How to Create a Good SEO Audit

1. What is an SEO audit?
2. Why you should carry out an audit
3. What is important in an SEO audit?
4. What does an SEO audit include and how do you create one?
5. Content Audit
6. Offpage Audit
7. Merge data and prioritize
8. SEO Audit: The checklist
9. How long does an SEO audit take?
10. What does an SEO audit cost?
11. Conclusion

The basis of every good SEO strategy is the SEO audit.

What exactly that is, what it isn't, and where you should focus your attention, is explained by our guest author Maurice Marinelli in this guest article. Above all, he shows you what a real SEO audit consists of.

With the tips from his post, you are ready to create your own audit or at least to brief your SEO responsible parties.

What is an SEO audit?

Basically, an SEO audit is an analysis of the status quo of a website in terms of search engine optimization. As so often, there is no exact definition of individual terms in the field of online marketing. Same applies to SEO audit. If you take a cross-sectional look at the audit landscape, there seems to be many interpretations of what it is, what its scope is, and what it can and should cost. Here's a brief definition: Besides the audit, there are other terms that sound similar, but are actually very different. If you google 'SEO audit', you will sooner or later come across the following terms: 

• SEO audit
• SEO analysis
• SEO check

What the differences are, you can see in this overview:

Why you should carry out an audit

A sensible and extensive SEO audit should always be the basis of a long-term SEO strategy. Because in search engine optimization the rule is: No measure without a view of the long-term effects and the big picture. Simply optimizing at random will rarely get you anywhere. The rankings and the factors behind them are too volatile and numerous. Unstructured SEO measures cost above all one thing: valuable time in which competitors can already do a lot right and pull away in the search results. Activism has rarely a place in search engine optimization. The main reasons why an audit is done are: 

1. Determination of the status quo

• Strategy finding
• Prioritization of measures
• Status quo: Where are we actually?

Determining the current status of search engine optimization is the least an SEO audit should be able to do. Specifically, this means checking the website or online store in all disciplines important to search engines for heart and kidneys. We will get to which disciplines these are later. 

2. Finding the right strategy through an SEO audit

In advance a small disclaimer: In this article I deal with audits on a larger scale. This does not mean that audits for smaller or websites with local focus are not just as important. However, you should always ask yourself: Is a complete audit in all areas of the website necessary? Depending on the goal and purpose of the website or online store, certain areas may be more important. SEO is really not about ticking off lists found on the internet. Because the prerequisites for this are much too different. The real power of an audit unfolds with the interpretation of the data, which you collect during it. This allows you to find a suitable and individual strategy. This also applies if you outsource the SEO project to a freelancer or an agency.

3. Prioritizing measures: What is really important?

Someone who is just starting out with SEO often asks one thing above all: Where do I start? What is most important? Which measure has a directly assignable effect on the visibility? A new title here, tweaking the loading time there, or maybe even doing something on the internal linking? The knowledge landscape online is - especially in the field of SEO - very large. That's a good thing. But: If you don't have insight into various projects, you quickly fall into activism and get stuck in small things that have no direct influence on the ranking. If then the allocated budget becomes tight or the executive suite demands early results, many an SEO project has been scrapped. A proper SEO audit provides a remedy here. Because: A core competence in search engine optimization is to prioritize measures. Once you know where you currently stand and what you should do, it is much easier for you to order the individual to-dos according to impact. This, in turn, allows you to achieve results faster than if you optimize wildly. In addition, there are other very good reasons to conduct an SEO audit:

• Before an SEO campaign, to assess effort and costs within the framework of an offer
• To execute the operative SEO measures (possibly with mentoring) yourself
• To determine a basis for budget planning
• To evaluate freelancers or SEO agencies on a larger project
• The question of the “when” is also interesting

In a perfect SEO world, audits are done at regular intervals. Therefore, check your website more often with an SEO audit and you will (inevitably) find things that are currently holding back your website from playing at the top. In this case, the audit does not need to be as extensive as an initial one.

What is important in an SEO audit?

