Maximise the Full Potential of Your Website with an SEO Audit

In this article:

• A Comprehensive Guide on SEO Audits for Your Website
• What to Expect from an SEO Audit
• Essential Elements of a Comprehensive SEO Audit
• Automated SEO Audit Services with Self-Analysis
• Hiring an SEO Agency or Consultancy for Audit Analysis and Interpretation
• Choosing the Right SEO Audit Company: Factors to Consider
• What does and SEO Audit Cost
• Top SEO Audit Companies
• Optimise your Website’s Performance with Expert SEO Consulting Services

A Comprehensive Guide on SEO Audits for Your Website

With millions of websites competing for the attention of internet users, it can be challenging to ensure that your website stands out. This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes in. If you want to maximise your website’s potential and attract more traffic, it’s time to commission an SEO audit.

An SEO audit is essential to assessing the current health of your website and identify areas for improvement. Whether you’re a business owner or a digital marketer, this article will provide valuable insights to help you optimise your website for search engines and drive more traffic to your site. If you want your website to rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs), then an SEO audit is the first step towards achieving that goal.

What to Expect from an SEO Audit

An SEO audit is a comprehensive evaluation of a website’s search engine optimisation (SEO) performance. The website audit will identify the strengths and weaknesses of your current SEO performance and provide actionable recommendations to improve your website’s search engine visibility. A comprehensive website audit report should include a prioritised list of actions to take to improve your technical, on-page, and off-page SEO, along with recommendations for keyword research, content strategy, and link building.

Essential Components of a Comprehensive SEO Audit

• Overview: The Overview section of an SEO Audit Report is a crucial part of the analysis as it provides a high-level summary of the website’s current SEO performance. It gives a brief summary of the website’s organic traffic, keyword rankings, and backlink profile, which are essential metrics to evaluate the website’s visibility and authority. This section aims to provide a snapshot of the website’s current status and identify any immediate issues that need to be addressed. For example, if the website’s organic traffic has significantly decreased, this could be an indication of technical issues or penalisation by search engines.

• Keyword Research: Keyword research is an essential aspect of an SEO site audit. It involves identifying relevant and high-traffic keywords for your website, which can help you target the right audience and improve your search engine rankings. Long-tail keywords are particularly useful, as they are more specific and have less competition. You should also ensure that your website’s title tags, meta descriptions, and heading tags incorporate your target keywords in a natural and relevant way. A comprehensive keyword research analysis can also help you identify gaps in your content and create a content strategy that addresses the needs of your audience. Incorporating keyword research into your SEO implementation plan can have a significant impact on the success of your website.

• Content Audit: In the Content audit section of an website audit report, the focus is on the quality, relevance, and usefulness of the website’s content. This involves evaluating whether the content meets the needs and expectations of the target audience and whether it provides a valuable user experience. The audit will also check for duplicate content on the site, which can negatively affect rankings, and ensure that structured data markup is being used to provide search engines with context and information about the content. Additionally, the content marketing strategy will be assessed to determine if it aligns with the goals and objectives of the website.

• On-Page SEO Audit: During the on-page audit section of an website audit report, the website’s on-page optimisation is analysed to ensure that it is properly optimised for search engines. This includes an analysis of keyword usage, content quality, and metadata. To ensure that the website is properly optimised, the audit report will include recommendations for optimising title tags, meta descriptions, and heading tags to accurately reflect the content of each page. Additionally, the report will suggest improvements for optimising pages for mobile devices, ensuring a clear and concise URL structure, and using alt tags for images and internal links to connect pages. The on-page audit section is crucial for improving a website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and for creating a better user experience for visitors. It is an essential step in the process of developing an effective SEO strategy.

• Off-Page SEO: An analysis of the website’s backlink profile, including the number and quality of backlinks, anchor text usage, and link building tactics. In addition to analysing the website’s backlink profile, an SEO Audit report should also assess the website’s trust, authority, and outreach. This involves evaluating the website’s domain authority, page authority, and overall trustworthiness in the eyes of search engines. The audit report should also look at the website’s outreach efforts and how they can be improved to increase brand visibility and reach a wider audience. A thorough audit of off-page SEO can uncover opportunities for link building and outreach, as well as areas where the website can improve its overall authority and trustworthiness. It’s important to keep in mind that off-page SEO is just as important as on-page SEO when it comes to improving search engine rankings and driving organic traffic to a website.

