What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is the process of auditing a business or brand’s SEO; this includes finding and fixing content, scanning keyword optimisation, identifying page update opportunities and more.

The SEO audit includes:

The purpose of an SEO audit is to understand how well a website is performing, and what improvements could be made to ensure a website or brand is ranking higher on search engines.

A local SEO audit should cover everything in a traditional audit, but also include local SEO factors:

There are five types of SEO that will impact your visibility on search engines that you should be auditing:

When auditing SEO, it’s important to to audit all of these areas to ensure that all aspects of your SEO strategy are reviewed and optimised.

It’s common to see SEO audits that just focus on on-site or technical. But a good SEO strategy looks at these three types of SEO all together to get a full overview of where changes need to be implemented to optimise your website.

To effectively audit your website, you need hard data about your site and your competitors. But you can close your excel sheet – there are site audit tools out there to help you get all the information for your audit.

• Google Search Console: dashboards and reports from Google that give you a direct insight into your rankings and look at how to troubleshoot pressing issues.
  
  
• Insites: fast, comprehensive, and accurate insights into your website's SEO and overall online presence written in plain English to help you, or your clients, understand your SEO results and how to improve them.
  
  
• Semrush or Ahfrefs: if you're an SEO expert, you'll likely already be using these tools. However, if you want to communicate the results of these reports, we'd suggest backing it up with a trackable, easy-to-understand Insites audit.
  
  

SEO is always changing; from trending keywords to competitors trying to outrank you, your visibility on search engines can fluctuate or even deteriorate if you ignore it.

Think of it like a marathon. Rather than short sprints, like when running a marathon, you’re more likely to succeed if you take a steady pace.

So running an SEO audit will allow you to understand what’s changed, from your ranking to the stability of your site’s build.

Once you’ve run your first SEO audit, you can better manage your SEO’s health over time by running regular SEO audits to ensure your website is optimised, allowing for a better user experience and increased traffic.

So you’ve audited a website, you’ve got all the hard data you need, and now you’re looking to understand what you’re looking at and what you’re looking to achieve.

Take the hard work out of running your SEO audit. Run an audit of any website in just 60 seconds when you sign up for Insites and receive an easy to understand, comprehensive overview of your online presence.