What Is An SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a comprehensive analysis of a website’s SEO performance, looking at what the website does well, what it isn’t doing well, what it isn’t doing at all and what the competitors are doing or not doing. An audit can and should include all aspects of search engine optimisation: on-page, off-page and technical work. The audit checks for things that are known to be ranking factors such as your backlink profile, your keyword usage etc, as well as things that may be more user-focused or indirectly impact rankings such as user experience, conversion optimisation, website hosting and website speed (which is set to become a more visible ranking factor in 2021!)
What does an SEO Audit Check For?
As previously stated, an SEO audit should cover all aspects of optimisation. These are just some of the specific things a website SEO audit should be checking:
- On-Page SEO
- Optimised Title tags
- Optimised meta descriptions
- Alt tags
- Correct use of headings
- Keywords
- Quality and readable content
- Sitemap
- Duplicate Content
- Canonicals
- URL structure
- Off-Page SEO
- Linkbuilding
- Brand awareness
- Social media
- Technical
- Website speed
- Crawlability & indexability
- Htaccess & robots.txt
- HTTP responses (301 redirects, 404 errors etc)
- Mobile-friendly
- User experience
These are just a limited number of things an SEO audit will check to estimate how your website SEO is performing and what can be improved. These checks should also be done on competitor websites, which allows the SEO agency in Manchester to better understand how the website can be improved, and which points to specifically focus so the website can perform better than the competitors and start ranking higher.
Why do you need an SEO Audit?
Before any SEO campaign is to start, it is important to plan out what you are going to do, when you are going to do it and why you are doing it. An SEO audit allows you to see where the website is already performing well, where it needs improving and also gives the specific areas of the SEO performance that needs to be fixed in order to be on par, or better than, the competitors.
It is also important to understand that an SEO audit is not a one time thing. Your website is like a digital home for your business, and it will not be stagnant for long periods of time. Overtime there will be new pages, articles, title changes, new links, host changes, website revamps… the list is endless as to what can be changed on your website – so it is important that you are constantly auditing your SEO performance as well.
