Knowledge is power. SEO audit – an effective method to check the quality of your own website

What is an SEO audit?

Let’s start at the beginning so that no one has any doubts. An audit is an independent, expert assessment of an organization, system, process, project or product. Regardless of the subject of our analysis, everything takes place in accordance with certain rules, standards, and checklists. So it can be said that it is a form of know-how instruction.

In the world of optimization and positioning, in turn an SEO audit is an analysis of a website’s search engine optimization. It can be used to find areas of improvement for on-page optimization, as well as identify any technical issues that may be hindering a website’s ability to rank. There are different types of audits, each with their own focus and purpose. However, all audits should aim to improve a website’s visibility and organic traffic.

What can an audit solve?

To be honest, nothing. It doesn’t solve, it shows the problems. This includes finding any issues that could be holding your site back from ranking higher in search results. Additionally, an audit can help you track your progress over time and see how your optimization efforts are paying off. A comprehensive audit will give you the most complete picture of your website’s SEO health, but it can also be time-consuming and expensive.

When should it be done?

You should conduct an audit when you first create your website to ensure that it is set up for success. Another situation is rebuilding the website or changing the strategy, as well as updating important algorithms to which you need to adapt. The audit will also help in removing the penalty imposed by the search engine and when the site is taken over from another owner.

Types

There are four main types of SEO audits: technical, on-page, off-page, and competitor.

A technical audit analyzes your website’s infrastructure and looks for any issues that could be holding you back. An on-page audit looks at your website’s content and makes sure it is optimized for search engines. An off-page audit looks at the links pointing to your website and checks their quality. Finally, competitor analysis can help give you ideas for how to improve your site and how to take advantage of opportunities. It also gives you information about who might be trying to take away your traffic.

However, the audit may concern only one selected element on the website, e.g. organic traffic, loading speed, content quality. It is a flexible analytical tool that anyone can use in any way.

What does a comprehensive audit consist of?

First of all, it will go in two ways. The first is the manual checking of the page by an expert, the second is the use of technological tools that will perform automatic work. Both results will allow us to gain access to a holistic result. A comprehensive audit includes things like your site’s structure, content, code, and off-site factors like inbound links and social media engagement.

The most common errors detected during the audit

The SEO world is vast, and it’s easy to overlook something. Sometimes, due to lack of knowledge or appropriate tools, we make mistakes that may cost us a penalty from Google. Practice has shown that most often we have a problem with:

• unoptimized meta tags,
• incorrectly matched keywords,
• no redirects,
• ignoring user experience (UX),
• keyword cannibalization,
• duplicate content,
• maladjustment to mobile devices,
• slow loading speed,
• a large number of low-quality links,
• spam.

Important tips

1. Know what you want to achieve with your audit.
2. Choose the right type of audit for your needs.
3. Make sure it is conducted by an expert in SEO auditing who can provide unbiased and accurate information about how to improve your site’s ranking on search engines. Look at the quality of the audit report, not just its length or price tag, as this will be a good indicator of whether it’s worth paying for one in the first place.
4. The biggest drawback to any type of audit is that they are often too general, failing to take into account the intricacies of individual websites and how they operate.
5. When conducting an audit, pay attention to where your company ranks in comparison to competitors on keywords. If there are key phrases that you’re consistently losing out on to competitors, then there may be something wrong with your website’s visibility.
6. When conducting an SEO audit, don’t forget about other aspects of online marketing such as PPC campaigns or Social Media Marketing (SMM).

Does a free audit make sense?

A free audit might make sense if you’re a small business with a limited budget and you’re just getting started with SEO. However, if you have the budget, it’s worth paying for a comprehensive audit from a reputable firm. A paid audit will give you more actionable insights and recommendations. Unfortunately, free tools are not as accurate as those used by specialists. Accordingly, their results are of questionable quality. They can’t provide in-depth advice or guidance on how to fix your site’s problems. Free audits typically don’t include any analysis or suggestions on how to improve your site’s SEO. So…

Is it worth ordering an audit of an SEO agency?

Yes, it is worth ordering an audit of an agency! A technical audit will help you understand the inner workings of an agency’s website and can identify any potential issues that could be holding it back from ranking higher in search engine results pages. An agency audit can also help you assess the effectiveness of an agency’s current efforts and make recommendations for improvements. Remember that the most important thing is its credibility. Experts have access to all the necessary tools. So you will have access to IT, programming, marketing and promotional competences.

To sum up

Each type of audit serves a different purpose and can help you identify different areas for improvement on your website. It’s important to know the difference so that you can make the best decision about which audit is right for your needs. It is always the first step towards appropriate, high-quality optimization. Without knowledge, we are unable to position. Audit should therefore be a permanent element of the strategy.