SEO Audit

The first step in any new SEO relationship is to conduct an audit. Imagine the poor client who has changed SEO providers several times. If the providers were all on their toes, they each conducted audits. Some businesses may dread the SEO audit process because, if done properly, it will be thorough and exhaustive. In fact, whether a company changes SEO providers or not, it’s a good idea to conduct a thorough SEO audit at least once a year, especially if the business is drawing significant revenue from search traffic.

The SEO audit should produce a snapshot of the state of health of a Website (and the publisher’s SEO practices) at the time of the audit. The audit may identify problems but the problems should not be fixed during the audit (because the fixes change the sate of the Website’s health). Inevitably someone comes up with some drastic the-world-will-end-if-we-don’t-fix-this-now scenario that “justifies” making changes during the audit. Such radical changes should be well and carefully documented but it would be best to defer them until after the audit.

Why defer making changes until after an SEO audit? Because if you change stuff while you’re auditing you end up with an audit that doesn’t tell you what the current state of the Website’s health is.

What follows are some high-level suggestions for how to do an SEO audit. Ultimately you have to come up with the details yourself because if you don’t understand how to conduct some audit practices you’re better off not trying. Of course, that raises the question: if an SEO doesn’t know how to check for “X”, should that SEO be doing an audit?

There is no right or wrong answer for that question, but if I were in the position of not knowing how to examine something I would recommend to the client that they bring in someone to check that part of the system. I am sure I have done that on more than one occasion. You can be expert enough to know where you are NOT expert, and you should be professional enough to give your client the best recommendations to protect THEIR interests.

Step 1 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Define the Statement of Purpose

Learn what the purpose of the Website is. It’s purpose is NOT to make money, create visibility, or build brand value. If the publisher doesn’t understand why they have a Website, you can pretty much bet your best practices that their SEO audit is going to look pretty bad.

You don’t need a 5-page explanation of what the Web business is all about. 1-4 sentences should be sufficient. If the client gives you 1-4 sentences of vague description about what they are trying to accomplish with the Website, you will need to gently guide them through the process of figuring out what the site is really trying to accomplish for their business.

Without that initial Statement of Purpose, everything that follows is a waste of time.

Step 2 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Document the Publisher’s Search Lexicon

What keywords does the client think he should be drawing traffic for? Don’t let the client talk about rankings. You want to know what keywords they are targeting or think they should be targeting. Ask them to justify each keyword with a 1-sentence explanation of why people should be using that keyword to find their products or services. Don’t be condescending. You may need to gently prod them with some questions about what the value they offer through those search terms may be. A good client will pick up on what you’re doing and help you; an eager client may unwittingly derail the process by trying to second-guess you and give you “what you want”.

This part of the audit is designed to help you talk about all the client’s search priorities, not just the ones that “so-and-so” thinks are important. The Big Boss often thinks in terms of industry jargon. Get down to the people taking the orders and talking with the customers and see if they know why clients are signing up through the site.

The Search Lexicon will provide you with invaluable insight into how close (or far from) the mark the site’s keyword targeting is, so DO NOT LOOK AT THE WEBSITE when building the Search Lexicon. This part of the audit is intended to help you learn how the client thinks about their vertical.

Step 3 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Review the Client’s SEO Tools and Practices

Are they using analytics? If so, this is where you get access to the reports and data.

Are they using outside providers? If so, this is where you get access to the outside providers’ reports — and if you’re lucky, you can even review the contracts (which you should do in an audit). Are the providers meeting their contractual obligations? Don’t fall into an advisory role here — just document what IS and what IS NOT being done.

Are they using SEO tools? If so, which ones? Who in the business has access to the tools? How were they trained? How often do they use the tools? Observe them when they are using the tools during their normal jobs (demonstrations are not informative — you want to observe the gorilla in its natural environment).

Step 4 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Analyze the Site’s Architecture

Now is a good time to see what they are doing with the site. Look at the keywords they are using in their URLs, the folder structures, the relationships between leaf nodes and the root URL, the age of the content, the rate at which content is added, modified, or deleted, who creates the content, how unique the content is, what the site looks like visually, etc.

