Are you underwhelmed by the organic search traffic on your website? Or maybe you have no idea what to do next to make the search engines love you. The good news is that you’re researching “SEO audits,” which means you’re ready to pump up your existing SEO strategy!
Boosting organic search traffic is usually in the top 3 goals of every client I work with. And if it isn’t a top goal for you, you should ask, “Why not?” Focusing on increasing your organic search traffic can help you capitalize on long-term traffic to your site.
And with increasing search traffic, you increase your chances of more people seeing your brand, getting more leads, and converting those leads into paying customers.
But how do you know if SEO (search engine optimization) is your problem?
The first step is doing a SEO audit of your website. It can build a solid foundation to improve your online visibility. Discover what a SEO audit service may cover and when to look into professional SEO audit services.
What are SEO audit services?
SEO audit services evaluate your website’s performance based on three categories:
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
Technical SEO is how well Google can crawl your site on the backend (code you don’t see). On-page SEO concerns the content, keywords, and design your users notice when they read and visit your website. Off-page SEO looks at other factors, such as your backlinks and local SEO. All three categories of SEO work together to determine your overall effectiveness as a website.
How do I know if my website needs a SEO audit?
You should conduct a SEO audit on your website for many reasons. And there are benefits to having a detailed report of where your site ranks with online performance. Below are several scenarios that may require SEO services.
You’re launching a website refresh.
Have you had your website for a while and want to refresh or redesign a few pages?
Before making larger content changes to your site, it’s an excellent idea to conduct an SEO audit to clearly understand what’s working and what’s not. This can reveal anything from broken links to content gaps you should concentrate on to improve your new site. It can also show high-traffic pages you don’t want to alter too much in the redesign process.
You notice organic traffic declining.
The obvious sign most clients notice is a decline in organic traffic.
Having your website for a year, actively adding content, and still seeing your organic traffic decline or remain stagnant over time is another reason to consider doing an SEO audit. This is a red flag in Google Search Console (GSC), a free tool anyone can sign up and utilize with websites.
You want to make navigation changes to your site.
If you’re considering major changes to your navigation, such as removing pages or adding others, doing a SEO audit can help you understand key site pages your audience is spending time on that you don’t want to scrap.
Keeping anchor text short in your navigation can improve how search engines crawl your site. It’s also another positive move in making it easy for your audience to quickly find what they want. If you add a drop-down option to your nav, you’ll want to ensure content is arranged correctly and not duplicated.
You realize your domain rank has declined.
Your domain rank can sometimes be a sign of SEO issues. It’s a score based on several factors, and it ranges from 1 to 100. This metric can be used to predict (again, not a hard indicator) how likely your website is to rank on SERPs (search engine results pages). The higher it is the better!
You increase your domain rank by having a secure site with very few technical issues and delivering valuable content linked to other reputable sites with high domain ratings.
If you see this number start to plummet, it’s a sign to utilize SEO auditing services.
Your bounce rate has steadily increased.
Maybe you have a site, but users leave as soon as they land on your homepage. This could look like a high bounce rate in Google Analytics.
A high bounce rate can indicate there are user issues (technical or with your overall content) turning readers off as soon as they discover you online. Going through an SEO audit process can uncover these problems and dig into the “why” behind your high bounce rate.
Inbound links to your site have declined.
Inbound links, also called backlinks, are other websites with links on their websites, which can direct traffic to your website.
You want to be cautious anytime you change the URL structure on a page, as this can negatively impact any backlinks or other websites linking to you in their content. A SEO audit can look at your backlink profile and even provide recommendations around sites you should contact and provide updated URLs.
The competition has increased online.
The online landscape will continue to grow. Smart competitors will try to stake claim over certain topics in your niche. That’s why evaluating their content is an important part of knowing what topics you should consider, and a SEO audit can uncover just that.
