What is an SEO Audit and Do You Need One?

Hello, and welcome to the South Lakes SEO search engine optimization blog.

My name is Tim Marston, and this is my site. I am a freelance SEO consultant. I specialize in SEO and nothing else. I am a search engine geek, and I love it!

Please click on this link if you are looking for an SEO audit service for your website. Or carry on reading if you would like to learn more about the process.

What Does an SEO Audit Involve?

In a nutshell, an SEO audit is an analysis of your site’s current state and an assessment of its potential to rank in the search engines. (In particular, Google as it is by far the most popular).

A good quality website SEO audit will cover a wide range of angles, it will include technical SEO, but also it should do more than that (on-page SEO, backlinks, traffic data, etc.).

Every business and every website is different, and as such, every site audit is also different, but here are some of the most common areas of analysis for SEO audits:

  • Technical SEO – This is the really geeky stuff. Basically, it involves looking at your site’s structure and coding to make sure nothing can hurt its chances of ranking in Google.
  • Checking Google Search Console – AKA Google Webmasters Tools, it’s a free tool suite that helps make sure your website is well built for the search engines.
  • Website Page Speed – How fast your site loads (aka site speed) matters for SEO and overall website conversions. Just fixing this can make a big difference to your business success.
  • Checking Your XML Sitemap and Robots.txt – Important pages of your site that need to exist to keep the search bots happy
  • An Analysis of User Experience – AKA UX, how are users interacting with your site, and how can this be improved?
  • On-page SEO – Each page should be optimized for some target keywords. Does it have a meta title and meta description, etc.?
  • Checking for Duplicate Content Issues – The less duplicate content you have on your site that can be indexed by Google and other search engines, the better.
  • How Many Pages on Your Site are Indexed? – How many pages of your website are listed in the Google search engine results pages, and are there any indexing issues?
  • Site Structure – How are the pages of your site structured in relation to each other? How is the internal navigation setup between different sections of the website?
  • An Analysis of Your Keyword Targeting – What keywords are you targeting? How successful are you at targeting them, and how can this be improved with better on-page SEO?
  • Keyword Research for Future SEO – What new keywords could and should you target?
  • Internal Links – Have you used internal contextual linking to spread the link juice and relevance around your site from one URL to another?
  • Content Gaps – A good SEO audit will find gaps in your content strategy and advise you on filling this gap with the right sort of content.
  • Content Quality and Relevance – Content quality matters, and so does it’s relevance to your niche and your target keywords and phrases.
  • Checking Your Search Performance – Using Search Console, Analytics, and Ahrefs (a premium SEO tool) to audit your site’s current search ranking performance and organic traffic generation.
  • Is Your Site, Mobile-Friendly? – is your site built in such a way that it works well for mobile users?
  • Social Media – Are you using your social profiles to help your SEO efforts?
  • Checking for Broken Links – People are often surprised when I show them how many links on their site are broken.
  • Backlink Profile Analysis – Backlinks to your site are a huge part of SEO. The right backlinks can really help. The wrong ones can really hurt.
  • Any Other Potential Site-wide or On-Page SEO Issues – Digging up anything that could hamper your efforts to get free organic search traffic.

 

search rankings

NOTE – You might also find this SEO audit checklist post useful.

Are SEO Audits Necessary? Do You Need One for Your Website?

An SEO audit is not necessary for every single website. However, if your site falls into one of these categories, you should definitely consider one:

  1. You have had a sudden drop in search traffic or rankings.
  2. You paid someone to do some digital marketing, website development, or SEO work, and you think they might have made things worse.
  3. You have some warnings in the Google Webmasters dashboard.
  4. You want to increase the amount of SEO traffic you get to your site but do not know how to go about it.

 

If any of these apply to you, please feel free to contact me using these details, and we can chat about how an SEO audit could help you improve your business:

  • Phone – +44 7761170139
  • Email – tim@southlakesseo.co.uk
  • Skype – tim_marston1

So What Should You Do Now?

If you think that you need an audit for your website, you should contact me to have a chat.

If you do not think you need the audit but want some help in improving your organic traffic levels, please also feel free to reach out and get in touch.

I can help you with anything from a content strategy creation to building high-quality, relevant backlinks with an approach based on best practices developed over years of study and application.

I do anything and everything related to website SEO, so please do not hesitate to drop me a line. I am always very happy to have a chat and see if we are a good fit for each other.

Thanks for reading this short blog post, and I will hopefully hear from you very soon if you want to hire an SEO consultant UK based but working with clients anywhere in the world.

Last Updated on November 21, 2021

Let's start a conversation on how I can help You

I am based in Cumbria in the UK but work with clients from all over the world. So please feel free to get in touch:

Phone - 07761170139
Email - tim@southlakesseo.co.uk