A Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) audit is a diagnostic tool for website owners to help identify weaknesses and opportunities in the site. An SEO audit should meticulously analyses a website’s infrastructure to pinpoint technical flaws, content gaps, and optimisation opportunities.
This will then be utilised as a roadmap for website owners to improve their organic visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
In this article, we’re going to break down everything you need to know about what an SEO audit is and how to run one to help you on your SEO ventures.
Table of Contents
- Why Perform An SEO Audit
- Initial Setup For An SEO Audit
- Analysing Website Structure
- Content Analysis
- Technical SEO Assessment
- Identifying and Fixing Crawling Issues
- On-Page SEO Evaluation
- Off-Page SEO Analysis
- Reporting & Monitoring SEO Progress
What is an SEO Audit?
A comprehensive SEO audit scrutinises a website’s current SEO standing by examining its technical framework, content effectiveness, and off-page elements to identify any impediments to search engine performance. The audit provides detailed insights into your website’s compliance with best practices and the actions needed to address any deficiencies.
The audit will examine various aspects such as site structure, mobile responsiveness, page speed, keyword optimisation, and backlink profiles for optimisation opportunities.
These opportunities are designed to elevate your site’s visibility on SERPs, enhance the user experience, and contribute to the site’s authority and trustworthiness. The outcome of the audit will enable businesses to craft a tailored SEO strategy that ensures the website attracts and effectively engages the target audience.
The end goal of an SEO audit is to elevate the website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) and to refine the site’s alignment with business objectives and user needs.
SEO audits various specialised tools and analytics platforms, such as Screaming Frog, Google Analytics and Google Search Console, and many more. This helps the SEO to provide actionable insights based on real data.
This roadmap will guide website owners through necessary adjustments for optimal digital performance, unlocking a website’s potential to attract and retain the right audience in a highly competitive and ever-evolving digital landscape.
Why Perform an SEO Audit?
Performing an SEO audit will enhance a website’s online presence and performance in a few ways. First, it helps identify technical issues that could be hindering a site’s ability to rank well on SERPs. This includes problems with site speed, mobile responsiveness, and secure connections, among others.
An SEO audit can significantly boost search engine visibility. By pinpointing and addressing areas where a website may not be fully optimised for a search engine’s crawler, businesses can improve their rankings and increase organic traffic.
An SEO audit can also enhance the user experience (UX). It evaluates UX aspects such as site navigation and content relevance, ensuring that visitors find value and ease in interacting with the website, which helps convert users into customers.
Google’s preference continues to be on sites that offer a strong user experience, giving this even more weighting when it comes to an SEO audit. Collaborating closely with UX teams has become an important skill, as well as identifying potential sticking points in the user journey.
Finally, conducting an audit informs a more effective content strategy. It identifies gaps and opportunities in a website’s content, allowing for the optimisation of existing materials and the strategic creation of new content to better inform customers throughout their buying journey. This ensures that a website remains relevant and valuable to its target audience.
Real-World Impact of SEO Audits
See below for a few examples of how SEO audits have impacted website business goals, by turning audit outputs into website changes that improved business goals.
| Business Case | SEO Audit Results | Outcome |
| E-commerce Store | Identified slow loading times on product pages and lack of mobile responsiveness. | Implemented site speed optimisations and responsive design, leading to a 40% increase in page speed and a 25% uplift in mobile conversions within three months. |
| Local Service Provider | Discovered missing local keywords and inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) across listings. | Optimised for local search by updating content and local listings, resulting in a 50% increase in local search visibility and a 30% growth in service inquiries over six months. |
| Content Publisher | Found duplicate content issues and poor keyword optimisation across articles. | Revised content strategy to focus on unique, keyword-optimised articles, leading to a 60% increase in organic traffic and doubling ad revenue within a year. |
| SaaS Company | Uncovered a lack of authoritative backlinks and poor social media engagement. | Launched a guest blogging and social media campaign, achieving a 35% increase in high-quality backlinks and a 20% rise in social media interactions, enhancing overall brand visibility and authority. |
Initial Setup for an SEO Audit
To kick off an SEO audit, you’ll first need to configure essential tools and platforms that provide insights into the website’s current performance and areas for improvement:
- Google Analytics is indispensable for analysing traffic patterns and user engagement, offering insight into how visitors interact with the site. This is an industry-standard tool that will give you a better understanding of how users find your website.
- Google Search Console will help you understand site health, highlighting issues like crawl errors and indexing status.
- Specialised SEO Audit tools such as Screaming Frog allows for a deep dive into the website’s structure, identifying technical SEO issues and content opportunities.
- Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs offer well-rounded capabilities to cross-check traffic, keyword visibility, technical health, backlink profiles and competitor analysis all in one place. Please note that the traffic values will likely differ in these tools vs. Google Analytics due to data aggregation, so keep this in mind and always make sure to compare a variety of tools for the most accurate dataset.
Combining the specialised features of these tools, as well as any others in your arsenal, will help to make your understanding of your website’s SEO more comprehensive, better informing your post-audit changes.
Tool Configuration Guide
| Tool | Configuration Steps | Key Metrics/Features |
| Google Analytics | 1. Sign up or log in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Add your website as a property. 3. Install the tracking code on your website. 4. Set up goals to track conversions. 5. Add integrations with other platforms like Google Search Console. 6. Consider creating custom audiences for more specific data. |
– Traffic sources
– User behavior (e.g., engagement time metrics) – Conversion rates – Bounce rates |
| Google Search Console | 1. Sign up or log in to Google Search Console.
2. Add your website as a property. 3. Verify ownership of your website (HTML file upload, domain name provider, HTML tag, etc.). 4. Submit your XML sitemap. 5. Check for crawl errors and fix them. 6. Use the URL Inspection tool to view how Google crawls and indexes your site. |
– Indexing status
– Crawl errors – Mobile usability issues – Security issues |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | 1. Download and install Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
2. Enter the URL of the website you want to audit in the ‘Enter URL to spider’ box. 3. Click ‘Start’ to begin the crawl. 4. Use the configuration options to adjust the crawl (e.g., limit URLs, exclude certain paths). 5. Analyze the results for issues like broken links, missing alt tags, and duplicate content. |
– Broken links (404 errors)
– Duplicate content – Missing alt tags – Page titles and meta descriptions |
These tools, or other third party SEO audit tools on the market, will give website owners a clear path forward on which issues need to be addressed.
Analysing Website Structure
The structure of a website includes its organisation and ease of use. It’s important that a user be able to easily navigate a website, but it’s also important that the structure supports a search engine’s ability to easily crawl and categorise the site, to make sure it shows up in search engine rankings.
A well-structured website features a logical URL structure that is consistent and intuitive.
Additionally, site navigation (buttons, menus, etc.) should be user-friendly, enabling visitors to effortlessly find the information they want, which reduces bounce rates and improves engagement.
Well-structured sites will also have strong mobile responsiveness and speed, factors which also significantly impact search rankings and user satisfaction.
A website that is fast, mobile responsive, and well-organised not only ranks better in search results but also provides a positive experience for its visitors, making it more likely that they will return or convert.
Website Structure Analysis Guide
| Aspect | Positive Example | Negative Example | Tools/Methods for Assessment |
| URL Structure | – Short and descriptive URLs, with intuitive nesting
– Uses hyphens to separate words – Follows a logical hierarchy – Readable |
– Long and cryptic URLs
– Uses underscores or spaces – No clear hierarchy |
– Manual review
– Screaming Frog SEO Spider |
| Site Navigation | – Clear and intuitive menu
– Consistent navigation across pages – Breadcrumbs for easy backtracking |
– Confusing or complex menus
– Inconsistent navigation – Lack of breadcrumbs |
– User experience testing
– Google Analytics (Behavior Flow report) |
| Mobile Responsiveness | – Content fits on mobile screens without horizontal scrolling
– Touch elements are adequately spaced |
– Requires zooming and horizontal scrolling on mobile
– Touch elements too close together |
– Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
– Chrome DevTools (Device Mode) |
| Site Speed | – Pages load in under 2 seconds
– Optimised images and assets – Efficient use of caching |
– Pages take longer than 5 seconds to load
– Large, unoptimised images – No caching implemented |
– Google PageSpeed Insights
– GTmetrix – PageSpeed Compare |
Evaluating your website structure will help you identify and address any issues that may be hindering its performance in search engine results and negatively impacting user experience. Implementing improvements based on this analysis can lead to better search rankings and higher user satisfaction.
Content Analysis
Content analysis during an SEO audit examines the quality, relevance, and optimisation of the website’s content, or the copy and images themselves.
This type of analysis begins with identifying duplicate content issues.
Search engines want to see that each piece of SEO content on a website is unique and offers value, which helps fight spam and noisy content. Search engines will penalise duplicative and repeated content.
The next step is to optimise for target keywords, integrating them naturally into the content. Content writers should make the keywords fit into the content as naturally as possible to improve search visibility while maintaining readability for the audience.
Additionally, website owners should optimise meta tags and descriptions, as these elements directly influence click-through rates from search results by providing clear, compelling summaries of the page content.
