Ever wondered what to expect from an SEO audit service? What you should require from your website audit company? What matters or not, when it comes to a great SEO audit?
In this extensive presentation I’ll show you exactly what we include in our 5 star rated SEO audits and what gives our clients such a great value for their money (see their testimonials, if you don’t want to take my word for it).
Why Order an SEO Audit After All?
Many of our SEO clients just come to us to get marketing and Search Engine Optimization work done. Some need work on their Google My Business, too, others just have a low-performing website.
Before we start any monthly marketing plans, we need to see EXACTLY what’s wrong with their online presence and what hinders them from outranking their competitors.
This is done by an SEO audit.
As you will see, an audit is a very complex diagnosis which shows the client what they are doing well and what doesn’t work in their online strategy.
During such an audit we discover possible Google penalties, issues with the domain’s history (maybe it was used for porn years ago), indexation problems, low-quality content, a fishy backlink profile etc.
While you might expect your website to be pristine, unfortunately it’s not the case. Even the sites in our own network (which we’re carefully managing) sometimes “break” and, running an SEO audit on them at least 2 times a year reveals some pretty interesting data.
What’s Included in Our SEO Audit Service
I cannot speak for other SEO audit agencies, but we take our website audits deadly serious, because it’s never just a thing that keeps clients behind their competitors.
- MAIN SEO audit checklist – over 100 “points” that I touch during the audit process.
- Domain authority and history – Is the website new? Does it have a good history? Did it have any issues in the past?
- Google Analytics and Search Console audit – what you rank for, if there are any issues, sitemaps, traffic, goals etc. I also look at indexation problems, possible penalties, core web vitals and other metrics that allow us to understand how Google “sees” your website.
- Keyword audit – are your ranking for important keywords, is your keyword work unfocused etc.
- Technical issues breakdown – separate sheets for all possible problems we find (meta descriptions, internal link errors, H tags, canonicalization etc.)
- Speed / Mobile friendliness audit – is the website mobile friendly? Does it load fast?
- Content audit – how many words does your website have? Is there little to none content? Any grammar mistakes? Content recent enough?
- Image audit – are the images properly sized? Are the file names optimized? Do we have any indexation issues with them?
- FULL website scan – all pages scanned with details easy to read and understand.
- Backlink audit – Is the website getting “weird” links? Are the domains linking to yours of good quality? Same/related niche? Are you getting links from spam / illegal websites?
- Google My Business audit – most website audit companies ignore this, but GMBs are HUGE today in driving qualified leads to our clients. So, if the client has a GMB listing, we’ll audit it as well.
- Web Design Audit – code cleanness, branding, overall website design.
- Marketing Audit – funnels, goals, CTAs.
- “To do next” list – For most websites the SEO repairs are many and time consuming. So you will receive a PRIORITIZED list of what improvements will bring in the best results and then work on the ones with less impact on your rankings.
- 1 HOUR VIDEO CONSULTATION – We meet in a video call and I share my findings, you ask questions and find out what are your next steps in order to improve your website.
CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
Ramona has far exceeded my expectations. I hired her to do an SEO audit of my website. She provided the most detailed report I have ever seen.
The SEO Audit Service Breakdown:
In the following presentation I’ll use screenshots and data from a website audit we did on CreditCardPaymentsNow.com. It’s one of our own projects and I’ll use it as an example, so that we don’t disclose private client data.
Main SEO Audit Checklist
I like to work on Google Drive Spreadsheets, this way my client gets easy access to the file, they can also share with their developers and we can keep track of our work, provided they hire SEO Audit Pros to do the repairs and marketing afterwards.
The main page has over 100 points that we check one by one and mark as ‘OK’, ‘needs work’, ‘serious issue’ and ‘not relevant’ (green, yellow, red, gray). We also have an ‘initial’ state and ‘after’ to help organize the SEO repairs better.
The client can mark down new “colors” as they improve their website and we also put observations for the issues that need more attention or explanation.
Domain Authority and History
Not too many people consider it important, but a domain name that has a “hairy” past, might pose ranking issues further down the road.
Sometimes, if you purchased a domain name and didn’t realize that 4 years ago it was a porn website, for instance, you will find it hard to rank and even get accepted by some social media websites.
In this case, if your website still has penalties or a huge spam score, you’ll probably want to know.
Google Analytics and Search Console Audit
Before we can make any recommendations, I need to see exactly how the website is indexed, if it has any traffic issues, manual penalties, indexation issues etc.
All the issues that I find are then recorded on the SEO audit file, with separate sheets detailing the exact pages that struggle and need attention.
