What is an SEO Audit Service?
on January 24, 2024
Building a website for your business is important, but it isn’t a one-and-done task. To reach your target audience, your site must be optimized. But what does that mean? Isn’t it something that your web designer already did? Will you have to spend more money? Where would you even start?
In this guide, we answer those questions and show how an SEO audit service can help you expand on the good work you’ve already done to increase ranking and convert more traffic.
Website & Search Engine Optimization
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how, we need to cover the ins and outs of what. Once a website is “done,” “finished,” or “launched,” we tend to forget about it. Unlike every other tool, process, and aspect of life, websites are somehow expected to be set-it-and-forget-it money-making machines requiring no additional attention or maintenance.
To be fair, custom website development companies (aka good web designers) do everything they can to make that as true as possible. They go above and beyond sites that are just pretty, functional, and organized – each photo, page, headline, block of copy, and call to action is optimized and coded with a purpose.
The strategists your web design company (hopefully!) employs have included keywords (both visible to viewers and built into the backend) aimed at helping your site get seen by the people you want to engage with. This is no small feat in the competitive landscape of organic search, and doing it successfully requires extensive planning before a site can be considered “done.”
This is where the one-and-done mindset tends to set in and even well-optimized sites fail to gain traction or slide down the rankings. Unfortunately, the SEO process must be ongoing for search engines to recognize your gorgeous site as relevant and worthy of showing to a potentially interested audience. Simply put, you must keep adding expertise and authority through consistent updates to rank. The easiest way to do this is with regular blogging, which can take many different forms depending on your industry.
Yet, to know what to blog about or if that’s even the right strategy, you’ll need guidance and insight from an SEO audit service.
Website Performance and Search Engine Rankings
If you’re following us so far, it’s okay to be a little lost or a lot frustrated. Every aspect of your business is probably already more work than you initially imagined, and now the website you just finished requires more work as well?
The fact of the matter is that quality, authoritative content is the number one driver for getting users to your site. And that content must be added regularly (monthly at an absolute minimum) for search engines like the Google search console to notice you.
When considering your site’s performance and how to get it on the first page of search results, there’s a long list of relevant factors. These can overlap with aspects of user experience your designer addressed during development (we’ll talk more about those another time), but they also come into play post-launch.
Some of the most important page analysis factors include:
- SEO copywriting using keywords
- URL structure
- Page titles
- H1 tags
- Title tags and meta descriptions
- Alt text/descriptions for images
- Image optimization (ideally on unique imagery!)
- Internal linking
- Backlinks
- There’s more … but we imagine you get the idea
Considering that the list above contains words that don’t mean much to many people, it’s common to either completely ignore this part of your website (you surely know this isn’t a good idea) or to hire it out to an audit service (this is a great idea!).
Understanding the Basics of SEO Audits
An SEO audit service looks at all the factors that affect a website’s search engine ranking. The goal is to find the things your site is doing well that you could do more of and to find areas where it’s missing the mark and could be improved.
It’s easy to get in the weeds with an SEO audit. The key is to remember why you built your site in the first place: to attract business.
If you’re super interested in using your free time to learn more about SEO strategies and digital marketing, there are tons of guides like this one online and tutorials from services like Google Analytics for you to reference.
The basics of an SEO audit are as follows:
- You or your audit service will comb your site, looking for issues affecting ranking.
- These could be missing title tags and meta descriptions, broken links, duplicate content, or keyword stuffing.
- It also includes all the design aspects we’re not getting too detailed about in this guide (site speed, accessibility, etc.).
- We’ll (or you’ll) analyze your competitors, do keyword research and backlink gap analysis, and come up with actionable recommendations that will make a measurable difference.
- This typically includes backend work and developing and implementing a targeted content strategy.
Key Components of a Good SEO Strategy
Remember, the whole point of audit services is to find clear ways to fix problems preventing your site from being noticed or employ repeatable strategies to get it noticed more. They help you prioritize actions that will have the biggest impact on organic traffic and, ultimately, customers.
Companies that already have great sites can consider them akin to a house with good bones built on a solid foundation. All they need to do is get new curtains, unclog the sink, and keep the lawn watered and mowed.
Some audits, however, reveal that the contractor you hired didn’t actually reinforce your headers correctly, and now your roof is at risk of collapsing and must be repaired.
To see which boat you’re in, you/we need to understand your business, your short- and long-term goals, and where you’re positioned against your competitors. This means taking time to analyze the backend of your site and using a handful of SEO tools to analyze on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO.
On-Page SEO Factors
On-page SEO includes things like the quantity and quality of content and its use of low-competition keywords with good search volume, title tags and meta descriptions, and URLs. On-page SEO is typically the easiest to influence so long as you understand your strengths and weaknesses well and can implement an ongoing content strategy for improving upon them.
Off-Page SEO Factors
Off-page SEO factors are harder to control and take time to build. This type of SEO is about how authoritative and trustworthy search engines see your site to be. Building off-page SEO means things like getting reviews and backlinks or being featured on a podcast, in a PR campaign, or in a social media post.
Technical SEO Elements
A technical SEO audit requires specific tools – and is time-heavy. It involves checking links and using software to gain insights into site architecture, accessibility, page load times, HTML/CSS, and more. Some tech SEO issues are obvious (hello, 404 error not found), but some aren’t. Technical SEO requires expertise but is otherwise a relatively straightforward area for improvement.
The Significance of Regular SEO Audits for Website Health
Have we mentioned yet that website work isn’t a one-and-done process? If we haven’t, forgive our oversight. If we have, forgive our redundancy.
The thing is, website work isn’t a one-and-done process. To keep your website healthy (aka ranking – have we mentioned ranking yet? If we haven’t … never mind), you’ll want to get into a regular cadence with performing SEO audits and addressing their results.
This may mean quarterly (if you’re new to this and your site is – forgive us again – a mess), yearly (if you’re dialed, have a regular posting/updating schedule, and continue to rank where you want), or somewhere in between.
The TL;DR step-by-step process for a basic SEO audit is as follows:
- Completing keyword and competitor analysis
- Performing an on-page optimization check
- Doing backlink/off-page optimization research
- Undergoing a technical SEO evaluation
- DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THE RESULTS
- Rinsing and repeating
Organic SEO is a long game. It’s part of a holistic SEO strategy that’s also part of day-to-day business. Like turning on the lights, mopping the floors, and periodically upgrading your equipment – it’s a way to better serve your customers and grow your business.
Is Your Website Set Up to Rank? We Can Find Out.
Search engine algorithms and Google Search Essentials are continually evolving, which means companies like yours need to evolve as well. To remain competitive, you should undergo regular website audits, develop an SEO strategy addressing the results, and implement best practices that improve your website. Easy, right?
Hey! You made it all the way to the end! As a reward, we’ll help you find out if your website is set up to rank (and learn what to do if it isn’t!) with a free SEO audit.
FAQs
Q. How much does an SEO audit service cost?
Some SEO audits cost hundreds, others cost thousands, and a rare few are free!
Q. Why invest in an SEO audit package?
Most businesses invest in an SEO audit package because they want to remain competitive and grow. Undergoing an SEO audit and taking action on its results is a relatively low-cost, high-ROI method for getting noticed by customers and search engines alike.
Q. How long do SEO audit services take?
How long an audit service takes depends on the knowledge of the people performing the audit and the audit’s depth. Once we start your audit, you can expect our experienced team to deliver a custom report to your inbox in a matter of days.