Page architecture or construction is just as important as the toponymy and taxonomy the site uses. Toponymy defines how things are named. Taxonomy defines how things are organized. Toponymy tells you what keywords are used in the URL and page names. Taxonomy tells you how the folders and sub-domains are sorted and arranged in the site’s hierarchy. Navigation tells you which pages and sections are most important to any page.

So you want to document all of a site’s toponymies (there can be more than one), taxonomies (there can be more than one), and navigational widgets (there can be more than one). There may be too many for you to really document. It’s okay if you document the pattern without being exhaustive but the audit should make it painfully obvious there are multiple whatevers on the site.

This is also where you identify (but don’t fix) any internal linking nonsense such as PageRank Sculpting, use of mixed link formats (absolute and relative), cross-linking between secure and unsecure versions of the domain, non-canonical link references (including and excluding the www. randomly in links), broken meta declarations, etc.

If the client has a URL map you should determine how accurate and up-to-date it is. If they don’t have a URL map, you should see if you can build one for them. But I would hesitate to just run Xenu Link Sleuth on the site. If the client is running analytics that will screw up their analytics. Discuss the options with them before doing something like this. Xenu can also crash a server. Make sure they understand the risks.

If they can give you the source files, that would be less obtrusive and risky. It makes your task harder, but you’re not there to relax and enjoy the sun.

Step 5 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Classify the Content

What sort of content is the site publishing? Is the content striving for optimization? Is it keyword-rich? Is it rambling? What does the grammar look like? How well does it match the Search Lexicon? Is it articulating (explicitly or implicitly) the business purpose of the site? Does the content relate to the business purpose of the site?

Where does the content come from? What is the process for creating the content? What is the process for publishing the content? How much editorial review is involved? What sort of checks and balances are in place? Who fixes the content if a problem is identified?

This part of the audit should tell you how much responsibility is in any one person’s hands. In a small organization, you’re locked into working with one or a few people who have to wear multiple hats. But the audit needs to identify the risks that are entailed by who is participating in the content creation and maintenance and how those risks are being mitigated (if at all).

Step 6 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Keyword Analysis

Now that you have looked at the content, you need to look at the hard data to see what keywords are actually bringing traffic in from search and to which pages that traffic is flowing. This usually won’t be easy because most analytics packages are not designed to provide you with this kind of information. They’ll report which pages are getting traffic, they’ll report which keywords are bringing traffic, but geting those reports to line up is often impossible.

A keyword analysis should include at least four columns of data:

The source of the search referral traffic

Search referral term

Page receiving traffic from the search referral term

The keywords that the page is actually emphasizing in TITLE, Hx headers, and through on-page repetition

Can you include other data in that analysis? Sure. You may have other keyword-related KPIs that I’m not covering here. But the ultimate goal of this step in the SEO auditing process is to benchmark how well the content-driven keyword goals are matching up with the keyword activity in search referral traffic.

Many clients won’t have this data. Don’t try to fix the problem during the audit. Just note that the necessary data is not being captured.

If the client isn’t tracking analytics, you can still try to get some data by authenticating their site (through THEIR email address) with Google and Bing. Use the Webmaster reporting tools the major search engines provide to at least give the client a birds’ eye view of what the data can show them. It will also be helpful after the audit when you teach the client about how to use analytics to develop good SEO practices.

Now that you have captured at least SOME keyword data for the audit, go use a keyword trending tool and do some benchmarking on their query spaces. Are these healthy query spaces? Are they dying? Are they still growing? If a client’s business goals are aligned with a query space that was 10 times more active 3 years ago, the audit should note this.

If you have access to PPC data, you should look at this too. How much do they rely on PPC? Are their PPC keyword goals related to their organic goals? How much coordination is involved in pursuing both paid and organic search goals?

If for some reason you could not get a URL map earlier in the process, this step SHOULD provide you with at least a partial URL map. That URL map is your bible.

Step 7 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Review the Reporting Process

What key performance indicators is the client using? What steps do they take to report on their KPI progress? Who produces the reports? Who sees the reports? What do the reports look like? Are they cross-referencing data to make sure their reports are accurate and informative?

