What is an SEO audit and why is it needed?

Today, among the services in the field of web design and website promotion, you can often find such a service as SEO audit. What is such a service? Why might site owners need it? What should be an effective SEO audit? It is worth considering all these issues in more detail.

SEO audit service is usually called such a service, which includes a comprehensive check of the site parameters that are important when promoting it in search engines. The list of parameters to be checked in each case may be different – it depends on the type of site being checked, and on its goals and objectives, and on the company providing SEO audit services.

SEO audit may be required in different cases

Usually it is performed before the start of the site promotion – in this case, it is needed to determine the readiness of the site to take active steps to promote it. Also, SEO audit can be performed after a certain period of promotion – to evaluate the results.

A well-executed SEO audit gives the site owner a lot of useful information, helping him understand exactly where the site has “weak points” and also find out what steps can be taken to eliminate these “weak points”. An example of a possible SEO audit algorithm is presented below.

SEO audit algorithm

SEO analysis. At this stage of the SEO audit, an analysis of the main factors of external and internal site optimization is carried out:

• analysis of the current position of the site in search engines by thematic keywords;
• analysis of the quantity and quality of backlinks to the site;
• analysis of the quantity and quality of the site pages indexed by search engines;
• analysis of site trust indicators (TIC, Google PR);
• analysis of the uniqueness of texts on the pages of the site;
• checking the presence of headings H1-H6 on the pages of the site;
• analysis of meta tags title, keywords, description of each page;
• analysis of keywords in the texts of the site pages;
• analysis of the internal linking of the site;
• analysis of the sitemap of the site and the robots.txt file.

Various manual or automated methods can be used to perform all checks at this stage. At the same time, all the results are recorded in one form or another in a special report, which will make it possible in the future to draw up recommendations for correcting errors and shortcomings, if any are found during the analysis.

Usability analysis

This stage of the SEO audit involves a thorough study of the site’s usability. Specialists check how easy and convenient it is to use the site, how understandable and accessible to users are the actions necessary for making a purchase or ordering a service. At this stage, the following work can be performed:

• analysis of various forms on the site, including registration, order forms, feedback forms;
• analysis of buttons for purchasing goods / ordering services, as well as other interactive elements on the pages;
• analysis of the general structure of the main and secondary pages of the site.

The result of usability analysis as part of an SEO audit is, again, a report. Such a report indicates the “pluses” and “minuses” of the usability of the current version of the site.

Recommendations

This stage of the SEO audit can be safely called the most important, because all the information obtained at the previous stages will be useless if the defects found are not corrected in any way. The list of recommendations may be different – it all depends on the specific performer.

Most often, the list of recommendations includes tips on filling in the meta tags of the site pages in accordance with the requirements of search engines, tips on optimizing texts on the site, tips on building the link mass of the site, etc. Based on these recommendations, the site owner decides is it worth it to work on website promotion.

To sum up

SEO audit is a service that necessarily requires an individual approach to the consideration of each site. Otherwise, the recommendations developed in the course of such an audit may turn out to be completely ineffective and not bring any benefit in promoting the site. In this regard, it is necessary to approach the choice of a contractor for SEO audit as seriously and carefully as possible.

Source: easyseo.pro