Why do you need an SEO site audit?

Are you developing a website and planning to promote it in search engines? Or do you already have an established website but want to generate more organic traffic? Then you can’t do without an SEO audit. It is the first and crucial step towards successful SEO optimization. Whether your website has been promoted before or it is a newly launched resource, it is recommended to conduct a comprehensive analysis before starting any promotional activities.

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is a process of assessing whether an internet resource meets search engine requirements. In other words, it is a comprehensive analysis that identifies the errors that hinder successful website ranking in search engines. During an audit, all parameters of the web resource that affect its ranking in search results are examined, weaknesses are identified, improvements are suggested, and a list of necessary corrections is compiled.

Why is an SEO audit of a website important?

A website that is being developed will undergo changes. That’s why regular attention should be given to SEO audits. Essentially, it is a check on the functionality of your web resource. It is particularly relevant for commercial websites (marketplaces, service websites, online stores) as they are an important (if not the primary) source of attracting customers.

When is an SEO audit necessary?

  • The website is in the process of being created or has recently been launched. Ideally, the analysis should be conducted during the project development stage. This allows for consideration of all the necessary factors for promotion and significant time savings in fixing errors in an already «live» resource.
  • Planning to start SEO promotion for an existing website from scratch.
  • The website is already being promoted (or has been promoted in the past), but the results are unsatisfactory.
  • A noticeable significant drop in traffic without apparent reasons.
  • Planning for major changes (such as redesign, changing hosting/domain, or CMS).

There is no «universal» frequency for conducting an SEO audit. It depends on the characteristics of the project and its rate of development. However, the minimum requirement for «active» resources is typically every 3-4 months, as well as after any major updates and when negative trends are observed in analytics tools.

An SEO audit allows you to:

  • Identify the weaknesses of a website and areas for growth. This enables you to prioritize tasks and allocate time to different optimization efforts. Sometimes even small adjustments can quickly show positive results.
  • Find and quickly fix errors on the website. If you regularly work on the website, such as adding products to a catalog, publishing articles, creating new sections, or updating plugins, errors are inevitable. For example, a content manager may upload multiple images daily without optimizing their file sizes. As a result, the webpage speed decreases, and loading time is one of the important ranking factors.
  • Evaluate how SEO efforts impact the website’s performance. When actively working on promoting a website, it’s important to regularly conduct intermediate SEO audits to understand if the chosen direction is correct and to monitor the actions of employees involved in the promotion. For instance, during development work, programmers accidentally changed the URLs of important pages without setting up redirects, which led to a decline in their rankings. An SEO audit can help identify and correct such errors.
  • Timely respond to Google algorithm updates. Search engines regularly change their ranking algorithms, and it’s important to stay updated with these changes. After an algorithm update, webpages receive a new evaluation, which can result in decreased rankings and visibility. Conducting an SEO audit helps determine what needs to be fixed in response to such updates.
  • Obtain valuable data about the website. An SEO audit provides numerous parameters and answers important questions regarding not only SEO but also the overall development of your business. For example, a poor navigation system may be the reason why visitors are not performing desired actions on the website, and a comprehensive analysis will reveal this.
  • Analyze competitors. If you want to stay ahead, it’s necessary to understand how your competitors operate, knowing their strengths and weaknesses. This will make it easier to develop your own effective SEO strategy and optimize your website in a competitive environment. An SEO audit allows you to analyze traffic, semantic core, website structure, usability, content, and other important data about competitor websites.

 

What are the types of website SEO audits?

SEO audit is a comprehensive process that provides various data about a website. Accordingly, it can be divided into several subtypes. Let’s delve into them in more detail.

