Why Your Website is Literally BEGGING for an SEO Audit
“Audit” is just one of those words that can immediately conjure up states of stress and anxiety. Trust me, I get it! I’ve never met a soul that actually wanted to get audited by the IRS, and I still have flashbacks of our big biannual audits in the Navy aviation community that seem like a lifetime ago. That being said, I love running website audits for SEO. I mean I totally geek out over them and to me, it’s one of the most exciting aspects of search engine optimization. I’ve audited hundreds of websites of all types and sizes, and I learn something new every time.
SEMRush Site Audit Dashboard
Why are website audits important?
You can’t make improvements without knowing where you stand, and an audit is like a roadmap to get started. Your website is a living breathing thing, and requires routine care. Just like you wouldn’t wait to take your car to the mechanic until your engine overheats on the highway, you don’t want to risk leaving potentially major problems with your website unaddressed. Algorithms are always changing and you always want to stay ahead of the curve as much as possible. Not leaving search traffic (and potential sales) on the table and providing a great user experience are also great reasons to run regular audits and fix the issues you come across.
So, what exactly is a website audit from an SEO perspective? What kind of information will I get from an audit?
A full audit checks your website from a few different angles. This is not an exhaustive list but when I run an audit I always at least look at the following categories: technical optimization, on-page optimization, content insights, user experience, and competitive analysis:
Technical optimization - Every single content management system (CMS) is built a little differently, and each of them will handle technical aspects of SEO in ways you don’t always expect. An audit will uncover technical issues with redirects, coding, site architecture, page speed, and more.
On-page optimization - As your site grows it becomes more of a task to ensure every page is as optimized as it can be. Common on-page audit issues include errors in metadata, headers, internal and external links, and even page content.
Content insights - Speaking of content, all of the other categories listed here can uncover content you thought was updated or removed, and can point to gaps you may have in your content strategy.
User experience (UX) - Many UX errors will be found in the technical and on-page error list, but you should periodically be going through your website from the perspective of a site visitor. Things like ease of navigation, all elements working as expected (clickable buttons and links, videos, forms, etc.) are all important for a positive user experience.
Competitive analysis - It’s always good to check out where you’re at vs your top competitors. A complete audit should include at least an overview of their organic search traffic, top keywords, backlinks and domain authority compared to yours.
How do I run an audit? Are there free tools I can use?
There are countless tools you can use to run an audit, I personally use three main ones. SEMRush, Google Search Console, and my own eyeballs! While automated tools do the heavy lifting of an audit, it’s equally important to do what I call a manual audit of your website periodically. 9 times out of 10 you will catch something that wouldn’t otherwise be obvious in a dashboard!
SEMRush is a great platform for running comprehensive site audits. Once your audit runs, you will get details on several different types of issues, listed by severity (errors, warnings and notices). Each issue lists the page(s) it was found on with some info on why it matters and how to fix it.
You will also get a list of your crawled pages - meaning pages that have been discovered by search engines - this is useful in determining if all pages have the status you expect (including redirects), any drafted or outdated content has the visibility you want, and any issues are listed by url.
The “always a student” in me also LOVES the overall site health score included for each audit. I will caution you to not freak out if you have an initial low score, that just means there is probably some low-hanging fruit to tackle to get your site better optimized (and get that score up!). If you consistently run audits you can also track your progress over time.
SEMRush offers a free version of their site audit that you don’t need to be technically savvy to use, and it’s super simple and quick to get started. There are many other reputable companies that offer free versions or free trials of audit and other SEO tools, a few others I have used in the past include Ahrefs, Moz and Screaming Frog.
Google Search Console is an invaluable tool in every site owner’s arsenal. If you haven’t already, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and register your site yesterday. Once it’s verified, you’ll be able to do things like check your pages that have been indexed (or not), submit and manage sitemaps, and view performance data like impressions, click through rate and average position for your queries and pages.
Manual Audit (aka your own eyeballs!) - I cannot overstate the importance of manually auditing your website on a regular basis. You’re probably looking at your website all the time, but a visual audit is different from focusing on a particular launch or update. Obviously if you have more than a handful of pages this can get overwhelming fast. Start by tackling your most important pages first, share the task with your team (if you have one and can do this), or split your site into smaller, more manageable sections and tackle them one at a time. Basically just do what you can, when you can.
When I manually audit a client’s site or my own, I’m taking a fresh look at it as if I were a brand new site visitor. Here is a sample checklist of the questions I want to answer with a yes, at a minimum:
Main navigation/sub navigation/footer - Does it have a logical flow? Does it work as expected? Am I easily able to find pages I want visitors to navigate to? Are there differences between different headers/footers I didn’t expect (main website, landing pages, and blogs are examples of website areas often on separate templates and can have different navigation structures)?
Clickable elements - Are all links actually clickable? Do they go where you intended them to go? Are links incorrect/broken? Are all external links going to current, existing pages? If there is a client login area is that working properly?
Forms - Are contact/offer forms intuitive? Do they work? Can they be filled out without errors? What happens once the form is filled out, am I getting the correct asset/message/followup email after I submit my information?
Readability - Do font styles (families, colors, sizes, etc.) make it literally readable on the page? Would the average visitor understand the copy? This is a good time to check that your content doesn’t use too many technical terms that your visitors wouldn’t understand - you don’t want to assume all site visitors understand all of your industry’s jargon.
Popups - Yes, from what I see on a lot of websites popups need their own category! Are all popups working as expected? Can I easily accept or reject what’s in the popup - meaning can I click on any link, fill out the short form, accept terms, and or close it out? If the answer is no, this kind of experience basically guarantees that a visitor will not be returning to your website.
Mobile responsiveness - Last but definitely not least, can I answer yes to all of the above on mobile? You may have heard of mobile-first indexing which is very strongly recommended by Google. Nearly 60% of all worldwide website traffic comes from mobile phones so yeah, it’s pretty important. Luckily most CMSs have built in functionality that allow you to see what each page looks like on desktop vs mobile, and you should also test on as many actual devices you have access to.
Site audits don’t have to be scary, and the only way to fix potential issues is to know what they are. It’s much scarier to just assume everything is fine, only to find out down the line that you have a major issue that could have been addressed months or even years ago. There are many free tools out there that can help you take a look under the hood and make sense of what you should prioritize right away. I would recommend running audits at least once or twice a year, but quarterly or monthly if you can, as well as any time you are making major technical, structural, or content changes to your website.
SEO Website Audit Service
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