The Ultimate 2024 Guide to Conducting an SEO Audit
For a business that wants to increase search visibility, an SEO audit is a critical process that will help you identify and fix website issues that affect search performance. There are a lot of moving parts to a website audit, from elements such as technical infrastructure to on-page and off-page SEO.
However, by conducting a comprehensive SEO audit on your website you can understand what you are doing right and what you can do to increase your virtual footprint on search engines like Google or Bing. Naturally, this would lead to increased leads and customer acquisition for your website.
Why SEO Audits Matter For Your Business
To bring more users to your website, you need to understand how they found you in the first place. An SEO audit will give you insight into how your users are arriving at your website and what areas are affecting how users find, or don’t find in some cases, your website.
In many cases, such as the SEO reports we run, you will also get insight into your competitors.
It’s a great starting point to begin investing in SEO.
What do You Need for An SEO Audit
Before you get started on your SEO audit, you need to consider what your goals are. Are you looking to increase engagement? Drive traffic for brand awareness or leads? Do you want more SERP (search engine result page) features?
Once you set your goals you will have a better understanding of what areas to focus on for your SEO audit.
Top SEO Audit Tools
Many different tools can help you create a robust SEO audit. Here are some of the tools we use:
Google Analytics: Tracks website traffic and user behavior. For example, you can see what devices users are using to find your website (mobile versus desktop), what locations they are coming from, etc.
Google Search Console: Monitors site performance in Google Search and identifies issues. You can especially use this to pinpoint errors on your website so that you can correct individual pages that are not crawling correctly.
Screaming Frog: This software (downloaded onto your desktop) will crawl your website to identify technical SEO issues.
SemRush: Provides insights into backlinks, keyword rankings, and competitor analysis. You can also use competitor software like Ahrefs for this purpose.
We also recommend a great keyword research tool, such as Google Keyword Planner or Moz. Keyword research is an essential part of conducting an SEO audit.
How To Conduct A Technical SEO Audit
The technical portion of the SEO audit refers to the backend structure of your website needed for performance and search functions. Essentially, how healthy your site is regarding indexing your website for search engines.
Here’s the technical details to include in your search audit:
Evaluating Site Architecture
Search engines find it easier to crawl and index content on a well-structured website. Ensure your website is organized logically, with distinct main sections and subcategories. Screaming Frog is one tool that can be used to evaluate the structure of your website and pinpoint areas that need work.
Measuring and Improving Website Speed
Site speed is a crucial ranking factor. Slow-loading websites can lead to higher bounce rates and lower rankings. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to measure your site’s speed and implement recommended optimizations, such as compressing images and leveraging browser caching.
Ensuring Mobile-Friendliness
Nowadays, mobile devices account for the bulk of searches, so it is imperative to have a mobile-friendly website. To guarantee a flawless mobile experience, use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to evaluate how your website functions on mobile devices and make the required changes.
Assessing Crawlability and Indexability
Ensure that search engines can easily crawl and index your site. Check your robots.txt file and XML sitemap for errors. Use Google Search Console to identify and fix crawl errors, and ensure all important pages are being indexed.
Conducting an On-Page SEO Audit
After conducting the technical portion of the website, the next step is the on-page portion of the website. This is the aspects of the website that can affect what users see directly and how they can find specific pages on your website.
Here's what to address:
Enhancing Content Quality and Relevance
High-quality, relevant content is the cornerstone of good SEO. Review your content to ensure it provides value to users. Identify and improve thin or duplicate content. Consider updating or removing outdated content and focusing on creating comprehensive, informative pieces.
You should also check for duplicate content. If your content is flagged as duplicate, it can lower search engine rankings or be delisted altogether.
Optimizing Keyword Usage
Relevant, high-quality content is the foundation of effective SEO. Make sure your material adds value for readers by reviewing it. Recognize and enhance repetitious or thin content. Think about deleting or updating out-of-date content and concentrating on producing thorough, educational articles instead.
Remember, to republish when you have added a sizeable amount of information. This will alert search engines that the content has been updated.
Refining Meta Tags and Headers
Ensure your header tags, meta descriptions, and title tags are optimized. Make sure every page has a distinct title tag and meta description that contains the target keywords and appropriately reflects the content of the page. To organize and improve the readability of your text, use header tags (H1, H2, H3).
When practical, consider adding bullet points, infographics, images, or anything else that will give your users more visual clarity. You can also consider the image alt tags to ensure both search visibility and accessbility. The easier to understand your content, the more likely your users are to be engaged.
