What does an “SEO Audit” entail exactly?

Introduction

Just as an architect carefully plans how a building will be built, your SEO agency must carefully plan how they are going to implement your businesses SEO.

For example, there’s no point in an SEO agency spending a vast amount of time building high-quality backlinks unless the website has good on-site SEO.

How the SEO consultant know if the business has good on-site SEO?

Well, the SEO consultant will need to undertake what is called an “SEO audit”.

Within this article we will explain what an SEO audit is and why agencies use it to evaluate how good a business’s backlinks are, on-site SEO and the businesses content marketing for example.

Therefore, when you hire a digital marketing agency they should spend a long time about evaluating your businesses SEO.

For example, they should evaluate:

·        Businesses backlinks

·        Content marketing

·        On-site SCO

·        Meta titles

·        Meta descriptions

·        Anchor text

Evergreen content marketing

·        Business citations

·        And much more

Each SEO agency might have a different SEO audit that they carry out

Sometimes some businesses here in Cardiff they may think that all SEO companies will offer the same work, however this is not the case, that’s the say often different SEO agencies will offer different work.

Therefore, when one company says that there will undertake SEO audit, this might not be as detailed as what another company can offer.

Therefore, it’s like a mechanic checking over a car, you might have some mechanics which are diligent which will check everything from the car’s oil levels, right through to making sure that everything is running as it should such as the level of fuel and oxygen mixture.

However, on the other hand you might have a careless mechanic that just does the minimum, this is exactly the same when you are picking a digital marketing agency.

Some will offer a very diligent approach and check everything from the quality of your website backlinks, where some others might not check anything, and go straight into trying to optimise the website which is the wrong approach.

We say the wrong approach because simply put the first thing that your SEO consultant should do is carry out an SEO audit to make sure that there are no penalties on the website and to evaluate how they are going to improve the website.

For example, a marketing agency often only has a set amount of hours that they can spend to improving a business’s SEO every single month.

So, an SEO agency should carry out an SEO audit right at the start, as otherwise they will not know which areas they need to improve, and which areas will bring about the best return in the shortest time unless they carry out an SEO audit.

For example, without an SEO audit often the business will not be able to spot duplicated content marketing.

Now, as a good digital marketing agency will know if the website does has duplicated content marketing then this could hamper the businesses SEO performance, so this needs to be rectified.

Also, if the business has any algorithmic or manual penalty that’s imposed on the site, then this need to be rectified before any further SEO work is carried out.

How will the SEO agency know if there are any algorithmic or manual penalty is imposed on the website? They will need to undertake an SEO audit.

It’s important that the SEO consultant fixes any errors

For example, some agencies might state that they are going to build so many backlinks in the first month, however they should first look at the current backlink profile, and see if these backlinks are of good-quality, as if they don’t they might miss that the website has a penalty imposed on it right from the start.

If the website has a penalty on it right from the start, then this means that the SEO performance is hampered and this needs to be rectified before any further work is carried out.

Backlinks

It’s important that the agency evaluates the quality of the business’s backlinks, and if the website has any penalties imposed that these are rectified.

Therefore, we highly recommend that whichever agency use, that you ask whether they have a backlinks specialist within the agency.

It’s all well and good having copywriters who can write the content marketing, on-site and off-site SEO specialists, you should also have an expert in backlinks as well.

Then they will be able to quickly see if the quality of the backlinks are good, or whether the website possibly has a penalty imposed on the website?

Content marketing

Then our agency often moves onto evaluating the quality of the businesses content marketing, for example if a previous SEO agency has been working on the onsite SEO, and they’ve only added a few blog posts which are just a few hundred words, yet they are poorly written then this will need to be rectified.

That’s because low-quality SEO will hold the website back so this means that be rectified prior to any good quality white hat SEO being applied to the website.

On-site SEO

Evergreen content marketing

Sometimes some businesses in Cardiff will opt for the cheapest web design quote, for example they might ask 10 various agencies for a web design quote, and then opt for the cheapest quote.

However, because they have opted for the cheapest, sometimes there is only say one brief paragraph of text per page, which means that this is not enough for an SEO agency to optimise at a later date, so that’s to improve the company’s SEO.

Therefore, the SEO company will need to evaluate quality of the content marketing

Missing the important details?

Your SEO consultant during the audit will need to ascertain whether important details are missing, such as the businesses NAP information if this is missing then this could hamper the businesses local SEO.

For example, let’s say that you are electrician and you work in Cardiff, and the web designer has not added NAP information to you website then this could hamper your businesses local SCO.