Technical SEO Audit

It involves a detailed analysis of the technical aspects of a website and allows you to determine:

  • Page loading speed and server response time
  • Correctness of redirect settings
  • Errors in the website’s code, broken links, duplicate pages
  • Proper URL naming, ensuring all links are user-friendly 
  • Correctness of robots.txt and sitemap.xml files
  • Presence of the “Canonical” attribute

Search engine SEO audit

This type focuses on identifying errors in on-page optimization and includes:

  • Analysis of the semantic core and page visibility for priority keywords
  • Indexing checks (completeness, speed, presence of unnecessary or duplicate pages in the index)
  • Evaluation of meta tags and internal linking structure

Content SEO Audit

Analyzing the content of web pages provides insights into:

  • Structuring (presence of H1-H6 headings) and uniqueness of texts
  • Proper display of title and description tags on all content pages
  • Quality of content optimization for search engines (presence of necessary keywords from the collected semantic core, accurate distribution of keywords in the text, alignment with relevant search queries)

Website Usability Analysis

This allows evaluating the user-friendliness of the website. Usability audit includes:

  • General interface analysis (clarity, absence of ambiguity in menus, sections, categories)
  • Testing responsiveness of the website on different devices, operating systems, and browsers
  • Assessing the readability of fonts and texts
  • Analyzing the functionality of the website’s search feature
  • Evaluating the ease of navigation, presence of breadcrumbs, pagination, etc.

Local SEO Audit

This type of audit is relevant for businesses with offline locations. It provides insights into how well a project is optimized for local search and identifies errors that negatively impact the website’s rankings. Key areas of examination include:

  • Company profile in Google services
  • Contact page on the website and its correct formatting
  • Meta tags (whether they indicate the location)
  • User reviews
  • Content optimization considering geographic factors

Depending on the specific needs for an SEO audit, only certain subtypes may be utilized (e.g., content optimization check only). However, conducting a comprehensive analysis is recommended to assess the website from various angles. During consultations with the client, we determine the most relevant type of audit based on their request and whether there is a need for an extensive SEO analysis.

Who fixes the errors identified during an SEO audit?

The purpose of conducting an SEO audit is to correct all the errors found on a website, thereby increasing its value for both search engines and users. The majority of the website optimization work, as well as analysis, is done by an SEO specialist. Web developers, copywriters/content managers may also be involved. However, whether additional specialists are needed and what exactly they need to do is determined directly by the SEO specialist.

Comon Agency team provides a comprehensive solution – in addition to conducting an SEO audit and developing a website optimization strategy, we will help you implement it quickly: we will fix all the identified problems (from technical nuances to the structure of the semantic core), conduct a re-analysis, and create a promotion plan to increase targeted traffic.

Frequently Asked Questions about SEO Audit Service

Why is an SEO audit necessary not only for the website but also for the overall business?

A comprehensive SEO audit allows identifying problems that hinder an increase in website traffic and reveals hidden growth opportunities. If a website has numerous errors, low-quality content, irrelevant meta tags, and other issues, any further actions aimed at promotion simply won’t yield results. Based on the analysis data, a more effective strategy can be developed, contributing to the growth of targeted traffic and, consequently, sales.

How much does a website SEO audit cost?

The price of an SEO audit depends on the size of the website (the number of web pages) and the scope of work required. During the preliminary consultation, we conduct a brief and inform the client of the cost of the SEO analysis for their website. The starting price for an SEO audit is $200.

What is the difference between automated and manual SEO audits?

An automated website audit is performed exclusively by specialized online tools (e.g., Serpstat). Some services (typically with a paid subscription) generate comprehensive reports (such as the number of broken links, website performance evaluation, meta tag errors, etc.), providing a general understanding of the website’s condition. However, an automated audit is more like a quick analysis that gives a basic understanding of what is wrong.

A manual audit conducted by an SEO specialist involves not only identifying the problem but also determining its cause and providing recommendations for resolution.

For example, an automated audit may provide you with the number of backlinks, but it won’t offer advice on whether you should increase the link mass or improve the quality of the links. In other words, with a manual audit, you not only receive a list of errors but also know how to fix them and prevent them in the future.