How to properly perform an SEO audit?

Doing and implementing an SEO audit opens up any effective SEO strategy. In order to achieve good organic results and increase traffic to the site, the audit must be done correctly and consider all the necessary elements that Google indicates within the webmaster guidelines.

What tools do you need to have access to in order to perform an SEO audit?

Conducting an SEO audit without access to tools is impossible. Which tools you should use depends on your needs and requirements. We have a number of different tools on the market, both Polish and foreign.

We will need tools that allow us to verify, among other things, the site’s structure, construction, quality and originality of the content, keywords, organic visibility, traffic, incoming links, any problems with the server, and indexation.

The vast majority of these listed elements cannot verify „on foot” or would take far too much time. That’s why, among others, such tools as:

come to our aid.

• Google Search Console – a free tool that allows you to monitor the status and position of your website
• Google Analytics – a free tool to analyze website traffic
• Senuto – a paid platform for planning, analysis and optimization of Google search activities
• SemRush – a paid platform for planning, conducting and analyzing paid and organic online activities in multiple markets
• Ahrefs – a paid platform for analyzing websites’ link profile and their technical problems
• MajesticSEO – a paid platform for analyzing the link profile of websites
• Page Speed Insights – a free tool from Google to evaluate and analyze page load time and Basic Internet Indicators
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider – a paid software program with which you can analyze your website for optimization
• SurferSEO – a paid tool that provides support in creating SEO-optimized content using AI solutions
• CopyScape – a tool that allows to verify the originality of content on the site
• Google Keywords Planner – a free tool within the Google Ads platform to help select keywords for SEO
• Semstorm – a paid platform that supports work on the visibility of a website in search results

Why is installing Google Analytics and Google Search Console necessary for an SEO audit?

Google Analytics is an essential tool for any online marketing activity. This is primarily because with its help, we can analyze the traffic and conversions from the various channels in which we conduct our activities very accurately.

Adequately configured Google Analytics answers most questions related to the effectiveness of our activities. Of course, such data is worth including in the SEO audit because, with their help, we can determine the organic traffic and conversions generated from it so far and estimate the results for the future.

The data we have is worth including in the SEO audit because, with their help, we can determine the organic traffic and conversions generated from it so far and estimate the results for the future.

Google Search Console, on the other hand, is the only way of communication between Google and the site owner. This is where, in addition to analytical data on our site’s visibility, we also receive alerts on the site’s current performance and indexation level in Google search. This type of data is among the key data in an SEO audit.

What access to the analyzed site should we have in order to perform an SEO audit?

To ensure that the SEO audit performed is complete, it is useful to have access not only to the site’s Google Analytics and Search Console but also to its CMS. In some cases, access to the site’s server and DNS may also be useful, but this is not a necessity.

The site’s server and DNS can also be accessed.

Is it worthwhile to prepare the structure/list of audit elements we want to check for ourselves in advance?

If you want to conduct a full and effective SEO audit of a website, it is worth having a checklist prepared in advance of all the elements you need to check each time. This is the only way to ensure that nothing important is missed during the analysis.

The audit template prepared in advance, however, can not be a rigid framework because even though we check a specific group of indicators for most sites, the sites can differ significantly from each other, and the creativity of non-SEO errors is infinite.

Crawl the site using SEO tools – why is it worth performing it even before the audit begins?

To perform an SEO audit, one usually uses tools that crawl the site page by page. Examples include Screaming Frog and Ahrefs. The first tool mentioned allows us to set the frequency and speed of crawling so that the server does not load with a large number of queries at once.

For large sites, once this speed is reduced, the tool’s analysis process can be very long, sometimes even hours. Therefore, it is worthwhile to start this automatic analysis even a day before our planned audit to have ready the full data we will use.

What elements does a proper SEO audit consist of?

A correct SEO audit consists, as a rule, of 4 main elements:

• On-site audit – technical analysis of the site for errors and inconsistencies with the Webmaster Guidelines, as well as analysis of the quality and quantity of content on the website
• Off-site audit – analysis of a given website’s environment, incoming links, analysis of competition and linked keywords
• List of optimization recommendations – a list of elements to improve on the site created after the audit
• Recent post-implementation audit – verification that all errors identified in the audit have been implemented on the website

What should we get as a result of the conducted audit?

Any SEO audit conducted should result in the aforementioned optimization recommendations, which are intended to best adapt the site to the search engine’s requirements.

Such recommendations usually consist of a list of elements that need interference and a suggestion on how to fix them. They are later also the basis for conducting a post-implementation audit.

These recommendations are also used as a basis for a post-implementation audit.

How to construct understandable conclusions from an audit?

When preparing a list of optimization recommendations, it is a good idea to divide the elements to be changed according to priority, starting with those that have the greatest impact on its correct functioning and organic visibility and ending with those „side ones”, so that it is clear at a glance where to start implementing changes.

The second important element is the very form of constructing and verbalizing conclusions. Very often, we do not know what level of knowledge of SEO the person who will receive the materials we prepared has. Therefore, it is worthwhile to briefly describe each element we discuss, considering a brief definition of what it is, what it should look like for a given site, and what it looks like now.

The third most important part is, of course, the information on how we suggest solving a given problem on the site. It is also worth noting which of the errors we indicate can be fixed, for example, from the site’s CMS level and which may require the intervention of a programmer.

How to construct SEO guidelines for copywriters creating optimized content for the site?

As a result of an audit, it very often turns out that there is a need to create additional content for the site to be able to implement the SEO strategy we have adopted. When preparing a brief for copywriters, it is worth including in it as much information as possible that can be useful in creating text that meets our expectations. These may include:

• content plan for the near future
• list of keywords to be included, along with the frequency in which they should appear
• expected text length
• structure in which the text is to be created
• whether metadata title and description are to be written
• whether internal linking is to be included
• what materials the copywriter is to use at the research stage

How to support the client in implementing the audit?

In many cases, the implementation of changes from the SEO audit is left to the client’s in-house efforts or is carried out by the site’s original author. In cases where we know that our clients have little SEO knowledge themselves, it is worthwhile to communicate with the people making the changes we suggest so that the whole process goes smoothly.

Through such involvement, we will be sure that everything we included in the audit was understood as we expected and will be implemented effectively. In many cases, services have a number of technical limitations, which require improvising to achieve the expected results. In such a situation, it is also worth keeping the proverbial hand on the pulse.

The audit will also be a great success.

Post-implementation audit – why should you not forget about it?

Of course, the post-implementation re-audit should undoubtedly not be forgotten when auditing and optimizing a site. In practice, it is simply going through our list of optimization recommendations again, point by point, and verifying that they were implemented and that this was done correctly. If some items were missed or errors were found, return to the contractor with additional comments. This will allow us to be sure that the site in question was adjusted to Google’s requirements really well.