August 30, 2024
An SEO audit that merely generates a long list of technical issues—such as meta descriptions being slightly too long or finding a few forgotten 404 error pages—might appear thorough but in reality, these extensive lists don’t always correlate to improvements in visibility, traffic or user experience.
Fixing these ‘broken’ items is of no use if the value of each is limited. The key to an effective SEO audit lies in assigning importance and finding the most impactful improvements.
In this guide, we’ll discuss how to conduct an audit that leads to real and significant changes. We’ll show you how to approach an audit with clear objectives, focus on the critical elements and prioritise actionable insights.
Here’s how to conduct an effective and impactful SEO audit that can truly move the needle.
An SEO audit is a comprehensive analysis of a website’s performance within the search engine results pages (SERPs). The purpose of an SEO audit is to identify issues that impact performance and identify opportunities to improve rankings, boost visibility and drive organic traffic.
An SEO audit is driven by data and guided by goals. It’s an all-encompassing process that assesses if a website is technically sound, meeting user expectations and effectively competing against competitors.
Think of it as a website MOT. It’s a way to check the health of your website from a search-related perspective. In other words, an SEO audit reveals what is working well, where there is scope for improvement and which steps should be taken to strengthen SEO performance.
When you think of an SEO audit, you may think about technical issues like site structure and crawlability, or factors such content quality and backlinks. All or some of these can be included within an SEO audit. It just depends on the type of audit you conduct and how extensive you want the audit to be.
Broadly speaking, there are four main types or categories of SEO audit. These are: technical, on-page, off-page and content.
A technical SEO audit involves evaluating the technical elements of a website to ensure that search engines can crawl, index and render its pages. It takes a deep dive into the technical issues that can impact organic ranking, traffic and visibility. These types of audit typically include:
User experience (UX): Assessing the aspects that impact user experience. For example, checking for broken links and missing pages.
An on-page SEO audit focuses on optimising individual pages on your website. It’s a diagnostic process that can provide valuable insights on keyword rankings, metadata and user experience. This form of audit usually encompasses the following:
User experience: Evaluating how user-friendly each web page is, from the overall design and menu navigation to content length and layout.
A content audit involves reviewing website content to ensure it’s comprehensive, up-to-date, engaging, relevant and on brand. This process is an ideal way to discover your best-performing pieces and spot content gaps that could capture additional traffic. This type of audit usually looks at:
Keyword optimisation: Evaluating keyword ranking and usage within your content. This includes keyword density, inclusion in headers and metadata, and whether keywords match search intent.
An off-page audit assesses the external elements that can impact your website’s SEO performance. It’s useful for determining how your website is perceived within search engines, i.e., how trustworthy and authoritative it is. These are the key areas to consider:
Social media presence, engagement and shares: Assessing how your social media presence is helping or hindering your SEO efforts. This includes social signals such as shares, likes and comments.
Whether you’re carrying out a technical SEO audit or an off-page audit, there are a range of tools that can assist. From analysing and configuring your sitemap to understanding your backlink profile, here are some of the most commonly used tools for SEO audits:
Now that you’ve decided which type of audit to conduct, you’re ready to begin. Here is our step-by-step guide for completing an effective SEO audit and maximising website performance.
The first stage of any impactful SEO audit involves setting clear objectives. Rather than going through an endless list of faults found in your Screaming Frog crawl, or digging through data in Google Analytics, you need to know what you want to achieve and how you will achieve it.
Setting objectives from the outset can be the difference between mediocre results and real, tangible outcomes. Whether you’re working on your own website or conducting an audit for your client, having clear goals allows you to tailor your approach and create a more focused, actionable audit.
Of course, you may discover side-wide issues that need to be addressed. However, objectives act as a guide post: they provide a clear route and prevent you from getting lost in the data.
When it comes to impactful SEO audits, working backwards from a benchmark is often the most effective technique.
When setting objectives for your SEO audit, you may be tempted to outline a long list of SEO-related improvements. They could include increasing organic traffic, boosting conversion rates or improving keyword ranking. However, these standalone goals are unlikely to help.
To deliver an audit that really packs a punch, you need to know how your objectives fit into the wider picture. This means aligning your SEO audit with your overarching business goals.
The benefit here is two-fold. Firstly, your audit will work towards pre-existing goals and support overall growth. Secondly, it illustrates how this process will provide a return on investment—this is helpful when relaying your recommendations to clients and stakeholders.
By taking this unified approach, you can identify key areas and streamline your auditing efforts. For example, if the goal is to increase organic traffic by 20% in the next quarter, your audit can look to identify issues that directly impact traffic. This could include keyword ranking, content quality and indexability.
An SEO audit can feel like ticking off an endless to-do list. It can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, spread your efforts too thin and get bogged down in the details. That’s why it’s crucial to search for quick wins and concentrate on high-impact changes.
For example, while content quality is extremely important, optimising every page for the sake of it is not. Making tiny changes to thousands of pages is going to chew through your budget, require a lot of resources and (probably) fail to deliver your desired results. The solution here is to prioritise the pages and keyword groups that have the most potential to drive traffic—i.e., the low hanging fruit.
