SEO Audit : Benefits, Steps & Prices of SEO Audit

What is a full SEO audit?

In the past, it was enough to insert keywords and links in order to be visible on a search engine. Nowadays, these search engines use algorithms to determine the order in which sites appear. They analyse the responsiveness of the site, the speed, the quality of the content, the authority of the site and the technical code. You should therefore analyse the level of quality and number of backlinks, the quality of the links present on the site, the Meta, the structure of the URL, the SSL certificate and the loading speed of your site. To do this, you need to know the weaknesses of your site before implementing adequate SEO strategies.

To this end, the SEO audit is the means by which these analyses are carried out. This tool is designed to find out why a website is failing in the search engines. With the audit, you will understand why your site is not being viewed enough and why your business is stagnating. It also provides opportunities for improvement in the context of SEO optimisation. Apart from e-commerce sites and online shops, it is also essential for self-employed entrepreneurs, agencies and anyone who wants to increase their visibility on the Internet. Moreover, following an SEO audit, an action plan is established according to the reports obtained in order to appear in the best positions on the SERPs.

Why do an SEO audit?

Conducting an SEO audit has several advantages. First of all, an SEO audit reveals the weaknesses of an SEO strategy. This gives you the opportunity to make corrections and to obtain a better SEO strategy. An SEO audit also gives you the solutions to remedy the situation. If, for example, you are facing a problem with your website redesign, the SEO audit is the support you will need to better manage the problem. Apart from that, in the face of competition, an SEO audit will highlight the strategies used by your competitors so that you can better compete with them. At the same time, it will suggest strategies to achieve the same results as your competitors.

In addition, the audit brings a new direction to the SEO strategy. You will have a complete list at the end of the audit that will highlight the actions to be taken in order to obtain a healthier base and excel ahead of your competitors. After the implementation of these solutions, you will certainly notice an improvement in the visibility of your site, for example an increase in natural traffic, in the conversion rate and a growth in turnover. Your site will be more fluid, dynamic, accessible and offer a good user experience. However, this really becomes apparent after a few months.

When should an SEO audit be done?

Given its function and multiple advantages, the SEO audit can be done at any time. However, you should think about this tool before the creation of your site and do it as soon as the site is created. You can also do it in one of the following cases. Improving the positioning of the site on search engines : therefore, immerse yourself in the diagnosis of your most formidable competitors in order to understand how they operate. Analyse the images, server, codes and titles and establish the optimisation strategy that will boost your site. Knowing the performance of the site : sometimes it is important to know if your site is useful for users. After making major changes to the site : redesigning can cause your website to fall apart if you haven’t done an SEO audit beforehand. However, if you did not do your redesign properly, you should also do an audit. After the fall of the positioning of the keywords in the SERP : knowing that several reasons can cause this fall, you must necessarily operate an audit to better understand it.

Apart from all these points, an SEO audit should also be carried out when you suffer an algorithmic or manual penalty from search engines. As there are many cases, do an audit at any time, even when your competitors are trying to take your place.

How to do an SEO audit?

In general, the SEO audit is done by professionals, especially an SEO agency. They must have experience in SEO and must have the necessary tools to succeed in the keyword section. They take into account several points and carry out several audits.

• Keyword audit : This first step is to see the relevance of the keywords selected during the initial keyword research. These keywords should be accessible, relevant and profitable.
• Competitor audit : This step allows you to know your competitors, their keyword and netlinking strategy as well as the content that provides them with enough traffic.
• Technical SEO audit : This step highlights any errors that can be corrected to boost the site. To carry out this step, the site should first be scanned in its entirety, then checked for correct indexing, keyword cannibalisation and redirection problems. It is also at this level that the checks are carried out on the tags.
• Page audit : Here, the quality of the content and the optimisation of the pages are checked. The keyword must appear only once in the meta description and in the first 100 words. The URL must also be optimised and clear. On the other hand, the ALT of the first page must contain the keyword. Apart from that, this audit also includes several points relating to the configuration of the page.
• Content audit : The content audit consists of analysing the content and is the most time-consuming step. First of all, you should make an inventory of all the content, analyse each piece of content and check whether there is a risk of penalties or whether there is duplicate content. Also, your content should be useful, captivating and informative. These are all points to be checked judiciously through this audit.
• User experience audit : Thanks to this audit, you will know the reasons for the state of your conversion rates. You can also improve the reception on your site. With the tools available for this purpose, you will know, among other things, the average time that users spend on the site.
• Backlink audit : The relevance of links, the authority of links, the diversity of links and the targeting of links are the main points analysed in the Backlink audit. In addition, it also deals with the anchor texts, particularly their diversification and the number of related domains.

These audits are carried out with several tools. Google Search Console or SEMRush are used for the keyword audit. The competition audit requires the use of Moz Bar or SEMRush and Google PageSpeed Insight, Friendly Check, Siteliner for the technical SEO audit. Similarly, the page audit is carried out with Outiref. Google analytics and Backlink-Tool provide respectively the user experience audit and the backlinks audit. The list is not exhaustive, and there are several other tools available to perform these audits.

The steps of a complete SEO audit for your website

For your website, you would have to do the Onsite audit, the semantic audit and the competitive audit.

SEO Onsite audit

The SEO Onsite audit, refers to the audit of the site itself. This is the phase that takes into account everything related to the structure of the site, the URL, the crawl, the keywords, the content and the loading speed of the site. Read more about onsite seo here. It also aims to check every important element involved in search engine optimisation. The audit also aims to study indexability, usability and fluctuations in referencing. Your website must be accessible with or without the ”www” and ”http” or ”https”. Each language version should also be optimised if your website exists in several languages. The professionals also check through this audit if the site does not make use of iframe and if it does not contain flashes.

Semantic audit

The semantic or offsite audit is the main element of the SEO strategy. It allows you to evaluate the potential of the sector of activity, to design a netlinking strategy, to determine the axes of the editorial strategy and to optimise your on-site content. It also researches keywords according to the sector of activity and the objectives of the site. It also aims to create hubs, landings and articles. In addition, it identifies the best pages for each keyword. In short, this audit takes stock of the content of your website and analyses its structure, length and the quality of the semantic field used. In addition, it also takes into account the analysis of referencing IPs, referring domains and the variety of anchors.

The competitive audit

Competitive auditing involves analysing the strategies adopted by your competitors. The first action in this audit is to know the SEO competitors of the website and the sector of activity. To this end, it reveals for each competitor their popularity, outbound and inbound links, content, site structure, navigation and social media positioning. It also takes into account the influence of your competitors on social networks by analysing, for example, the number of followers, engagement and frequency on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and the number of views, subscribers and videos on YouTube. On the other hand, it aims to analyse the awareness of your site and that of your competitors. Its objective is to differentiate you from the competition by offering you solutions. It is therefore important to carry out this audit before the positioning strategy.

How much does an SEO audit cost?

The price of an SEO audit varies according to the size of the website, the experience and size of the agency, the elements audited, the time frame and the tools used. Similarly, the cost will differ when a new site needs to be optimised or the ranking of an existing site needs to be improved. The analysis takes an average of one day to one week depending on the objectives, with a minimum report of 70 pages. As the work is quite complex, the average price varies between 75 and 150 euros per hour. A minimum of 700 euros is required for an SEO audit. The most important thing is the competence of the agency, the experience and the quality of the final audit to avoid scams. However, be aware that a low price may reflect a scam or poor work as it is almost impossible to get a quote below 500 euros.

In short, an SEO audit is mandatory if you want to boost your business and increase your turnover.

Loic Julien