Therefore, the SEO consultant should work through the website and should spot opportunities where they can quickly improve the businesses SEO, sometimes this is adding NAP information to the footer the website or on the contact page.

Need pages

Does your website need new pages?

For example, you might task a Cardiff digital marketing agency with improving your businesses organic SEO, let’s say that you are a plumber and you want to be on the first page for emergency plumber.

However, if you have not got a page on your plumbing website for “emergency plumber” then the SEO agency should explain that is very hard to optimise for this term unless you have a dedicated page for emergency plumber on your website.

Therefore, the agency should recommend that a new page is designed for emergency plumber.

Do you require a Cardiff SEO company?

Often small businesses in Cardiff try to improve their SEO themselves, however if the company implements low-quality SEO and then business could incur a penalty which could mean that it drops down the ranks.

Therefore, sometimes it’s better to leave the work to a white hat and well-known SEO agency like Top Space.

Must be white hat

There are so many companies that offer free seo audit reports, yet you as the businessowner may well be thinking, well what is included in an seo report?

Well its kind of like a garage that sells used cars, where some claim “every car passes a rigorous inspection before we sell the car”- well sure, but what does that entail?

One garage may check over 200 parts of car, and then document what has  been checked, while another may just give the wheels a kick to see if they have air in them- so it really does vary from business to business.

And from our experience this is the same for SEO, that’s to say some businesses may charge for an SEO report that is very detailed, really well written, and written by an SEO expert.

Yet another business may well just use an automated programme that doesn’t tell you much at all, other than it thinks a few meta titles are too long, there’s one or two spelling mistakes, and you could add a H1 tag on a few more pages- well that’s not likely to be much use to anyone.

So of course we cant speak for other businesses, and what they put into their SEO reports, however we can say what we put into ours, and before we go any further, we have to add that we do not offer free reports, the reason being is often an SEO consultant will have to spend many hours if the report is to be done properly, that’s to say we believe that many automated programmes are not a substitute for someone who’s been optimising websites for a very long time, like most of our consultants have.

So, what do our consultants normally report on when we write an SEO report?

Page speed

Does your website take a long time to load? If so, this should be fixed, the reason for this is you have to put yourself in your customers shoes for just a second.

So let’s say they are looking to purchase a new fridge / freezer, your website offers free delivery so this has meant that the customer wishes to purchase from you, so they place the item into the basket.

Yet, when the customer then proceeds to pay for the item, the website then becomes very slow, this may then mean you lose that sale, but not just that, your websites bounce rate may even increase.

So this could mean, if your website is slow, and your bounce rate increases substantially, that your SEO could be negatively impacted.

Content thin?

Is your website content thin?

And what does this even mean?

Well, lets say for example that you run a plumbing business, and you specialise in boiler repair and replacement.

Now to describe your boiler repair and replacement service, you have written 2 lines of text, now is this enough?

Well, no is most like the answer, that’s because when GoogleBot, which is the bot used by Google to crawl and index websites, it will most likely have a vague idea about the service that you offer.

Why would this be the case?

Well, let’s take this is an example:

“We are an established business, we pride ourselves on offering high levels of customer satisfaction, if you require a plumber, then why not call our business today”.

Sure, the word “plumber” is used but does the company mention it can replace boilers in detail?

Compare this with another business, that business has over 500 words of quality information explaining that they can repair or replace your boiler, including an FAQ?

So which business is likely to have better SEO?

Well, business number two, if the seo work is white hat.

Does the business have a blog?

Part of an seo audit should be to see if the company has a blog, if so, how regularly does the business update the blog, and is it well-written?

How well written is the content marketing generally?

The SEO consultant who is writing the SEO report should also look at whether the businesses content marketing is high-quality, or not?

So, what do we mean by this?

Well, does the content marketing offer quality and useful information? 

Good onsite SEO?

Has the business managed to implement good onsite seo, and what do we mean by this?

Well, is the following optimised in a white hat way?

·        H1-H6 tags

·        Meta titles and meta descriptions

·        Alt tags

·        Content marketing

·        Anchor text

 

H1 – h6 tags been used?

Have heading tags been used? If so have the SEO agency optimised the heading tags in a white hat way?

AMP and Schema

Has the marketing company created an AMP version of the site, has the business added Schema?

Duplicated content?

Has the business got duplicated content marketing on the site, so for example, have the business copy and pasted text from another business?

If so, duplicated content could create a penalty.

Design

Is the design good, or could website be improved?

White hat?

Is the work white hat?

How we can help:

If your business requires white hat seo, then why not call us?