Look at pages that currently sit on page two in the SERPs. What’s really stopping them from ranking on page one? What are your competitors offering that you aren’t? Or perhaps you have pages that are targeting high-traffic keywords but they just aren’t performing as expected. What’s holding them back and how can you fix it?
The important thing to remember is this: you don’t need to perfect every detail. An effective SEO audit is one that emphasises quality, resource allocation and results over quantity.
With your objectives in place, it’s time to dive into your SEO audit. This means selecting those high-impact areas that can boost your website’s performance. Not sure where to start? No problem. You’ll find six key areas below.
Before you continue, it’s important to note that this is by no means an exhaustive list. While these recommendations come from decades of SEO experience, every website is unique. What drives success for one might not deliver results for another, so it’s important to assess each site on an individual basis.
Many SEO audits focus on pleasing search engines and adapting with ever-changing algorithms. While this isn’t necessarily wrong, this kind of focus can lead to a significant oversight: neglecting the user experience (UX) one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of SEO.
It’s logical that user experience feeds into ranking. A well-designed, intuitive and clear website is more likely to inspire longer sessions, higher levels of engagement and repeat visits. In contrast, a confusing, clunky, outdated and ad-filled site is likely to deter users and send them straight back to the SERPs.
That being said, a good website needs more than smooth navigation and an easy-to-use layout. User experience goes beyond technical fixes; each page must match search intent and fully satisfy the user’s query from start to finish. Study the user path, where you want them to get to and how easy that is.
Search intent, or user intent, can be broken down into four categories: informational, commercial, navigational and transactional. For example, if a user is looking for a step-by-step guide (informational), but lands on a product page (transactional), they’re unlikely to stay or make a purchase.
When evaluating the user experience, it can help to ask the following questions:
Internal linking is a powerful yet often underutilised aspect of many websites. In its most simple form, an internal link is simply a gateway between two pages on your website. The direct impact of internal links on rankings can be absolutely massive. However, an effective strategy requires more than a scattering of random links.
An effective internal linking strategy centres around your most important and high-impact pages. It involves strategically placing these links within your content and guiding users to other relevant pages on your site. Regularly linking to these pages is the equivalent of holding up a big, flashing neon sign: it tells search engines to pay attention to these valuable pages.
When executed well, internal links can boost the visibility of your most important pages. They can enhance the user experience, reduce bounce rates and bolster engagement rates. They also play a crucial role in distributing page authority and improving crawlability.
However, it’s just about the quantity of internal links; quality, context and relevance are equally important. Links should always feel natural and useful to the user—links should never feel forced or repetitive. Additionally, anchor text should be descriptive and provide context, both to users and search engines.
Consider these questions when assessing your internal link strategy:
Indexability refers to how easily search engines can discover, crawl and index your website’s pages. Fail to focus on indexing and you effectively render your other SEO efforts redundant. Why? Because only indexable pages can be accessed by crawlers and appear within the SERPs.
The indexability of your website is fundamental to your SEO performance. After all, how can users find your content if it can’t be indexed by search engines?
There are several factors that can affect how easy it is for Google to discover, crawl and index your website. This includes technical issues like your robots.txt file, noindex tags. When you start to get into the 100s of 1000s these issues can also impact your crawl budget.
A crawl budget refers to the maximum number of pages a search engine will crawl within a given timeframe. This number is calculated using crawl limit (which is impacted by factors like crawl errors and page speed) and crawl demand (how fresh the content is and how popular the pages are).
A quick note on page speed. While it’s an important factor, it often becomes something of an SEO energy sink. A huge amount of time and resources are poured into trying to get a perfect page speed score, however, unless the website is genuinely slow the real impact on SEO, users and indexability tends to be fairly minimal.
To really boost your website’s indexability, we recommend regularly checking for common issues. This includes duplicate content—often caused by different html parameters—which can confuse search engines, lead to cannibalisation and harm your crawl budget.
When looking at your site’s indexability, the following questions are a good place to start:
On-page optimisation remains one of the most fundamental pillars of effective SEO. This involves fine-tuning your web pages to align with search terms and increase their visibility with search results. Examples of this include metadata, headers, internal links, images and keyword optimisation.
However, effective on-page SEO goes beyond these basic elements. To really improve SEO performance, your on-page optimisation should aim to make your pages more relevant, valuable and readable. Keywords alone are not enough to move the needle.
For example, it can be easy to obsess over keyword placement. However, while keyword positioning is important, it’s no longer the be all and end all. Search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with algorithms that look beyond words to decipher intent.
As such, it’s essential that your content is informative, valuable and written with the reader in mind. In other words, your keyword placement should not come at the detriment of content quality and user engagement.
On top of this, search engines evaluate the overall structure and readability of your content. This means it’s crucial to organise your pages logically, using clear headings, subheadings and short, digestible paragraphs.
Here are some questions to ask when analysing your on-page SEO optimisation:
Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links from one website to another. They have long been recognised as one of, if not the, fundamental factor in organic search performance, used to determine a website’s authority and its ranking potential. However, not all backlinks are created equal.