• Technical SEO Audit: A thorough analysis of the website’s technical components, including crawlability, indexability, site architecture, page speed, core web vitals, and hreflang issues. The technical audit examines your website’s technical infrastructure and ensures that it is optimised for search engines, including addressing crawl budget, reducing crawl errors, improving page speed, and enhancing user experience. The technical website audit includes identifying and resolving issues such as broken links, duplicate content, missing alt tags, and ensuring that your website is secure with an SSL certificate. Additionally, the audit also covers the implementation of technical SEO best practices, including the use of structured data, schema markup, and canonical tags, to improve the website’s search engine visibility and overall performance. The report should provide you with an actionable technical SEO roadmap that will help you fix any technical issues that may be affecting your website’s search engine rankings.

• SEO Competitor Analysis: Conducting a thorough analysis of your website’s top competitors to identify their SEO strategies and tactics, including their backlink profiles, content quality, keyword targeting, and on-page optimisation can help identify gaps in your own SEO strategy and provide insights on how to improve your website’s performance in SERPs. Analysing your competitor’s backlink profiles can help you understand the type of backlinks that are driving traffic to their site. A comprehensive site audit report should include a detailed competitive analysis section that provides valuable insights on how to stay ahead of the competition.

• SEO Analytics: As part of an website’s SEO audit, an SEO analyst will review your website’s data analytics to identify trends, areas of concern, and opportunities for improvement. A data-driven approach to SEO can provide valuable insights into how your website is performing and guide your efforts to improve your rankings and drive more traffic to your site. Analysing the SEO data analytics play a crucial role in measuring the success of your SEO efforts. With tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console, SEO analysts can track key metrics and KPIs such as organic traffic, bounce rate, time spent on page, and click-through rates. This information helps to identify areas of your website that need improvement and provides insight into user behaviour. It’s important to regularly review a website’s performance data and make adjustments as needed to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your SEO efforts.

• SEO Roadmap and Key Recommendations: The Recommendations section of an SEO site audit report provides a list of actionable items to improve the website’s SEO performance based on the findings in the abovementioned audits. This section includes a mix of quick wins and high-impact recommendations that are prioritised based on their impact vs. effort. Recommendations cover technical, on-page, and off-page SEO tactics, and provide a roadmap for the tasks that need to be done to achieve the desired SEO results. By prioritising the recommendations and creating a roadmap, you can focus on the most impactful changes first and achieve maximum results. The implementation of the recommendations in the SEO roadmap will help you achieve your SEO goals and improve your website’s overall performance. A Content Editorial Plan may be recommended as part of the roadmap to ensure consistent and strategic content creation that aligns with your target audience and business objectives.

Automated SEO Audit Services with Self-Analysis Required

While there are numerous SEO audit tools available in the market, many of them provide automated reports that require self-analysis and interpretation. As a result, individuals with the ability to interpret and strategise priorities should use these tools. These individuals may include digital marketers, SEO professionals, web developers, and business owners who want to improve their website’s search engine ranking and online presence.

Here is a list of services that provide automated SEO audit reports delivered within minutes or hours, but require self-analysis or interpretation:

• WebCEO: Offers a free high level SEO Audit tool which is limited to one report per day per domain and offers users a quick and easy way to assess the overall health of their website’s SEO. WebCEO also offers more advanced SEO audit services and provides its audit tool through its agency partners. WebCEO offers both free and paid plans for SEO auditing, with the cost of the service depending on the level of audit required and the plan selected. The free plan provides limited access to auditing features, while paid plans start at $99/month and offer more comprehensive audits. It’s best to review the features and pricing of each plan on the WebCEO website to determine which one suits your needs and budget, or contact an agency partner (such as BlueMagnet) for a more cost effective report with interpreted actionable insightsl
  
  

• SEMrush: SEMrush offers an SEO checker tool that can provide users with an automated SEO audit report within minutes. The tool is free to use, but limitations apply to the number of pages that can be crawled. SEMrush’s On-page SEO Checker tool is available in three pricing plans: Pro, Guru, and Business. The Pro plan costs $119.95 per month, the Guru plan costs $229.95 per month, and the Business plan is customisable according to the user’s requirements.

• Ahrefs: Ahrefs offers a Site Audit tool that generates a report within minutes, but it requires users to interpret and act on the data. Ahrefs also offers a range of SEO tools, including a backlink checker, keyword research tool, and content explorer, which can help improve your website’s overall SEO performance, starting at $99/month for their Lite plan. The standard plan starts at $179/month and includes additional features such as keyword research and rank tracking, while the advanced plan costs $399 per month. The Agency plan costs $999 per month.