It’s a business advantage to get a clear picture of what keywords you rank well for, keywords your competitors are ranking well for (your window to better content opportunities), and being able to spot backlink partners to collaborate with.
A thorough SEO analysis uncovers a mix of issues and opportunities you can take action on quickly.
My SEO Audit Checklist
Here’s the rundown of a broken-out checklist of items I pay attention to related to technical, on-page, and off-page SEO performance in SEO audits I conduct. Understanding what to look for is key to strengthening your online search results and overall SEO strategy.
Technical SEO Audit
A technical SEO may not be the fun content your business and audience spend hours planning and brainstorming, but if ignored, it can quickly destroy any chance of the sexy blog posts and product pages on your site being seen by your audience.
This part of the audit often involves time spent in GSC (the free SEO audit tool mentioned earlier). Other SEOs may also use Ahref’s or Semrush, paid SEO tools that give you insights into your website’s technical issues, among others.
Mobile-friendliness
Compared to desktop traffic, just over 55% of website traffic comes from mobile devices.
That’s why it’s a MUST to prioritize mobile with your content. You want to ensure your audience can view your site with optimal page load speed (2-3 seconds tops). This (surprisingly) is an area in the technical audit I see constantly. It confirms that everyone with a website has to remember to design with mobile-first in mind (and many still don’t).
Site indexing
You can immediately look at indexing in GSC’s “overview” section. You can see how many pages have been indexed by Google (which means search engines are including your content in SERPs) and which ones are not.
For those pages that aren’t, you want to look at the discovered links that are not currently crawled to validate a fix so they can start showing up on Google. It’s perfectly normal not to have every page indexed, especially if it’s pages with redirects or alternate pages with canonical tags.
Site security (HTTPS)
Site security is a big deal with Google, and it should be a big deal to anyone with a website.
It’s crucial for search engine optimization, and if it’s weak, it opens the door for hackers to crash your site with unwanted SEO tricks like keyword stuffing and poor SEO tactics. Invest in upgrading your website to HTTPS if it isn’t already.
Page load speed
Time is priceless, with everyone having multiple daily to-do’s. So you don’t want to be that annoying website that takes too long to load. It’s a serious problem for your customers and bad for your business.
That’s why it’s crucial that your website loads as quickly as possible for someone viewing your site. In particular, looking at page load speed on mobile, you want content to load in just a couple of seconds. The quicker the page loads, the better. Spotting and fixing this issue can greatly improve your overall user experience and organic search positions.
On-Page SEO Audit
On-page SEO is the content most everyone is familiar with. It’s the “meat” of what you put into the online world with your About page, blog, and service pages (to name a few).
It’s also where the need for keyword research tends to be highlighted, with special attention paid to keyword rankings, difficulty, intent, and internal linking- all impacting your content strategy.
Website content
Duplicate content is a big no-no. When Google suspects you have duplicate content on your website, it’s an immediate red flag to them that you’re not trustworthy as one of the top choices of niche content to serve up in the SERPs. Canonical tags can help remedy this issue, and web developers can help with the coding.
As far as keywords are concerned, they are a vital piece of the puzzle to ranking higher in organic search results. SEO audits highlight the keywords attracting attention to your website. An audit can also uncover the need for a content gap analysis, which tells you what target keywords you should go after with topics relevant to your audience.
Internal links
Setting up the correct amount of internal links is like sending a signal to Google on how your website is structured. This is where site architecture comes in and building trust with your domain.
If you lack internal links connecting related pages and blog posts, then Google is much less likely to favor your site in the SERPS. When this happens, it means a lost opportunity to capture organic eyeballs on your content. Internal linking is an important part of your SEO strategy.
Metadata
Metadata includes page titles, meta descriptions, and the copy you use for image and video alt-tag descriptions.
If missing, Google flags it as another issue counted against your domain credibility. But the good news is that it’s a very easy issue to fix once identified.
