What Is an SEO Audit?

Concerned that your website isn’t as visible as it should be? Not seeing the traffic that you should despite your best efforts? While many factors can affect visibility and traffic flow, the problem could be poor search engine optimization (SEO). An SEO audit can help you identify what’s going wrong and where so that you can fix it.

What You Should Know about an SEO Audit

An SEO audit involves taking a deep dive into your website to determine why you’re not ranking as you should. You will need to consider on-page SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO, as well as user experience (UX), and more.

Most audits are multi-layer processes designed to surface information about several key areas, including indexing and crawlability, site architecture, competitor benchmarking, keyword research, and your backlink profile, to name just a few.

 Why Does an SEO Audit Matter?

Why worry about conducting an SEO audit? Surely you can just publish a few keyword-optimized blog posts or toss up a couple of Google Ads, right? Unfortunately, ranking well in the SERPs is not that simple.

An SEO audit reveals problems that might lie deep within your site’s architecture that, if left unaddressed, would have long-term effects on your visibility and crawlability. Without addressing them, Google’s bots might never find and index your site correctly. Worse, you could inadvertently find your site downgraded by Google. An SEO audit is the key to taking intentional, informed action to change the situation.

DIY or Partner-Led Audit

Now that you understand the importance of an SEO audit to your long-term success, you need to decide if you want to go the DIY route or work with an SEO partner. While you can certainly attempt to handle at least some elements of an audit on your own – keyword research is a good example – chances are good your internal team can’t tackle a full audit. Doing so requires deep knowledge and experience in all aspects of SEO, Google best practices, website design, UX, security, and so much more.

Working with a trusted SEO partner is the best way to ensure that you’re able to conduct an accurate audit that yields actionable, accurate results. Otherwise, you could find that you’ve spent an inordinate amount of time and money with little to nothing to show for it. With the right partner, you can create a roadmap for making and implementing changes that positively affect your findability and boost growth and success.