Ultimately, answering the question, “is my content helpful for users?” will be a core part of a content analysis.
Reviewing these aspects will help developers clarify and execute an improved content strategy, making it more aligned with user needs and search engine guidelines, ultimately driving higher engagement and better rankings.
Content Analysis Guide
| Task | Description | Tools/Methods | Tips |
| Conduct Content Gap Analysis | Identify missing topics or areas that competitors cover, but your site does not. | – Ahrefs Content Gap tool
– SEMrush Keyword Gap tool |
Focus on high-value topics that align with user intent and your business goals. |
| Optimise for Target Keywords | Integrate relevant keywords naturally into your content, without compromising readability. | – Google Keyword Planner
– Moz Keyword Explorer |
Use keywords in headings, subheadings, and naturally throughout the text. Avoid keyword stuffing. Aim for a natural flow. Use synonyms and related terms to avoid repetition. |
| Craft Compelling Meta Tags and Descriptions | Write concise and attractive meta descriptions and title tags to improve click-through rates. | – Yoast SEO (for WordPress)
– Manual HTML editing |
Include target keywords and a clear value proposition in meta descriptions. Use action-oriented language and keep title tags under 60 characters. |
| Check for Content Relevance and Quality | Ensure content is up-to-date, informative, and meets user needs. | – Manual review
– User feedback surveys |
Update old posts with new information. Remove outdated or low-quality content. |
| Use Tools to Identify Duplicate Content | Detect and address duplicate content issues across your site. | – Copyscape
– Google Search Console – Siteliner |
Use these tools to find and rewrite or remove duplicate content. |
Technical SEO Assessment
A Technical SEO Assessment examines the foundational elements that impact a website’s ability to be crawled and indexed effectively by search engines. This process begins with an analysis of site speed and optimisations, identifying areas where performance enhancements can significantly reduce load times.
Search engines factor website load times heavily in ranking algorithms, and a slow website can also have a negative impact on the user’s experience.
Search engines also place a lot of weight on a site’s trustworthiness and security.
Implementing SSL certification secures the site’s connection and instills trust among users, while also being a positive ranking signal.
Technical assessment also includes verifying the XML sitemap status and accessibility, which aids search engines in efficiently discovering and indexing the site’s content.
A comprehensive technical SEO assessment can help websites address underlying issues that may impede their search performance, laying a solid foundation for advanced SEO strategies and improved search visibility.
Technical SEO Assessment Guide
| Task | Description | Tools/Techniques | Steps/Recommendations |
| Analyse Site Speed | Evaluate the loading times of your site and identify bottlenecks. | Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, PageSpeed Compare | Use these tools to get specific recommendations for speed improvements. Focus on optimising images, leveraging browser caching, and minimising CSS/JS. |
| Ensure SSL Certification | Secure your site with HTTPS to protect user data and improve trust. | Let’s Encrypt, SSL For Free | Choose a certificate authority (CA) offering free/paid SSL certificates. Follow the CA’s instructions to validate your domain and install the SSL certificate on your server. |
| Verify XML Sitemap Status | Ensure your sitemap is up-to-date and accessible to search engines. | Google Search Console | Create an XML sitemap using online tools or plugins, then submit the sitemap URL in Google Search Console. Regularly update the sitemap as you add/remove pages. |
| Optimise for Mobile Responsiveness | Make sure your site provides an optimal viewing experience across all devices. | Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test | Implement responsive design techniques, and adjust content and navigation for touchscreens and screens with varying sizes. |
| Check for Crawl Errors | Identify and fix issues preventing search engines from crawling your site. | Google Search Console | Use the Coverage report to find errors. Address issues like 404 errors, server errors, and blocked resources. |
Regularly conducting a technical SEO assessment and implementing the recommended actions will help maintain your site’s health and improve its search performance.
Identifying and Fixing Crawl Issues
All other SEO activity is wasted if a search engine can’t crawl and index your site in the first place. Identifying and fixing crawl issues is crucial to ensuring that search engines can access and index your website effectively.
This process involves repairing broken links, which can hinder search engines’ ability to crawl your site thoroughly. It can negatively impact user experience, or resolving redirect loops and errors, as these can confuse search engines and users alike, leading to poor site performance in search results.
Crawl Issues Resolution Guide
| Issue | Tools to Identify | Steps to Resolve | Common Scenarios |
| Broken Links | – Google Search Console
– Screaming Frog SEO Spider – Broken Link Checker |
1. Use tools to identify broken links.
2. Determine if the broken link should be updated or removed. 3. Update the link to point to the correct URL or remove it if no longer relevant. |
– Page URL changed without a redirect.