Keywords Audit
No.1 SEO problem with most of the websites that we audit is poor keyword “mapping” and research:
- no keywords at all – the client has content on their website, but the content is un-focused and without any proper SEO optimization. There are no keywords they tried to rank for, just some random stuff that, while interesting, will never rank them for what really matters.
- poor keyword choices – keywords that no one searches for (extremely low search volumes) or keywords that are way too hard to rank for, unless I audit Wikipedia or WebMD (which isn’t the case).
- keyword cannibalization – more than one pages compete for one keyword, because there was no focus on the initial keyword research. In this case the search engines cannot “guess” what the client wants to rank for, so the same keyword will have 3-4 pages that are “assigned” to, but they rank badly.
During this audit we can see the type/quality of the keywords clients rank for and then advise on the next logical step they need to take.
Technical Issues Breakdown
There is no perfect website, that’s for sure, so the technical issues breakdown allow me to delve deeper into a site’s structure and problems.
This is where I mark down all big problems (headings, descriptions, internal linking issues, duplicate pages). Again, with separate sheets for each issue, so that the client can easily find the data and prioritize the repairs.
CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
I recently bought an affiliate content site and needed someone with SEO expertise to quickly point out what was working and what wasn’t. Well, Roma overdelivered and now my team and I have a bulletproof plan on how to skyrocket this website in the next few months!
Speed / Mobile Friendliness Audit
A fast loading website that’s also responsive (mobile friendly) also has an usability boost (makes it easy for visitors to find information and provides a good user experience).
Since the search engines are getting more and more “sensitive” towards these metrics, we also audit websites for speed and responsiveness.
Any issues that we find, are marked down in our audit checklist.
Content Audit
The Cinderella of a website’s development, the content was, is and will always be king. We make sure to pin-point any pages that had low-quality content, as this is an important ranking factor.
Image Audit
Images are important, too, from an SEO standpoint and during my audits I noticed there are few important issues:
- huge image file size – large images take longer to load and impact the overall loading speed of a website (plus ruin the user experience);
- unoptimized file names – DSCF005.jpg is not as good as seo-audit-checklist.jpg;
- missing ALT tags;
- indexation errors.
The client gets a full list of the images that need work and can then optimize them one by one.
FULL Website Scan
Each page scanned with details about indexation, title, headings, visitors, bounce rate, word count etc.
While most big issues get separate sheets and data, we also provide the main scan, to make it easier for clients to see their website performance on a per-page basis.
Backlink Audit
A website doesn’t exist alone on the internet, so another task from my SEO audit service is to see what domain names are linking towards the clients’ website, their quality, nofollow / dofollow link ratio, anchor text etc.
GMB Audit
Google My Business – vital for most of our clients, but completely ignored by some of them (and their marketing agencies). If you have a Google My Business listing you will also get it audited and also receive a set of recommendations to get even more leads.
Web Design Audit
I have 2 decades of online experience, have worked on countless graphic and web design projects all this time. To this day all the websites in my network are my creation, from logo to complete website, so a lot of my expertise is poured down into my SEO audit services as well.
A website is not just a collection of words or backlinks.
So many other details matter when it comes to better positions in the search engines.
Good branding, clean code, great usability, innovative imagery – all these provide a better user experience and in time translates into better rankings and more quality leads.
Marketing Audit
I know that you don’t expect me to look into your selling funnel and discuss your lead generation strategies, but, after 20 years since running an online business, I have some ideas that might help you.
So my SEO audit service includes an extensive marketing audit as well.
I’ll look at your wording, email marketing strategy, CTAs (Call to Action), unique selling propositions etc.
I always advise my clients to think about their website as a sale funnel, so it’s important that each of your pages gets the visitor further down the funnel.
“To Do Next” List
An SEO audit is worthless, unless the client gets a clear and prioritized SEO repairs task list. I teach them to priorities in 2 ways:
- make the repairs that will provide the best ROI for their website (as most sites I audit have many issues than need solving)
- prioritize based on page importance – it makes sense to repair “money making” pages, high-traffic pages etc. and then move towards others of secondary importance.
CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
Ramona is extremely knowledgeable about all things SEO and marketing! She does a very detailed job of auditing websites and provides actionable steps to improve rankings.
1 HOUR Video Consultation
Whether our clients are SEO savvy or need more guidance, our video calls allow them to go through the SEO audit report in a guided manner, ask questions and get a lot of advice.
CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
We had an hour long consultation where she walked me through EVERYTHING she found in her detailed audit while making sure to communicate the highly technical aspects in a way that I (a non-SEO person) could understand.