At least at this point, opinions diverge and I therefore once again refer to my initial definition: An SEO audit should consist of more than mere data collection. Rather, the correct interpretation of the data in the context of the respective use and goal of the website is decisive. This means in detail:

1. Create a concrete action catalog instead of bare analyses

Do not just analyze for the sake of analyzing. Try to use the data to identify what your next concrete steps are. Empathy is definitely required here. Put yourself in the shoes of your developers and give them directly actionable recommendations on the way.

2. Understand the role of SEO in the overall context

Search engine optimization and organic traffic is always only a part of the truth in the online marketing mix. It may well be that some technical aspects of the website or certain pages are not “ideal” for SEO and do not deliver any added value. But consider: often there are applications or pages on the website for a specific reason. Only having the SEO glasses on can be extremely harmful. A simple practical example from the area of Shopify SEO, which illustrates this context: An online store with an extremely high number of categories, which from a product perspective actually often contain the same thing. From an SEO perspective, this would have been a clear case: cannibalization - delete - done. But: a look in advance at the complete marketing of the shop reveals that many apparently redundant categories for SEO were created for performance marketing campaigns. In this case, the actual recommendation “Delete” would of course have been fatal, because these campaigns would literally have lost their basis (the category as a landing page). Not to mention the effort to undo this. The moral of the story: As an SEO responsible person, listen beforehand to how leads or sales are generated and take this into account in your recommendations for SEO.

3. Show possibilities beyond grievances

A goal of an SEO audit is - remember - to find the strategy. You will especially succeed in this if you research potentials that are currently still outside your website. By that I mean specifically: What are unused topic areas, where do PR opportunities offer themselves, which quick wins in keywords do you get with the Google Search Console. To drastically increase your reach, it is important that you know the market potential and the weaknesses of your competitors. It's important to remember not only to look at what's already there, but to focus on the possibilities. After all, you want to gain market shares with the SEO strategy, right?

What does an SEO audit include and how do you create one?

Let's get to the practical part: What should be in a proper audit? Basically, a professional SEO audit consists of several sub-audits. What exactly these sub-audits are and which ones make sense, I will explain to you now. Again the note: Weigh up whether it makes sense to subject the respective sub-area to an audit. Because although it is important to make an audit extensive, it also does not benefit if it is unnecessarily bloated. So here: Use your head. There is no set procedure for an audit. If you ask ten SEOs, you will get 10 answers. However, you should take a close look at the following things on and outside the website to be examined.

1. Objectives

How is SEO supposed to help us? You can only answer this if you understand exactly what the goals of the website or the shop are. As part of an SEO audit, you should first get to the bottom of this in order to be able to pay into it precisely with the SEO strategy later on.

Suitable tools:

• Conversations with sales/marketing

2. Competitor landscape

Who are we really competing with? This is also a decisive question at the beginning. What is often forgotten: SEO is a 100% competition discipline. There are no more available (relevant) places than the positions on the first page. Even there, the clicks are nowadays rare. That means: If you want to go up, someone else has to give way. Therefore, take a close look at at least your top 3 competitors. When selecting them, make sure to research the competitors based on the business model and the keyword set. Again, a slightly deeper understanding of the product or the offered service is required. Depending on the scope of your audit, the guiding questions for the competitor analysis should be:

• What SEO strategy are they pursuing?
• What keywords do they cover?
• What are the gaps in the content?

Suitable tools:

• SISTRIX  
• Ahrefs
• Semrush

3. Analytics

The basis for many further optimizations on your website: clean data. Invest some time at the beginning to evaluate your analysis tools. In a so-called analytics audit you can uncover discrepancies and counteract incorrect recommendations.

Suitable Tools:

• Google Analytics
• Matomo 

4. Penalties

This point too is essential. Even though this does not often happen, you should always check if any manual measures (penalties) have been taken against your website or shop. If you have set up your Google Search Console, you can easily check this under the section “Manual Measures”. If you want to be on the safe side, also quickly check the domain in the Internet Archive. Have harmful content ever been on it and are there possibly old loads?