The impact of backlinks depends on one big factor: quality. Backlinks from high authority websites act like little endorsements, telling search engines that your content is trustworthy and authority. A big thumbs up for SEO, they can boost the credibility of your site and positively impact visibility.
In contrast, poor-quality backlinks can do more harm than good. In fact, backlinks from spammy sites can trigger penalties and negatively impact your rankings.
To improve SEO performance, a well-rounded backlink profile should include a mix of different backlinks from reputable and ideally relevant sources.
When appraising your backlinks, use these questions to guide you:
In addition to improving your existing strategies, an SEO audit can identify a whole host of new opportunities. This could include the creation of new pages to target additional keywords, address content gaps or meet the evolving needs of your audience.
When exploring new page opportunities, it’s important to conduct thorough keyword research. This step is pivotal for identifying terms and phrases that are currently underserved by your existing content, or spotting gaps where search intent has not been fully addressed. In other words, this step makes sure you’re speaking the same language as your audience and fulfilling a genuine need.
In addition to your audience, looking at your competitors can open up a wealth of new opportunities. Analyse what content they are creating and what keywords they are ranking for. Are they targeting topics that your content hasn’t addressed? If so, can you offer a unique perspective and provide greater value?
Capitalising on these opportunities is an effective way to drive growth and stay ahead of the competition. In turn, this can boost your site’s relevance, expand your reach and increase your chances of capturing valuable search traffic.
Here are a range of questions to ask yourself when searching for new opportunities:
After conducting your SEO audit, you should have a list of issues and opportunities waiting to be categorised. Now it’s time to create your strategy, prioritise tasks based on their impact and order them by their ease of implementation.
Here we look at how to refine your findings, evidence your priorities, and communicate recommendations to clients and stakeholders.
When prioritising the actions from your audit, we recommend assessing using three key criteria: impact, effort and alignment. The order of importance can only be assigned by analysing the predicted outcome, weighing this against the time and resources required, and aligning the action to a related business goal.
Firstly, categorise findings by potential impact and ease of implementation. How much will each action move the needle? Is it a short-term or long-term solution? And what budget or resource does each task require? Our top tip is to focus on quick wins—those that have a high impact and require low effort—first.
Next, align each priority with the goals established at the beginning of the audit. Actions that directly support these objectives should be treated as a priority and placed at the top of the list.
With your priorities in place, the next step involves building a strong, data-driven case for taking action. Whether you’re working on your own website and reporting to stakeholders, or preparing a pitch for a client, it’s crucial to evidence how addressing these issues will contribute to improved SEO performance—and wider business goals.
Projections in SEO can be time consuming, and sometimes just pie in the sky wishful thinking given how many external influences and variables are at play. However, if you can demonstrate the value of recommendations in line with search volume and being modest with expected ranking improvements, this can go a long way with stakeholders that are laser focused on ROI.
Equally the other way around, attributing traffic or rankings losses due to changes made on site, algorithm updates or a declining backlink profile can be really effective in evidencing the need to implement your recommendations. Presenting this data alongside a plan to repair the damage and regain lost traffic helps to build a compelling case to those that may not understand SEO.
In some cases, your audit might not uncover any major silver bullet issues—no single, flaring problem that, once fixed, will dramatically improve your site’s performance. This can happen, especially with websites that are built on platforms that utilise out-of-the-box CMS, such as Shopify.
In these cases, it’s important to be upfront—transparency here is key. While clients and stakeholders may expect a list of dramatic fixes, delivering a long list of minor technicalities can lead to long-term disappointment.
Explain that everything looks good from an SEO perspective and communicate what’s really stopping the site from ranking. This may go beyond the realms of bread-and-butter SEO. For example, it could mean exploring offsite metrics such as reviews, branding or even the product or service itself.
Although you could suggest investing in traditional SEO tactics like keyword integration, metadata optimisation and backlink generation, these efforts are unlikely to yield results. If the site has a stream of negative reviews, or if poor online reputation remains unaddressed, focusing on SEO fixes alone would be a misuse of resources.
Being honest about the absence of major issues is always the best approach. It places you in the position of a trusted partner, rather than just a service provider—a valuable asset in an industry that is fast losing credibility.
A meaningful SEO audit is much more than a technical checklist. It’s a strategic process that requires clear objectives and thoughtful prioritisation. By identifying quick wins, focusing on high-impact fixes and aligning with overarching business goals, you can drive real results that go beyond surface level.
SEO isn’t a one-off task. It’s a long term investment that demands ongoing attention and regular refinement. Search engines are constantly evolving, algorithms are always updating and your competitors aren’t standing still; failing to act is the quickest way for your site to stagnate.
Whether you’re auditing your own website or a client’s, regular SEO audits are essential for staying ahead of the curve. Remember to focus on the areas that will make the most impact and avoid falling into the audit trap: an endless list of minor recommendations.
While technical tweaks and content adjustments are important, SEO is ultimately about serving your users. A holistic approach that considers user experience and search is essential for long-term SEO success.
Here at Another Concept, we use our experience and expertise to produce SEO audits that deliver actionable, measurable insights. We offer ongoing support to ensure that your site continues to perform, adapt and exceed your goals. Want to know more? Contact our team today to find out more.