– External website no longer available. |
| Redirect Loops | – Redirect Path Chrome Extension
– Screaming Frog SEO Spider |
1. Identify the loop using redirect detection tools.
2. Trace the loop’s path to find the starting and end points. 3. Correct the redirect chain to eliminate the loop. |
– Incorrectly configured redirects during site migration.
– Conflicting redirects set by different plugins or tools. |
| Redirect Errors | – Google Search Console
– Screaming Frog SEO Spider |
1. Identify the type of redirect error (e.g., 301, 302, 307).
2. Ensure the redirect is necessary and correctly implemented. 3. Fix incorrect redirects or remove unnecessary ones. |
– Temporary redirect (302) used instead of a permanent redirect (301).
– Redirecting to a non-existent page. |
Broken Links Example:
- Before: A product page linking to a discontinued item results in a 404 error.
- After: The link is updated to a similar product page, or the link is removed if no longer relevant.
Redirect Loops Example:
- Scenario: A URL redirecting to another URL, which then redirects back to the original URL, creating an infinite loop.
- Resolution: The redirect chain is corrected so that each URL redirects to the appropriate final destination without looping back.
Redirect Errors Example:
- Scenario: A page temporarily moved during a site update is redirected using a 302 redirect, but the change becomes permanent.
- Resolution: The 302 redirect is updated to a 301 redirect to indicate the permanent move to search engines.
Regular monitoring and maintenance of your site’s crawlability are essential for maintaining optimal SEO health and ensuring your content is accurately indexed and ranked.
On-Page SEO Evaluation
An on-page SEO evaluation focuses on optimising individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. This process involves a detailed review of elements directly within the website’s control, like content quality, keyword optimisation, and the use of meta tags.
Optimising heading tags to define a clear and relevant structure within your content, while naturally integrating target keywords where it makes sense to do so, can help both users and search engines to understand the flow of content.
Additionally, the effective use of image alt attributes enhances the SEO value of visual content, making images accessible to search engines and keeping your site accessible to all users.
Developing a robust internal linking strategy also helps distribute page authority and improve site navigation.
Through comprehensive on-page optimisation, websites can significantly improve their search engine visibility, user engagement, and overall SEO performance.
On-Page SEO Evaluation Guide
| Element | Best Practices | Example | Tools/Techniques |
| Heading Tags | Use H1 for the main title and H2-H6 for subsections. Include target keywords naturally. | H1: Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO
H2: Importance of Heading Tags |
– Manual review
– SEO plugins like Yoast SEO |
| Image Alt Attributes | Describe the image content and context. Use target keywords sparingly. | Alt: “SEO strategy planning on whiteboard” | – Manual HTML editing
– CMS media library options |
| Internal Linking | Link to relevant content within your site. Use descriptive anchor text that tells the user where they’re going next. | Anchor: “Learn more about keyword research”
Link: /keyword-research-guide/ |
– Manual review
– Screaming Frog SEO Spider |
Heading Tag Optimisation
- Good: <h1>5 Essential Tips for Home Gardening</h1>
- Clearly defines the page topic.
- Uses a target keyword: “Home Gardening”.
- Needs Improvement: <h1>Welcome to Our Blog</h1>
- Vague and misses the opportunity to include a keyword.
Effective Use of Image Alt Attributes
- Good: <img src=”garden-tools.jpg” alt=”Assorted home gardening tools on a wooden table”>
- Descriptive and includes context.
- Needs Improvement: <img src=”garden-tools.jpg” alt=”tools”>
- Too generic, lacks descriptive context.
Developing an Internal Linking Strategy
- Good: “For more tips, check out our complete guide to organic gardening.”
- Provides value to the reader and uses descriptive anchor text.
- Needs Improvement: “Click here for more.”
- “Here” is non-descriptive anchor text and misses an SEO opportunity.
Off-Page SEO Analysis
Off-page SEO analysis extends beyond the confines of your website, focusing on external factors that influence your site’s reputation and search engine rankings.
A critical component of this analysis is the assessment of backlink profile quality. High-quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative sites signal trust and credibility to search engines, boosting your site’s visibility in the ranking. There are various link building tactics that you can consider including guest posting, expert commentary and digital PR.
Where are people speaking about your brand, is it positive, and how can this be improved? These are all questions you should be asking yourself when assessing your off-page.
Social media engagement also plays a significant role in your site’s SEO performance. Active engagement on social media platforms can drive traffic, enhance brand visibility, and indirectly affect search rankings through social signals.
These types of off-page behaviors can improve a website’s online presence and strengthen the brand’s authority in the digital landscape.