Suitable tools:

• Google Search Console
• Web Archive

5. Technical SEO

Now let's get to the content directly on the site. There are a few essential topics that you should definitely take a closer look at. Mistakes in these areas mean a potential knockout. Experience has shown that audits are often unnecessarily inflated at this point. This is then usually due to the fact that the “audit” is performed automatically by an SEO tool. An SEO audit tool that replaces a professional interpretation of the data and suggests sensibly interconnected action recommendations, does not (yet) exist. Therefore, you should take a closer look at the following areas.

6. Index management

What does Google actually have in the index from the website and, probably even more importantly: If something is not in the index - why not? You should definitely check this:

• robots.txt
• noindex tags
• Sitemap(s)
• Canonicalization
• Status Codes
• URL structures

The indexing of your website is a key factor. Because what cannot be indexed cannot be found either and therefore contributes in 0% of the cases to traffic.

Suitable tools:

• Google Search Console 
• Screaming Frog 

7. Onpage factors

The audit should definitely include an onpage analysis. You can execute this part mainly automated by using tools. Classic factors for onpage optimization for this part of the audit are for example:

• Meta data
• Heading structures
• Image optimization
• User experience

The influence of the user experience on the ranking of a website is becoming more and more important. Check whether users can really navigate the website and perform desired actions. You should check this in an SEO audit:

• Mobile usability
• Core Web Vitals
• Accessibility
• Analysis of the actual user behavior on the website

Suitable tools:

• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics 
• Ryte 
• Hotjar  

Content Audit

As shown further up, technical factors can shoot a website completely into the abyss - but these factors can be quickly excluded. Afterwards, you should definitely turn to the content on your website. Keyword: Content Audit. Depending on the focus and goal of the website you are auditing, the Content Audit can then be the biggest lever for your website. Which contents a Content Audit should have, I explain to you here:

1. Current keyword set

First, you should check for which keywords the website is already ranking. With common SEO tools you can identify the basic of the current visibility. Ask yourself these questions in particular:

• What are our focus keywords?
• Which keywords contribute directly or indirectly to corporate goals?
• What topic areas result from this?
• Do these match the current website structure?

Suitable Tools:

• Google Search Console
• SISTRIX 
• Ahrefs

2. Desired keyword set

Based on this, it is important to find out where new potentials lie. The approaches to this can be varied. A tried and tested method in search engine optimization is to look at what (relevant) keywords the competition covers. You can do this with a Content Gap Analysis, for example. Based on the keywords from the first part, it is probably worth further expanding the topic areas (clusters). For this purpose, the good old keyword research is recommended.

Suitable tools:

• Google Search Console
• SISTRIX 
• Ahrefs

3. Low Hanging Fruits

Let's be honest: No one likes to wait forever for results, so you should pay special attention to these fruits in the SEO audit: The Low Hanging Fruits. In this context, these are the keywords that are already within reach for the really good positions. These are the positions within striking distance of the top 3. With SEO keyword tools or the Google Search Console you can find true nuggets. Remember at this point to become concrete in terms of the measures. You can ask yourself:

• What are the low hanging fruits?
• What do we need to do to improve for the respective keywords?

Suitable tools:

• Google Search Console
• SISTRIX 
• Ahrefs

4. Search Intent

Meeting the search intention is not a ranking factor, but a prerequisite to be ranked. Therefore, you should pay special attention to this and investigate each important URL in this regard. You want to know this in this part of the audit:

Does the content of a specific URL meet the expectations of the searcher?

Do we need other formats or content elements to fulfill this? If yes, which ones? Little practical tip: It makes sense to make a list with all important URLs (which you identified above) and to find out the “target intent” for each one. This is very time-consuming, but unconditional.

Suitable tools:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console 
• Google SERP

5. Evaluate contents

If you have a blog or a magazine, also look at all the content in it under the following aspects:

• Does this content offer added value or is it a mere “SEO text”?
• Which contents overlap and are redundant?
• Does this content contribute anywhere in the customer journey to our goals?

Depending on how long you have been working on the blog or magazine, you will be surprised how many contents can actually be deleted or merged.