Structuring URLs for SEO
Search engines can better grasp your material if your URL structure is clear and informative. To divide words, use hyphens instead of special characters or digits. Make sure your URLs are clear and pertinent to the information on the page.
Including An Off-Page SEO Audit
The next step in your SEO audit is considering your website authority, also known as off-page SEO. This refers to how search engines perceive your website (trustworthy versus untrustworthy) and how other websites link to your website (whether good or bad).
Here's how to include an off-page audit.:
Analyzing Your Backlink Profile
One important component of ranking is backlinks. Examine your backlink profile with Ahrefs, Moz, SemRush, or another backlink identifier tool. Determine which backlinks are dangerous and remove them to protect the reputation of your website. This is known as “disavowing” a toxic backlink. To disavow you can use Google Search Console or GA4.
Remember to consider the authority of every site that links to you. Would you consider them to be spam, or does the linking site seem like they are authoritative? For example, sites that end in .edu, .gov, etc. are almost always worth linking.
Strengthening Social Media Presence
Your SEO may be indirectly impacted by social signals. Evaluate your participation and presence on social media. Create plans to enhance your social media presence and promote content sharing, as these actions can boost backlinks and visibility for your website.
While you do not have to consistently update your social media channels, it is always recommended. Spend time also responding to comments, shares, likes, etc.
Performing A User Experience (UX) SEO Audit
Too often, this is a portion of the website SEO audit that is not included. However, we believe user experience is an essential aspect of user engagement and search engine indexing.
That is especially because Google and other sites are now putting more weight into how functional a website is and how engaging it is for end users.
Here is how you can include a UX website audit.
Monitor Your User Engagement Metrics
Metrics related to user engagement, such as session time and engagement rate, reveal information about how people use your website. You can use a tool like Google Analytics or even use heat mapping technology such as MouseFlow or HotJar.
Concentrate on where users are dropping off and determine why that might be. Are they leaving because of the content, lack of visual elements, or because there is a confusing CTA?
Understanding why and then fixing these issues can help to increase your user engagement.
Improving Your Site's Navigation and Usability
A user-friendly design and intuitive navigation are essential for a satisfying user experience. Make sure your website has a logical menu structure and is simple to explore. Test usability to find and address any navigational problems.
Optimize Conversion Rates
Attracting traffic is not as crucial as optimizing for conversions. Examine the conversion paths on your website to find any obstacles to conversion. Use A/B testing to test various components (such as forms and call-to-action buttons) and optimize for higher conversion rates.
For example, is the form too long? Too confusing? Asking these questions can help you as you perform this section of the SEO audit.
Conducting an SEO Report For Your Audit
After you finish the above components it's time to gather all your data, and information, and wrap it up with a pretty bow!
Here's how you create a finalized SEO audit:
Compile Your SEO Research
Write a thorough report outlining the results of your audit. Provide statistics, images, and detailed suggestions for every problem you find. To arrange your research and create a report that is easy to read, utilize templates and other resources.
At Starbound SEO, we create comprehensive SEO audits that start with an internal checklist and end with a detailed report that can help you understand what to address for your website.
Prioritizing SEO Issues
Issues are not all made equal. Give top priority to matters that have a big potential to impact your SEO performance. Create a detailed action plan to deal with each of these problems, beginning with the most important ones.
For example, you want to address your technical SEO issues first, especially your robots.txt file and sitemap as these will be the main ways your site will be indexed.
Implementing SEO Changes
Once you understand what to address, it’s time to make those SEO changes! Create a rollout schedule as well as one for routine SEO maintenance.
The Importance of Regular SEO Audits
Maintaining and enhancing the functionality of your website requires performing an SEO audit. Through a methodical assessment of technical SEO, user experience, and on- and off-page elements, you may pinpoint and address problems that might be negatively affecting the ranks and visibility of your website.
SEO is a continuous effort rather than a one-time event. You can keep up with changes in search engine algorithms and industry trends by conducting SEO audits regularly. Your website will stay competitive in search results and your SEO strategy effective if you regularly check its performance and make the required adjustment
Partner With Us For a Comprehensive SEO
There is no doubt about it, SEO audits can be a long and tedious process, but they are essential for ensuring your website visibility grows to its full potential.
At Starbound SEO we can take the guesswork out of search visibility. In addition to the above, we can also include a full competitor analysis, create content suggestions, and more!
Let us create a comprehensive, custom SEO audit for your website.
