A comprehensive SEO audit is the best way to assess your website’s performance. The problem is there’s no universal approach to an SEO audit, and everyone’s process is a little different.
However, you should include some essential steps in every SEO audit. The seven steps below are an excellent place to start if this is your first audit.
An SEO audit evaluates how well your website is optimised for search engines. This typically involves identifying technical, on-page, content and link-related issues. It’s essentially a health checkup for your website.
An SEO audit usually covers aspects such as:
Running an SEO audit will let you know if your website has significant issues, such as low site speed or broken links. Ensuring your site performs well will help it rank better in search engine results.
Performing an audit regularly is a great way to ensure your site's continued performance. External factors can harm your site’s performance, so regular maintenance is required.
An SEO audit should include an analysis of which keywords your site ranks for. This can allow you to better optimise your site and content for target keywords that you’re not ranking highly for or at all.
Google now uses mobile-first indexing on all websites, so your site must function well on mobile devices. Aspects like page loading time also impact your site’s ranking in the search results.
You will need at least one tool to complete a thorough SEO audit (and follow the steps below).
Most SEO software includes a site audit or crawl tool, allowing you to determine your site's performance. They’ll also include tools to help you with tasks like keyword research and backlink profiling.
Popular SEO software includes Ahrefs, Moz Pro, and SEMrush. One of these platforms will make your audit much easier, and there are free trials that you can take advantage of.
You can use Google Search Console to help with some aspects of your SEO audit, such as keywords and technical fixes.
You’ll need Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of your audit and see how it’s impacted traffic to your site. Google Analytics can also help you prioritise pages which get the most traffic or have recently dropped in traffic.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix are both free tools that you can use to assess your site’s speed.
Now onto the seven steps you need to include in your SEO audit for it to be effective.
The first step in your audit should be to check for manual actions. This is when a human reviewer at Google decides your site doesn’t comply with their guidelines, so some or all of your site won’t be shown in the search results.
Although this is fairly unlikely to be a problem with your site unless you’ve done some serious things wrong, it’s still best to check this off your list first.
You’ll need to head to the Manual Actions report in Google Search Console to check for manual actions. Ideally, it should say “no issues detected”.
Your next step is to check for any indexing issues. If your pages aren’t indexed, then Google can’t rank them.
You can check that your pages have been indexed in Google Search Console. Look in the Index section for the Pages report. This will show you a graph of all your pages, whether they’re indexed or not, and a list of reasons why pages haven’t been indexed. Go through this list and check that no pages that should be indexed aren’t.
Not all pages need to be indexed, just the ones you want to rank in the search results.
Here are some pages that don’t need to be indexed:
If you find a page that isn’t indeed but should be, you can fix the issue by following Google guidelines. Then you can click on Validate Fix.
You can also request that Google index a specific URL by clicking the “Request Indexing” link.
This is one of the biggest and most crucial steps in any technical SEO audit. Running a site crawl means you’ll be able to simulate the way Google crawls your website and identify any issues that Google has.
For this step, you’ll need SEO software with an SEO auditing tool, such as SEMrush’s Site Audit.
You’ll need to create a project and set up the SEO audit. It might take some time for SEMrush to run the audit, depending on the number of site pages.
Once it’s done, you’ll see the audit dashboard
This is one of the main aspects of the dashboard you should pay attention to. It tells you the overall health of your site based on how many issues it has found.
These issues are divided into three categories:
Clicking on the Issues tab will show a list of all the SEO issues with your site. You should review and fix them individually (SEMrush will give you a ‘how-to guide’ for fixing each issue). If you click on an issue, it will show you all the URLs affected by it.
Here are some issues you might encounter:
You should ideally perform a site crawl regularly (you don’t need to wait for your next comprehensive SEO audit). This will ensure your site performs well and allow you to fix any new issues.
You should only be able to access one version of your site out of the following versions:
The other three versions should redirect to the master version of your site. If there are multiple versions, it can cause issues with crawling, indexing, and ranking. This is because Google will see the other versions as duplicate sites with duplicate content, which can negatively affect PageRank.
You can use a tool to check for other versions (such as Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar), but it’s also straightforward to check yourself. Just enter all versions of your site into a web browser and check that each one redirects to the preferred master site.
If they don't, you’ll need to set up a 301 redirect.
Mobile-friendliness is important for Google and has been a ranking factor since 2015. So, it’s crucial to ensure that all the pages on your site work well on mobile devices.
You can check for any mobile-friendliness issues in Google Search Console in the Experience section under Mobile Usability. This’ll show a quick overview of the usability of all your pages and a list of any issues. You can follow Google’s instructions to fix any mobile-friendliness issues that have been identified.
Page speed is another factor that contributes slightly to rankings. However, there’s no official guidance on how fast a page should load.
You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check your page speed for free, but this will only allow you to test one page at a time.
Alternatively, you can use SEMrush’s Site Audit tool. You’ll find speed and performance issues (and tips on how to fix them) under the Site Performance report.
Google introduced Core Web Vitals in 2020, which are three new metrics that relate to user experience and page speed.
Core Web Vitals include:
Because these new metrics are ranking factors, you should check your Core Web Vitals for your SEO audit.
You can check them using Google Search Console in the Experience sections under Core Web Vitals. This will show you Desktop and Mobile reports listing any issues and all the affected pages. You can then follow Google’s instructions to fix any issues.
Conducting a comprehensive SEO audit can be tricky, especially if you don’t have the right SEO software and tools to do the job correctly. If you know your company needs an SEO audit but don’t have the time, skills, or resources to complete one, it might be time to seek the help of an experienced SEO agency.
The team at Logica Digital has over 15 years of experience in SEO strategy and digital marketing. Our comprehensive SEO audit service checks what’s working, what isn’t and what we can improve. Our expert team will then make any necessary tweaks to your site and continually monitor its performance to ensure everything runs smoothly!
We offer a free digital marketing audit which includes checking the performance of your site, as well as your broader SEO performance and any other aspects of marketing that you need help with.
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