rate optimisation (CRO). They help to mitigate lost traffic and expose any errors or issues your website might have.

Benefits Of An SEO Audit

1. Keyword Optimisation. An SEO audit helps you determine which keywords bring in the most traffic and help convert leads. Ranking well for keywords is all good, but they aren’t doing their job if those keywords don’t result in conversions. An audit will help you understand what each search term and variation of that term brings in and provide data-backed insight into improving your keyword optimisation.
2. Improves Performance. An audit will help quantify your site health, a key factor in search rankings. Running an SEO audit will flag problems such as site map issues or slow loading speed (Google ranks sites based on their loading speeds and penalises sites that take too long to load page elements). 
3. Stay Up To Date On Your SEO. Search engine optimisation is an area that is always evolving and changing. What was standard a few years ago can now be called obsolete in many areas of web strategy. Buying links used to be the standard, but now paid links are regularly flagged and can hurt your rankings. Audits help identify these outdated SEO practices, get you up to date and improve your site’s overall SEO performance.
4. Stay Ahead Of Your Competition. Did you know you can also run audits on your competitors as well? This is a great way to look at your competition from another (more quantifiable) angle and use that information to inform your SEO strategy. It’s always recommended to perform regular SEO audits to keep up with the Google search algorithm as it changes and ensure that long-forgotten aspects of your site aren’t actively hurting your rankings and causing you to miss out on the free real estate and revenue.

With the internet becoming even more diverse and competition in digital marketing stronger than ever, regularly performing an SEO audit will keep you a cut above the rest. An audit will expose your areas of opportunity and give you the data you need to make informed decisions on your digital marketing efforts.

I hope you found this blog helpful

Until next time