How to Do an SEO Audit in 5 Steps

So, you know what an SEO audit is, but what steps do you need to take to conduct an SEO audit?

Read on to find out how to do an SEO audit in five steps, as well as the tips we can offer as a performance marketing agency to help ensure your SEO audit is effective and worth your time.

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is where an “investigation” or “health check” is conducted on your website, where an SEO professional will identify key opportunities for improvements which will help your website’s ability to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Related: What is an SEO Audit? (And Why Do I Need One?)

How do you do an SEO audit?

Here are the five key steps that our SEO experts at QueryClick recommend for conducting an SEO audit:

1. Competitor analysis

A competitor analysis is exactly what it sounds like: conducting research into your competitor’s sites in order to make improvements on your own, based on your findings.

This involves comparing:

• how they rank
• keywords they rank for
• the type of backlinks they get
• site speed performance
• how easy the site is to use

It’s also always good to check their blog as well and see what topics they are creating content on.

2. Check performance against Core Web Vitals

Since the May 2021 Page Experience Update, Core Web Vitals have become a key search ranking factor.

This means that while high quality content is still one of the key factors to a successful SEO strategy, speed and page experience are now one of the core ranking factors that Google uses.

More specifically, Core Web Vitals.

By checking your website’s performance against Core Web Vitals, you can find out whether your site meets Google’s guidelines.

Core Web Vitals assesses how your website performs and will give you recommendations on what you can do to improve.

Your Core Web Vitals are:

• Loading
• Interactivity
• Visual Stability

Download our eBook: A Complete Guide to SEO Audits

3. Check and fix broken links

We’ve all experienced it, when you click on a link, and it takes you to a 404 (page not found) screen.

If that happens on your site, then it’s likely to break your user’s journey.

It’s always a good idea to do regular check-ups on your website, to check if you have any major broken links on your site.

Fixing broken links is good for users, and good for Google too.

4. Create an on-page SEO checklist

A good practice to follow when performing on-page SEO, is to have a checklist in place as it can help speed up the process.

For example, you can use a checklist to quickly identify problem pages, such as pages without a dedicated H1, or pages with meta titles over the pixel limit.

This will help you prioritise which pages you should optimise first.

5. Audit your backlinks

This is mainly for bigger sites, as they will likely have a wide variety of backlinks. However, it’s worth checking your backlink profile, regardless of the size of the site.

Auditing your backlinks is a great way to identify areas where you can improve upon.

Let’s say you’ve received a lot of backlinks to a particular article or page, but another area of the site isn’t performing too well.

You can identify your next opportunity for backlinks.

This is also handy for checking whether the links you’re receiving are genuine ones, or dubious ones.

Paying for links and passing them off as ‘natural’ links, will likely get you penalised by Google.

Related: An Introduction To Link Building For SEO

Working with an SEO agency

Here at QueryClick, we are a team of Organic Search (SEO), Technical SEO, PPC, Paid Social and Digital PR specialists who all work together seamlessly to deliver a performance marketing experience like no other.

But what’s the benefit of partnering with an agency? While you know your business inside out, we know SEO inside out and we understand that it isn’t a one-size fits all approach.

That’s why we take the time to understand your business and find the most effective way to improve organic traffic that will work for you.

If you would like to find out more about the services we offer, get in touch, or to request an SEO audit, click on the link below.