SEO Audit Service Explained

As a business owner or marketer, you’ve probably had an SEO agency offer you a search engine optimization (SEO) audit, but as a novice or someone with little time to dedicate to SEO, the importance of an audit might be unclear.

In this article, you’ll learn what an SEO audit is, what’s included, the different types of audits, and why it’s best to have an expert do it. By the end, you’ll thoroughly understand their importance in your digital marketing strategy.

Let’s begin!

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What Is An SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is an in-depth analysis that assesses how SEO-friendly and well-optimized a website is.

Overall, an SEO audit aims to determine how you can improve your approach to SEO and describes the tactics you can implement to climb the rankings and drive increased numbers of relevant traffic to your website.

Furthermore, it forms the basis of formulating a winning SEO strategy.

What Is Included in an SEO Audit? 

We suggest performing an SEO audit following an in-depth guide or, better yet, having an SEO expert do it for you.

An in-depth and worthwhile SEO audit service includes:

• Thorough website analysis
• Problem identification with actionable solutions
• Optimization recommendations and ideas
• Consultation and explanation of findings

Every SEO agency will offer a different service. As you’ll see in the next section, there are many types of SEO audits. Some agencies will provide these services, whereas others won’t.

What Are the Different Types of SEO Audit?

     1. Technical SEO Audit

The first step is a technical SEO audit. This looks at how your website is indexed and how easily bots can crawl it.

If your website, or specific pages, can’t be seen by Google, it can’t be shown in search results.

Often, businesses neglect this step and have pages of well-optimized content that never get indexed.

Make sure you register your website with Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools. These platforms give you ultimate control and visibility over indexing.

By submitting your sitemap, you prompt search engines to crawl your website. Furthermore, they highlight errors within your sitemap, tell you which pages can’t be crawled, and help you fix indexing errors.

     2. On-Page SEO Audit

An on-page SEO audit refers to all of the SEO elements you’re in complete control of – essentially, anything on your website.

Examples of what will be reviewed in an on-page SEO audit include:

• Title tags and meta descriptions
• Content structure, including headings and paragraphs
• Keyword optimization
• Internal linking strategy
• Image optimization – file size and alt tags
• User-friendliness – page loading speeds and mobile friendliness

The Google algorithm is built around providing a great user experience. The steps of an on-page SEO audit ensure you’re doing that. It assesses visual elements such as content and images while reviewing technical aspects, including loading speeds, responsiveness, and linking.

     3. Off-Page SEO Audit

Next on the list is the off-page SEO audit. Unlike on-page, this refers to elements historically out of your control or away from your website. Here, backlinks, social media, and brand mentions are focused on.

• Backlinks

A backlink is when an external website links to your content.

Using a backlink tracker tool, you can see the website that links to yours, if they add value, and whether you should remove the link.

Links from high-quality domains improve your ranking, but spam links will be detrimental to your position, so it’s important to monitor this.

• Social Media

In addition to looking at existing backlinks, an off-page audit will review your use of social media and how you promote content. In most cases, backlinks won’t just appear. You have to market your content to your target audience. Then, you’ll see an increase in backlinks.

• Brand Mentions

Unlinked brand mentions are the perfect place to start when looking to generate new backlinks. There could be many websites positively mentioning your brand, but they haven’t included a link to your website. Proactively reaching out to them and asking for link inclusion can be a quick win.

     4. Social Media Audit

What does social media have to do with SEO? Well, you’ve learned how it can help promote your content for backlinks, directly boosting your rankings.

It also indirectly boosts your rankings through increased brand awareness.

There are billions of social media users, and many of them form part of your ideal target audience. However, if they don’t know about your business and your SEO game isn’t great, they’re never going to find you.

An active, proactive, and creative social media strategy can drive more traffic to your website, boosting important metrics search engines consider when selecting pages to rank.

Why a Manual SEO Audit by an Expert Is Best

Some tools complete an automated SEO audit, but they have limitations. Often, feedback and actions generated are generic rather than specific to your aims and objectives.

A respected SEO agency with a well-reviewed SEO audit service will give you tailored advice based on your specific needs. Furthermore, they’ll be able to do any of the work you don’t feel comfortable completing yourself.

The cost of a manual audit will be more expensive than an automated tool, but the results are far more beneficial to your overall SEO strategy.

Furthermore, many agencies will offer this as a free service if you enter into an SEO management contract with them.

Summing Up

A thorough SEO audit is the basis for a successful SEO strategy and driving highly targeted traffic to your website. Without a professionally conducted manual audit, many businesses find themselves attempting to optimize their website and content without any sense of direction.

If actionable insights, recommendations, and an analysis of existing performance are what you’re looking for, an SEO audit is what you need.

For expert assistance, SEO audits, and much more, reach out to the Digital Authority Partners team today.