Table of contents
An SEO audit is one of the first and key elements of SEO. It should inaugurate SEO activities for a site to achieve high organic results in the future. Any further SEO activities planned in the strategy are worth starting only after the audit.
What are the most important elements of an SEO audit that should be included to be considered complete?
Every SEO audit should consist of three main parts: on-site analysis, off-site analysis, and optimization recommendations. Only an audit containing these three key elements can we consider complete and start implementing the changes recommended by the specialist.
On-site analysis is an analysis of a site’s technical elements and operation in the context of Google’s Guidelines for Webmasters. These guidelines describe the specific conditions that a site must meet to appear in organic search results.
Off-site analysis is an analysis of a given site’s environment in the search engine. It consists, among other things, of analyzing the competition, the originality of the site’s content in relation to the content found on the Internet, and the links pointing to the domain.
Optimization recommendations summarise the analysis’s conclusions, telling us what on our site we should change to achieve good organic positions.
What determines the timing of an SEO audit?
The execution time of an SEO audit is always determined by the size of the site to be analyzed and can range from a few hours to a few days or weeks. It is known that side factors such as the workload of a given specialist or company also come into play here, but the most important factor here will always be how many sub-pages there are within a given site.
The audit will always be determined by the site size to be analyzed.
How long does an SEO audit of a small website take?
A small website audit usually takes a specialist longer than a few hours to complete. By small website here, we mean a site that is more of a concise showcase of the company, containing a few pages, the most important information about the company, and a bit of content in the form of, for example, news, than a site describing dozens of services on separate subpages.
Optimization recommendations from an audit of a small website are also usually not long or complicated; a small site usually has few errors to fix.
How long does a blog SEO audit take?
The duration of a blog audit is already much more difficult to assess unequivocally since blogs sometimes vary greatly, and their size usually depends on how long they have been running.
Auditing a freshly created blog that literally has a few excerpts will not take more than a few hours, just like a small website. In contrast, a large blog that has been maintained for many years by several authors at the same time can mean many days of audit work. In the case of a blog, the duration of its audit should be determined individually by a specialist dedicated to this task.
How long does an SEO audit of a large service company website take?
By large service company site, we mean one with many services described on dedicated subpages. A large service company website may have between 300 and 500 subpages, so its audit will be more time-consuming. For the audit of such a site, it is worth assuming 5 to 7 working days.
How long does an SEO audit of a small online store take?
A small online store containing a dozen or so products will generally not differ significantly in size from the previous case I described, the website of a large service company. It will usually have 500 subpages at most. Therefore, its duration is unlikely to be more than seven working days.
How long does an audit of a large online store take?
A professional SEO audit of a large online store, on the other hand, will be one of the most time-consuming audits. Large online stores can have thousands of products in their offerings and, thus, thousands of pages indexed by Google. This, of course, involves analyzing both a huge structure, many keywords, and the content itself.
The length of such an audit is judged individually by the specialist responsible for it. Still, it is worth assuming that it is unlikely to take less than 14 working days, and we should not be surprised if it is an even longer process.
Summary
The duration of an SEO audit is hard to determine „in advance” without looking at the website in question. Still, it depends primarily on the website’s size, individually assessed by the se professional and can range from a few hours to several working days. So, when looking for an answer to the question „how long will an SEO audit take?” you need to go to the person who will conduct it and get the answer that is closest to reality, based on what kind of site you come with.
Let's talk!
She has 11 years of professional experience, she started her career at the Emarketing Experts agency as a junior SEO specialist. In addition to website positioning, she was responsible for conducting 360° marketing projects as an Account Manager at They.pl. She worked for companies from the financial sector (Bank Millennium, Bank Meritum, Finai S.A.) and e-commerce (e.g. Black Red White, Autoland, Mumla). At Up&More, he is responsible for, among others, SEO projects for Panek Car Sharing, Amerigas, Interparking, H+H and Autoplaza.