Off-Page SEO Analysis Guide
| Task | Description | Tools | Metrics/Strategies |
| Backlink Profile Analysis | Evaluate the quality and diversity of incoming links. | Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz | – Focus on improving the number of high-quality backlinks.
– Examine the quality, relevance, and authority of these linking sites. |
| Social Media Engagement | Measure interaction and visibility on social platforms. | Hootsuite, BuzzSumo | – Review your site’s shares, likes, comments, brand mentions, and follower growth rate |
| Competitor Backlink Analysis | Identify linking strategies and opportunities from competitors. | SEMrush, SpyFu | – Analyse your competitor’s top backlink sources, or most linked comment, for insights on how to improve your own linking. |
| Content Outreach & Guest Posting | Enhance visibility and backlinks through content collaboration. | Email outreach, HARO | – Increase number of guest posts published
– Quality of linked sites (Domain Authority) |
| Influencer Collaboration | Partner with influencers to boost brand visibility. | Instagram, YouTube analytics | – Analyse engagement rate of influencer’s posts, and target influencers relevant to your site’s niche. |
Backlink Profile Analysis Example:
- Good: A diverse backlink profile with links from high-authority sites relevant to your niche.
- Needs Improvement: A large number of low-quality or spammy backlinks that could potentially harm your site’s reputation.
Social Media Engagement Strategy:
- Effective: Regularly posting engaging content that prompts user interaction, running contests, and using relevant hashtags to increase visibility.
- Less Effective: Infrequent posts with little to no engagement or interaction with followers.
Competitor Backlink Analysis Insight:
- Discovering a competitor’s backlink from a high-authority educational site could reveal opportunities for similar outreach that attracts authoritative links.
Content Outreach & Guest Posting Strategy:
- Effective: Crafting high-quality, valuable content for reputable sites in your industry, leading to increased visibility and authoritative backlinks.
- Less Effective: Mass emailing low-quality content proposals to unrelated sites, resulting in few acceptances and low-value backlinks.
Influencer Collaboration Example:
- Partnering with a well-known fitness influencer to promote a health supplement, resulting in increased brand awareness and targeted traffic from the influencer’s follower base.
Analysing and subsequently improving your site’s off-page behavior can significantly enhance your website’s authority, visibility, and overall search engine performance. Regularly monitoring these off-page factors and adjusting your strategies accordingly will ensure sustained growth and competitiveness in your niche.
Reporting and Monitoring SEO Progress
SEO auditing is not a one-and-done process.
Search engine ranking and digital trends are constantly changing and evolving.
As you conduct SEO audits, be sure to create detailed SEO audit reports, which provide a comprehensive overview of the website’s current, point-in-time SEO performance, highlighting successes and identifying areas that require further optimisation.
These reports should showcase the site’s strengths, and highlight technical SEO deficiencies, content discrepancies, and off-page SEO challenges.
Tailor the reports to your reader. Communicating your SEO status in non-technical language can help senior executives understand why resourcing website development is important for a business’s success.
Always tie this back to the main business objectives associated with the work you’re doing for maximum impact.
For example, if the business’ impact is to increase revenue through organic by 50%, highlight the fact that slow page speed has the potential to impact potential revenue. In research on website performance conducted by Cloudflare, they found that:
- Pages that loaded in 2.4 seconds had a 1.9% conversion rate
- At 3.3 seconds, conversion rate was 1.5%
- At 4.2 seconds, conversion rate was less than 1%
- At 5.7+ seconds, conversion rate was 0.6%
They also saw examples where even large brands such as Walmart improved their site speed by just 1 second, and increased conversion rates by 2%. For an eCommerce site that gains $10 million a year in revenue, that’s an increase of $200,000.
As you create these reports, set up SEO performance tracking in analytics tools so that you can evaluate changes in your SEO reports over time to identify what is working well for your site’s ranking.
Utilising platforms like Google Analytics and Google Search Console offers critical insights into user behavior and website performance. By tailoring these tools to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) — including organic traffic, bounce rates, and conversion metrics — businesses can deeply understand the effectiveness of their SEO strategies.
This ongoing analysis facilitates swift, data-driven adjustments to the SEO plan. These tools offer real-time insights into traffic patterns, keyword rankings, and user engagement metrics, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions. By regularly reporting and monitoring, you can adapt your SEO tactics to changing search algorithms and market trends.
Conclusion
SEO audits have the potential to uncover a large number of issues and opportunities that can help to improve your site’s organic visibility and improve user experience.
By closely reviewing technical, content and links, as well as overarching performance against competitors in your space, you can build a robust and data-led strategy to help boost your SEO performance.
Want some help with your SEO auditing? Our expert team at StudioHawk can help.
