SEO Audits

Just like your car, your website needs regular maintenance. A website audit is a comprehensive evaluation of your site from an SEO standpoint, identifying both its strengths and weaknesses.

Following the audit, your company receives a tailored list of recommendations. If you’re working with an SEO agency like TSCA, we can implement these improvements for you. However, if you’d prefer to keep it in-house, our team will liaise with your web team – to help guide them through the process.

An SEO audit typically includes an in-depth analysis across several key areas to evaluate a website’s search engine optimisation health and identify areas for improvement.

Here’s a breakdown of the primary components:

Technical SEO Audit

• Crawlability and Indexing: Ensures search engines can effectively crawl and index the website, examining the robots.txt file, XML sitemaps, and index status.
• Site Architecture and URL Structure: Checks how content is organised and whether the URL structure is logical, clean, and search-friendly.
• Mobile Usability: Reviews mobile responsiveness and adherence to Google’s mobile-first indexing standards.
• Page Speed and Core Web Vitals: Analyses loading speed and user experience metrics, such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
• Security (HTTPS and SSL): Verifies whether the website uses HTTPS and has a valid SSL certificate.
• Redirects and Broken Links: Identifies any broken links (404 errors) and redirect issues (301 and 302) that can negatively impact user experience and SEO.

On-Page SEO Audit

• Keyword Optimisation: Checks if target keywords are used effectively on each page, including in titles, headers, meta descriptions, and content.
• Content Quality and Relevance: Assesses the depth, uniqueness, and relevance of content on each page to ensure it matches user intent.
• Metadata (Title Tags and Meta Descriptions): Reviews meta titles and descriptions to ensure they are unique, well-optimised, and within recommended length limits.
• Header Tags (H1, H2, H3): Verifies that header tags are used correctly for structure and readability.
• Image Optimisation: Reviews image file sizes, alt text, file names, and whether they are compressed for speed.

Off-Page SEO and Backlink Profile

• Backlink Quality and Quantity: Analyses the website’s backlink profile to assess the quality, authority, and relevance of incoming links.
• Anchor Text Distribution: Evaluates the distribution of anchor text in backlinks, looking for over-optimisation or unnatural patterns.
• Toxic Links: Identifies potentially harmful or “spammy” backlinks that could negatively impact rankings and reputation.
• Social Signals: Although indirect, a review of social engagement (e.g., shares, mentions) can provide insights into content popularity.

Content Audit

• Content Gaps and Opportunities: Identifies gaps where new content could be created to capture more search traffic or better serve user intent.
• Duplicate Content: Checks for duplicate content issues that could confuse search engines or split ranking potential.
• Content Freshness: Reviews older content to determine if it needs updating or removal based on relevance and performance.

User Experience (UX) Audit

• Navigation and Internal Linking: Assesses how easy it is for users to find content, and whether internal links are logically placed for both users and SEO.
• Bounce Rate and Dwell Time: Analyses metrics that show how users engage with the site, which can impact SEO indirectly.
• Readability and Accessibility: Checks for readability (e.g., font size, spacing) and accessibility, ensuring the site is usable for all visitors.

Local SEO (If Applicable)

• Google My Business (GMB) Listing: Reviews GMB setup and optimisation for local businesses, including consistency of Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP).
• Citations and Local Backlinks: Ensures citations across directories and local backlinks are accurate and optimised.
• Customer Reviews and Ratings: Analyses review quality, frequency, and ratings on GMB and other relevant platforms.

Competitor Analysis

• Keyword Gaps and Opportunities: Compares keywords targeted by competitors to identify potential gaps or new opportunities.
• Content Strategy Comparison: Reviews competitor content that performs well, providing insights into potential improvements or additions to the site’s content.
• Backlink Profile Comparison: Assesses competitor backlinks to identify potential sources and linking strategies that could be beneficial.

Reporting and Recommendations

• Audit Report: A comprehensive report summarising all findings, often including screenshots, data visualisations, and a list of specific issues identified.
• Actionable Recommendations: Clear, prioritised action steps for each area audited to help improve the site’s SEO performance.

An SEO audit aims to provide a holistic view of your site’s SEO health, from the technical underpinnings to the quality and reach of its content, with actionable recommendations to boost visibility and rankings.

The duration of an SEO audit can vary depending on the complexity and size of the website, the depth of the audit required, and the tools or methods used. Generally, here’s a rough guideline:

1. Small Websites (Up to 20 Pages):
   • An audit can usually be completed within 4 to 6 hours. A simple audit focusing on primary on-page SEO elements might take just a day, while a more comprehensive one covering technical, content, and off-page elements may take a few days.
2. Medium-Sized Websites (20–100 Pages):
   • For these, an audit might take between 2 to 5 days, including crawling, analysis, and reporting. More in-depth SEO audits, particularly those involving manual content reviews and technical assessments, can extend to a week.
3. Large Websites (100+ Pages) or E-Commerce Sites:
   • These can take one to two weeks or longer. The larger and more complex the site, the more time it takes to thoroughly review and address technical SEO, on-page elements, content, and backlink profile.
4. Enterprise-Level or Highly Complex Sites:
   • For very large or intricate sites, audits can take weeks and sometimes up to a month. They require advanced tools, manual review, and often involve detailed recommendations.

Additional Factors That May Impact Timing

• Depth of Audit: A comprehensive audit covering technical SEO, on-page optimisation, user experience, content, and backlinks will naturally take longer.
• Tool Automation vs. Manual Analysis: Automated tools can speed up the process but may require manual interpretation and further investigation.
• Reporting Needs: Detailed, custom reports tailored to the business’s needs, along with actionable recommendations, will add time.

In general, a thorough SEO audit can range from a few hours for a small, simple site to several weeks for an extensive enterprise website.