Images
Images dispersed through your content are the visual elements that help breathe interest into your content. The right images are intentionally chosen to help direct your reader, and from a SEO perspective, they increase audience engagement and improve accessibility.
If you have only one image per blog post, it’s a sign to beef up your visual elements.
With images, you also want to ensure the alt tags have descriptions (incorporating keyword usage when appropriate), a descriptive file name (NOT IMG7393.jpg), and a clear caption below the photo. It’s important images are compressed, and their file size is optimized for the web.
Off-Page SEO Audit Service
Off-page SEO involves efforts outside your website to improve digital credibility and online awareness. Off-page analysis starts to dive into what your competitors are doing and how you can further strengthen your online relationships with other websites.
Backlink profile (inbound links)
Right at the top of the list for off-page SEO in a SEO report is the importance of your backlinks. These are the inbound links from other websites that point to your website.
The ultimate goal with backlinks is to build relationships with other reputable sites of higher domain ranking and have similar audience readers who would be interested in your content as well. The higher the number of inbound links, the better. But this is where an audit can reveal how healthy these links are and if you need to prioritize more relationship link-building online.
Activities such as guest posting on websites with a higher domain rank than you can improve your SEO. You can also identify where your brand is being mentioned and ask them to include a link to your website. You want to take the time to invest in building these relationships and finding ways to help one another. It really is more about networking and making genuine connections.
Competitor analysis
A comprehensive SEO audit also considers what keywords your competitors rank for online and how they attract organic website traffic. This is where you can get SEO insights that help feed into your content strategy for your brand.
It’s an excellent way to uncover new backlink opportunities simply by analyzing who is linking to your competitors based on the content they’re producing.
Your goal is never to copy but rather to produce even more valuable content specific to your brand that will help increase website traffic.
Local SEO
You can benefit from local SEO if you have a business with a physical location or serve a particular geographic area. However, businesses like online-only eCommerce shops selling worldwide would not benefit from local SEO. Local SEO is for those serving a particular area and have consumers specifically looking for services or products within close physical distance.
A part of the SEO auditing process is determining if local SEO would be beneficial to you or not and why.
Social media opportunities
Those experienced SEO auditors include a peek into how you’re doing from a social media perspective. Your website, in the majority of instances, is the hub of your content. But…you don’t want to overlook the importance of meeting your consumers on different social channels they’re on daily.
Those social media channels include Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, and TikTok (the usual suspects).
Part of a SEO audit service includes noting how much traffic is coming from social (or not), reasons to be on certain platforms, and how you can connect all your digital marketing properties to strengthen your online presence and traffic.
Seeking Out a SEO Audit Service Is Smart
Whether you’re thinking about launching a website, have a fairly new site, or have an older site you haven’t touched in a while…it’s time for a SEO audit.
Think of it as a health check-up.
You should have it done at least once a year to get a baseline of your website’s performance and see areas and recommendations for improving and focusing your efforts. You don’t want to make the mistake of investing time and money blindly producing content.
Be smart. Find someone with SEO expertise, inquire about having an SEO audit, and give yourself solid knowledge of what SEO step you need to take next to increase traffic to your site.
SEO Audit FAQs
What does a full SEO audit include?
Website SEO audit services give a business the “pause” necessary to get an in-depth evaluation of what is and isn’t working well for them online. A full SEO audit often includes looking at your technical SEO and how your website functions, including page load speed and mobile-friendliness. Then there’s your on-page SEO and evaluating content structure, meta descriptions, and internal linking practices. And, of course, a full SEO audit isn’t complete without looking at your backlinks and what you can do to strengthen your domain ranking.
Can changes in Google’s algorithm updates affect your SEO performance?
It’s possible to see a decline in your organic search ranking from Google pushing an algorithm update. The key is to follow SEO best practices so your content is never at high risk when this happens. You do this by having a people-first mentality with your content. Always offer value, with a unique perspective, that helps solve a problem or gives the reader new insight they feel compelled to share.
