Staying on top of SEO is critical for any business with aspirations to expand their digital presence. Whether you’re a start-up looking to grow your search engine presence from scratch or an established brand fine-tuning your strategy, regular SEO audits ensure your website remains competitive within your industry.
How to do an SEO Audit
To carry out an SEO audit, start by assessing the technical health of your site, including loading speed, mobile responsiveness and security.
You’ll need a handy online tool like SEMrush and Google Search Console, ready to collect the data. This process will reveal strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement.
Then you can move onto on-page elements like meta tags, keyword usage and content relevance. Check crawlability and indexation to ensure search engines can access your content.
Struggling to rank? Or not sure what your next SEO steps should be. Get in touch for a site audit and let us find out what’s not working.
A thorough audit not only uncovers hidden issues but also reveals fresh opportunities for visibility and traffic. In this SEO audit guide, we explore five effective methods to maximise your audit outcomes. These tips apply across industries, whether you’re working in healthcare, finance or travel and more.
1. Audit On-Page SEO
An effective SEO audit should review whether each page is targeting the right keywords and appealing to user search intent.
Focus on making each page as clear and relevant as possible. Are your headings properly nested? Do your title tags use keywords naturally without being repetitive? Are meta descriptions enticing but accurate?
Improving on-page elements can clarify the purpose of each page for both users and search engines. An audit is the best time to strip any bloated or repeated elements.
Good practice also involves reviewing placement. Too many internal links in one section or keyword stuffing will dilute impact. Each page should offer real value with content that flows naturally and logically.
Plus, with mobile-first indexing fast becoming the norm, ensuring your site is responsive is no longer optional.
2. Check Indexation and Crawlability
Ensuring that your content is being properly indexed and crawled by search engines is a key part of the audit process. A site might have excellent content, but if it’s not indexed, it won’t appear in search results. And so a site that’s difficult for search engines to navigate will lead to lower rankings.
Use the Page Indexing report in Google Search Console to see which pages are being indexed and which are not. Pay close attention to noindex tags and sitemap.xml submissions. These elements can unintentionally end up blocking valuable content from being crawled.
Also, check whether any low-value or duplicate pages are unnecessarily indexed, which can dilute your site’s SEO strength. Cleaning up what’s indexed will sharpen the focus of your entire domain.
3. Review Page Speed and Content Length
When carrying out an SEO audit, speed and content length are two areas that can significantly affect your rankings. A sluggish site can frustrate users and reduce engagement, while excessively long or short content can signal a lack of clarity or depth.
Use Google PageSpeed Insights to measure loading times and discover performance issues. Look for delays caused by uncompressed images, large JavaScript files or excessive CSS. Speed improvements will lead to lower bounce rates and higher conversion potential.
For content, assess whether your pages are meeting the average word count expectations for your industry and topic. According to Search Engine Journal, longer content tends to perform better when it remains relevant and well structured. However, quality should never be sacrificed for quantity.
Now check for thin content pages that offer little value or duplicate information. These can also reduce your overall SEO strength. As you might be realising, there’s a whole lot of things that can sap up your SEO strength.
This is why you need to constantly be identifying opportunities to expand underdeveloped pages that are ranking poorly or start targeting interesting, unique and competitive keywords.
Striking the right balance between concise messaging and comprehensive coverage is one of the most effective SEO audit best practices for improving content performance.
4. Internal Linking and Site Structure
A clear and logical internal linking structure supports better crawlability, distributes link equity and helps users find information more easily. During the audit, map out your internal links and site hierarchy to ensure they support your most important pages.
Use crawl tools to identify orphaned pages that receive no internal links, as these can be difficult for search engines to discover. Ensure that high-priority content is linked from your navigation or key landing pages.
Check whether your site follows a logical depth structure. Important content should be no more than three clicks from the homepage. This SEO audit best practice handily covers both UX and SEO.
5. Evaluate Backlink Quality
Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals in Google’s algorithm. But it’s not simply about quantity.
A successful SEO audit evaluates both the number and quality of your inbound links.
Use tools like SE Ranking or SEMrush to pull a backlink report and look for patterns. Are most links from relevant sites? Are any coming from spammy domains? Poor-quality links can do more harm than good.
If needed,consider disavowing suspicious domains to prevent them from affecting your rankings. More importantly, identify your best links and use them as a blueprint for future outreach. Backlink analysis is one of the SEO audit best practices that can often be overlooked in favour of technical or on-page reviews.
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If you’re looking to optimise your site without the hassle of ever touching an SEO audit, we’re here to help businesses of all sizes unlock their full SEO potential. So whether you’re building from scratch or refining a current strategy, our team delivers clear, measurable results.
If you’re unsure where to begin and saddled with a site in need of a spruce up, get in touch with us for a tailored SEO strategy that reveals what’s working, what’s not and how to improve it.