Suitable tools:

• Screaming Frog
• Seobility
• Manual Evaluation

6. Internal Linking Structure

Users and search engines alike love to be guided through a website in a structured way. Therefore, during your SEO audit, you should take a look at the internal linking. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is every page linked internally?
• Are certain pages difficult to reach from the home page?
• Are the internal anchor links chosen sensibly?
• Is there a link internally within the content hubs?
• Are there broken internal links?

Suitable tools:

• Screaming Frog
• Ahrefs 
• Ryte 

Offpage Audit

As the third major pillar in search engine optimization, offpage optimization is still regarded after all. In your SEO audit, you should examine this part depending on the size of your website.

Backlink Audit

When you do an SEO audit, it is very likely that the domain you are examining already has backlinks. With a backlink audit it is less about checking every single link, but rather about identifying trends. You should check this:

• How many backlinks do we have?
• What quality does our link profile have?
• How does these metrics compare to our competitors
• What quality do the anchor texts have?
• Are there spam links?
• Are there broken external links?
• What link opportunities arise?

Suitable backlink tools:

• Ahrefs 
• LinkResearchTools

Merge data and prioritize

If you created your SEO audit according to the above guidelines, it is now time to merge and process the data. It is important to remember who is supposed to implement your recommendations and therefore to provide information as specifically as possible. Also, prioritize tasks according to the impact, as a comprehensive audit can quickly include 100+ pages.

SEO Audit: The checklist

This means for you when you create an audit:

• Don't do anything off the shelf. It will only very unlikely work.
• Show opportunities instead of just evaluating the status quo
• Prioritize according to the impact on visibility - not everything has to be implemented immediately
• Ask the right questions and keep in mind who will later implement the measures
• Analyze what is relevant for the specific purpose of the website or shop

You should analyze these overarching areas as part of an SEO audit:

• Goals of the website
• Competitors
• Data validity
• Penalties
• Technical SEO
• Index management
• Onpage factors
• User Experience
• Content on the website
• Keyword set currently and potentially
• Search Intent
• Backlinks

How long does an SEO audit take?

Depending on the number and extent of the URLs examined, an SEO audit lasts from several hours to several (working) days. But here, too, keep in mind: Depending on how big the project is and where you put your focus, an SEO audit will take different lengths of time. Plus, there's the question of who implements the audit and what experience they have. Is it implemented internally or does an external agency do it? All these are factors that make a flat statement difficult.

What does an SEO audit cost?

What would be better fitting here than the SEO statement par excellence: “depends”. Making a fixed statement here would not do justice to the diversity of the SEO landscape. No one would walk into a car dealership and ask: “What does a car cost?”, right? Every SEO has a different focus and therefore already sets different priorities in the audit - which in consequence require different efforts, which is also totally correct. This results in very different pricing models for SEO audits. SEO analyses, checks, and audits can cost anything from free to 5-figure amounts. It is important that you differentiate between the different terminologies. Do not compare only based on price, as the service SEO audit can vary greatly. As a rough comparison if you compare offers, can serve:

• How many URLs are analyzed?
• What is the focus (Caution: with “technical” audits many factors are often analyzed that have only little influence on the ranking)
• What billing model is used (by URLs or flat rate?)
• Which tools are particularly suitable for an SEO audit?

For a proper audit, you need different tools. The one that combines all data and at the same time interprets it, does not exist, as said (yet). So definitely rely on your most important SEO tool: Your brain. You can find the rest of the tools for SEO audits here at OMR Reviews. I've already revealed to you above which tools I use in our audits. With these tools you can perform an SEO audit:

• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• SISTRIX
• Ahrefs 
• Screaming Frog
• Semrush 
• Ryte

Conclusion

You now have an overview of what an SEO audit is and what it should include. To go back to my initial question, what really makes an SEO audit good: it is always really good when it not only points the finger at the wound, but contains concrete and prioritized action recommendations. This presupposes that SEO is placed in a larger picture in corporate communication and marketing. From there, an audit is extremely helpful in finding the right strategy.