• Screaming Frog: Offers a free version of their SEO Spider tool, which crawls websites up to 500 URLs and provides an overview of on-page SEO elements such as titles, meta descriptions, and headings. They also offer a paid version that starts at £149/year and includes additional features such as crawling more URLs, integration with Google Analytics, and generating XML sitemaps.

• WooRank: WooRank offers a website audit review tool that generates an automated SEO audit report within seconds. WooRank offers a free trial, but limitations apply to the number of reports that can be generated. There are three pricing plans: The Pro plan costs $59.99 per month, the Premium plan costs $179.99 per month, and the Enterprise plan is customisable according to the user’s requirements.

• Ubersuggest: Ubersuggest offers a free SEO audit tool that scans your website and generates an automated SEO audit report within minutes. Ubersuggest also offers a range of SEO tools, including a keyword research tool and content ideas generator/ Ubersuggest’s SEO Audit tool is free to use.

• SEO Site Checkup: SEO Site Checkup offers an automated site audit tool that can scan your website and generate an SEO audit report within minutes. SEO Site Checkup offers a free trial, but limitations apply to the number of reports that can be generated. The Basic plan is free, the Pro plan costs $29.95 per month, and the Agency plan costs $79.95 per month.

• SEOptimer: Offers a free Site Audit tool that generates a report within seconds, providing a general overview of your website’s SEO health. Premium plans with additional features start at $29/month.

• Moz: Offers an On-Demand Crawl tool that crawls your website and provides a report within minutes. Pricing for Moz Pro, which includes the On-Demand Crawl tool, starts at $99/month.

It’s important to note that while these tools can provide valuable insights into your website’s SEO performance, they do not offer the same level of analysis and interpretation as an SEO audit performed by an experienced SEO professional. The automated reports generated by these tools should be used as a starting point for further analysis and optimisation.

Hiring an SEO Agency or Consultancy for Audit Analysis and Interpretation

While using automated SEO audit report tools can be useful, interpreting the data and developing a comprehensive SEO strategy requires expertise and experience. Appointing an SEO agency or consultancy that specialises in SEO audits, analysis, interpretation, and strategising can be beneficial for businesses looking to improve their online visibility. These professionals have a deep understanding of the latest SEO trends, strategies, and tools, and can provide a customised and comprehensive analysis of your website’s SEO performance. They can also help prioritise the most impactful changes to your website to drive organic traffic and improve conversions. Hiring an SEO agency or consultancy can be especially valuable for businesses with limited internal resources or expertise in SEO.

Choosing the Right SEO Audit Company: Factors to Consider

If you don’t have the time or expertise to perform an SEO audit yourself, you may want to consider hiring an SEO audit company or agency to do the work for you. SEO audit services can vary in scope and price, so it’s important to do your research and find a reputable company or agency with experience in your industry.

When choosing an SEO audit company, here are some factors to consider:

• Experience: Look for a company with a track record of successfully completing SEO audits for businesses similar to yours.
• Expertise: Look for a company that specialises in SEO and has expertise in all aspects of SEO, including technical SEO, on-page optimisation, and off-page optimisation.
• Communication: Look for a company that communicates clearly and regularly throughout the audit process and provides a detailed report with actionable recommendations.
• Pricing: Look for a company with transparent pricing and no hidden fees. Make sure you understand what is included in the audit and what additional services may be required to address any issues uncovered during the audit.
• Reputation: Look for a company with a strong reputation and positive reviews from past clients. Check online review sites and ask for references from the company.

What does an SEO Audit Cost?

You may be wondering about the cost of an SEO audit. In this section, we’ll explore the factors that affect the cost of an SEO audit and provide insights on what you can expect to pay for this service.

A comprehensive SEO audit can range anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the individual or company’s level of expertise. The cost of an SEO audit can vary depending on several factors such as:

• Website size and complexity: A larger, more complex website with multiple subdomains and pages will require more time and effort to audit. Therefore, the cost of an SEO audit for a larger website is typically higher than that of a smaller website.

• Specific components included in the audit: The components included in an SEO audit can vary depending on the agency or consultant providing the service. Some common components include on-page optimisation, technical SEO, backlink analysis, and user experience. The more components included in the audit, the higher the cost is likely to be.
• Level of detail and analysis required: Some SEO audits are more comprehensive than others. A basic SEO audit may only scratch the surface, while a more detailed audit will provide a deeper analysis of your website’s performance. The more detail and analysis required, the higher the cost will be.

