Updated 13/06/2024
Whether you carry out an SEO audit yourself or hire an SEO agency to do it for you, there are countless benefits associated with having one.
However, before we dive into why they’re so important, it’s crucial to gain an understanding of what they are and what’s included.
SEO Audit Definition
An SEO audit is a thorough evaluation of the numerous factors that affect your site’s organic performance on search engines like Google or Yahoo.
Search engine algorithms are one of the most mysterious elements of digital marketing, and while it’s hard to avoid all SEO mishaps, an SEO audit can help bypass any major mistakes.
The purpose of an SEO audit is to identify the foundational issues that are affecting your organic search performance, and by understanding these weaknesses, you can alter your SEO strategy to enable you to rank higher on Google.
What Is Included In An SEO Audit?
While the contents of an SEO audit may vary from website to website, there are 3 general categories the audit will touch on: technical analysis, on-page analysis & off-page analysis.
Technical Audit
A technical audit highlights a number of technical problems that could be preventing your website’s content from being crawled and discovered by search engines. Some common issues flagged up in a technical audit include mobile friendliness, page load speed and website security.
Mobile Friendliness
Mobile device usage currently makes up for over half of all web traffic. Mobile users spend approximately over three hours a day on their phones, in comparison to just over two hours on a laptop/computer.
For this reason, Google now focuses on mobile-first when crawling and indexing new sites, which is why it’s so important to know whether your site is mobile-friendly, and if not, how to fix it.
Page Load Speed
Did you know that more than half of searchers won’t wait for your site to load if it takes longer than three seconds? If your site is slow, people are therefore going to click off your site and choose a faster page on the search results, increasing your bounce rate and damaging your rankings in search results.
Site Security
This may come as a surprise to you, but the security of your site is in fact a ranking factor. At the top of any website, you’ll notice a message that either says secure or not secure.
If your website isn’t secure, users who input their information into the site are at risk of having it stolen. It contributes to your site’s ranking and sends a signal to the user that they can trust your site.
On-Page SEO
An on-page SEO analysis is made up of website elements you can control and optimise, and a significant part of that is the content. Some of the main on-page elements impacting SERP rankings include keywords, linking structure (internal & external) and site maps, just to name a few.
Keyword Usage
Keyword research is the foundation of your SEO efforts and an audit should highlight current keywords/phrases your individual pages are currently ranking for. It may then offer suggestions of keywords that you could rank for but currently are not.
Linking Structure
An SEO audit should inspect both the website’s internal links, as well as the backlinks to your pages. In addition to examining your own internal links & backlinks, an audit may look at the backlinks of your top competitors.
Learn more about the importance of links in SEO here.
Site Maps
Another important component of on-page SEO is having sitemaps that give search engine crawlers ways to find the pages on your website.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO comprises of elements that you can’t directly control but can influence, such as creating valuable backlinks.
Backlinks to your websites can help your site rank better on SERP’s and drive higher quality (and quantity) organic traffic to your website. A backlink audit will identify and review all of the links currently pointing to your website.
By knowing which links are of high quality, and which are potentially toxic, you can change/ manage your strategy accordingly.
What Are the Main Benefits of an SEO Audit?
The benefits of an SEO audit include:
1. Improving Your Website’s Overall Performance
It’s no secret that site performance is one of Google’s main ranking factors, and running a site audit will flag up any performance issues holding your site back, such as low page speed or problems with site-maps.
With an SEO audit, businesses can therefore determine issues that are affecting usability and damaging their online presence, and find suitable solutions to improve this.
2. Discovering Which Keywords You’re Ranking For
An SEO audit offers invaluable information into your organic online presence. This is super helpful as once you know what you’re ranking for (or what you’re not), you can optimise your content accordingly.
You may have written a really helpful blog on a topic relevant to your business, but if it’s not properly optimised for the best possible keywords, how is your target audience supposed to find it?
3. Improving User Experience & Reduce Bounce Rate
As touched on earlier, if your website often displays errors or it takes more than a few seconds to load content and images, potential customers will quickly get frustrated.
Implementing the recommendations from an SEO audit and fixing these issues will make your website more user friendly, minimising the risk of these customers jumping ship to another (faster) website.
What’s more, a fast operating website will make users spend more time on it, which is great for SEO rankings as Google analyses user session time and their behaviour on the website. Users spending more time on a website suggests that the content is valuable and engaging, which affects the website position in a search result.
4. Increasing Google Positioning
Once you begin to work on the issues flagged from a site audit, you’re on your way to actively solving what’s holding your site back.
By making these changes, your page rankings will begin to improve.
As time goes on, you may even find yourself on the first page of Google search results among the top websites from your industry.
5. Creating An Action Plan
Lastly, a benefit of an SEO audit is that it allows you to create an action plan.
An audit equips you with a greater understanding of your website’s performance and highlights areas that need improvement.
Armed with this information, you can come up with an effective SEO strategy that targets all the right areas effectively, helping to boost your traffic and subsequently, conversions.
There are a variety of tools to help you run an SEO audit, for example Google Analytics, SEMRush, and Google Search Console. However, they will only flag up the current issues. An alternative to creating your own audit is having an SEO expert do one for you.
The benefit of having an expert create an audit for you is not only will they analyse your site and identify where the gaps are in your SEO strategy, but they will provide you with a number of things you can do to improve your SEO and increase the amount of organic traffic to your website.
How We Can Help
At Lumen SEO, we offer free, no obligation SEO audits on business websites. If you’d like one, simply pop an email to aled@lumenseo.co.uk with your website URL or visit our free SEO website audit page.
If you’d like to learn more about the SEO services we provide at Lumen SEO, contact us today. Alternatively, you can message us on either our LinkedIn or Instagram pages.