Top SEO Audit Companies

Here are a few examples of pricing for some of oldest and most established SEO Audit Companies:

• BlueMagnet: BlueMagnet offers a range of website audit services, including a comprehensive SEO audit report with actionable recommendations to improve a website’s performance. The price of their SEO audit services varies based on the specific needs of the website. However, their SEO Audits range from $950 to $2500. BlueMagnet’s comprehensive SEO audits are conducted by experienced and Certified international SEO analysts, and the delivery time for the report is usually within 2-4 weeks, depending on the size and complexity of the site. BlueMagnet has been doing SEO Audits for more than 20 years.

• Bruce Clay: Bruce Clay offers a comprehensive SEO audit that includes an analysis of technical issues, on-page optimisation, and off-page factors. Their pricing is customised based on the specific needs of each client. The estimated turnaround time for the report is 2-4 weeks. Pricing for their SEO audit services varies based on the size and complexity of the website, with packages starting at $2,500. Turnaround time for audit reports is typically 10-15 business days. Bruce Clay has been well known for its SEO audits for more than two decades.

• Moz: Moz provides a comprehensive SEO audit service that includes a thorough analysis of the website’s technical and on-page SEO factors, backlinks, and content quality. The pricing for Moz’s SEO audit services starts at $600 and goes up to $18,000, depending on the size and complexity of the website. Moz typically delivers the report within 2-4 weeks. Moz have been doing SEO Audits for 15 years.

• Neil Patel Digital: Neil Patel Digital offers a comprehensive SEO audit service that includes a thorough analysis of the website’s current SEO status, a list of actionable recommendations, and a personalised strategy to improve the site’s rankings. The price for Neil Patel Digital’s SEO audit service starts at $5,000. The estimated timeline for receiving the report is typically within 30 days. Additionally, Neil Patel Digital offers a free SEO audit tool on their website that provides an overview of the site’s performance, including a report on technical SEO issues, on-page optimisation, and content analysis. It is unclear how many years Neil Patel has been doing SEO Audits for, however Neil Patel has been in digital for around 18 years.

• Ignite Digital: Offers SEO audits with a focus on technical SEO, content optimisation, and user experience. Pricing for their SEO audit services varies based on the size and complexity of the website, with packages starting at $1,500. Turnaround time for audit reports is typically 10-15 business days. Ignite Digital have been doing SEO Audits for around 13 years.

• SEO.co: Offers SEO audits with a focus on technical SEO, content optimisation, and backlink analysis. Pricing for their SEO audit services varies based on the size and complexity of the website, with packages starting at $2,500. Turnaround time for audit reports is typically 10-15 business days. SEO.co have also been doing SEO Audits for around 13 years.

• Distilled: Offers SEO audits with a focus on technical SEO, on-page optimisation, and backlink analysis. Pricing for their SEO audit services varies based on the size and complexity of the website, with packages starting at $6,000. Turnaround time for audit reports is typically 4-6 weeks. They have been doing SEO audits for almost 18 years.

It’s important to note that these prices are subject to change and may vary depending on the specific needs of your website. It’s always best to research and compare different web audit tools and services before making a decision to ensure that you get the best value for your money. Hiring a reputable SEO audit company or agency can provide you with the expertise and resources necessary to conduct a thorough and effective site audit that yields valuable insights and actionable recommendations.

Optimise Your Website’s Performance with BlueMagnet’s Expert SEO Audit and Consulting Services

If you’re ready to take your website’s SEO performance to the next level, then it’s time to get in touch with BlueMagnet. Our team of experienced SEO analysts can provide you with a comprehensive SEO audit report and strategy recommendations to improve your website’s performance. We can also offer consulting services for in-house or agency SEO teams, providing ongoing support and guidance to ensure your website remains optimised for search engines. With our expertise and dedication to achieving results, you can trust that BlueMagnet is the right partner for your SEO needs. Contact us today to learn more!

BlueMagnet specialises in SEO training and SEO services, including SEO audits. With over 16 years of experience in the industry and have successfully completed SEO audits for a wide range of businesses in various industries, demonstrating strong expertise in SEO. BlueMagnet communicates clearly with their clients throughout the audit process and provide detailed reports with actionable recommendations to improve their SEO performance. Pricing is transparent, and there are no hidden fees. BlueMagnet offers various SEO audit packages with different levels of analysis, so clients can choose the site audit solution that best suits their needs and budget. BlueMagnet has a strong reputation and positive reviews from past clients, and is the preferred accreditation partner to the internationally recognised Search Engine Optimisation Professionals Association (SEOPSA), demonstrating both credibility and expertise in the industry.