Look at the vendor reports. How often do they come in? What sort of checks and balances is the client using to ensure the vendors are being honest and thorough? Are there clear KPI definitions for the vendor reports? Are the reports matching the contractual KPI tracking?

The reporting process should identify which keywords are bringing in the most traffic, the most conversions, etc. It should also identify which pages and/or sections of a site are performing best and least.

Larger companies tend to have a clearly defined reporting process more often than smaller companies. But every now and then you run into a small company that really understands the power of cross-checking claims and statements, as well as tracking KPIs for search. Still, this is the part of the audit that should identify any major weaknesses in the client’s SEO best practices.

Often, I find that a lack of reporting leads to all sorts of incorrect application of SEO techniques and practices.

Step 8 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Review the Site’s Back links

By now you should know if the client is acquiring links and if they are using an outside source for links. Be careful what link checking tools you use. Document for the client that the tools can only tell you what is in THEIR databases, not in any particular search engine’s database.

Yahoo! only knows what Yahoo! has discovered. It cannot tell you what Google or Bing know about or value (and, yes, I know Yahoo! serves Bang’s search results).

Links cape only knows what Landscape has discovered. It cannot tell you what Google or Bing know about or value.

Majestic SEO only knows what Majestic SEO has discovered. It cannot tell you what Google or Bing know about or value.

Shoot yourself if you tell a client, “Here is your Links cape report for your Google backlinks.” Shoot yourself and cut out your tongue and shoot your tongue if you say that after reading this blog.

Every tool has its limits. Every tool can still be useful. You don’t need to put these tools on pedestals and act like they are infallible.

In this process, you should also try to document how many references to the site’s domain or base URL you can find in search results for Google and Bing. Simply note these references as “In-Text Citations”. Don’t agonize over whether they represent links or not. That’s not important.

There are some SEO tools that will tell you what anchor text links are pointing at a site. Technically, any link vendor should be providing the client with this information but if you have the budget to get into some of the higher end tools, it will help you to know how much targeting the client is doing with their link building.

Clients often may not know who built which links, when, or how, but dishonest clients will burn you without any sense of remorse if they break the rules and get caught. This is one part of the audit process that should be sending off alarm klaxons because, frankly, no client is worth the high risk of being sacrificed to Google and Bing to cover someone else’s screwup.

I believe that fewer than 1% of SEO clients would do this, but I believe that more than 0 fall into that small group.

Step 9 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Make Recommendations

Some people make recommendations throughout the audit report. Some people leave their recommendations for the end of the audit report. That’s a matter of style but make sure you go through all those recommendations with the client.

Step 10 of How To Do An SEO Audit: Create An Action Plan

People sometimes confuse recommendations for an action plan. You can get away with that if you have only a very small number of recommendations to make. In my experience, the more recommendations you make the more glassy-eyed the client becomes.

After you have walked through all the recommendations you should present the client with an action plan that prioritizes what specific actions they should take next. They may need to negotiate with you so be flexible, but you should have a complete action plan ready to discuss before the negotiation begins.

Other Stuff You May Want To Include

Some people may look at the risks that are entailed by existing client SEO practices. If you see a lot of risky behavior in the earlier stages of the audit, it might be a good idea to summarize and evaluate those risks in a separate section.

Some people may capture enough data to provide the client with a historical performance report. If the client has never seen an SEO KPI report before (or a good one), then it may be a good idea to create a report that looks at their past month, quarter, year, or two years (if you can). They may learn to help you and themselves more quickly if you can show them how much they have accomplished already. It helps to have a confident client who feels empowered (and who respects your knowledge and experience).

Some people (maybe most of you) would include a competitive analysis in the audit. That’s fine, I suppose. I view competitive analysis as a very different kind of service. You have to make that decision for yourself.

A good audit will break out and expand upon information that assumes an unusual significance or importance. You can have a standard audit template you apply for every client, but be flexible. You never know what you’ll run into.

I hope this has been helpful.

About the Author

Manish Singh SEO Expert is currently working as a Sr. SEO Executive in the Internet Marketing field associated with Indian SEO Link Building Company India and doing deep research on the current Internet Marketing World Strategies, SEO Services India and having a strong Analyzing Power with Troubleshooting Attitude.

Posted in: How To Do An SEO Audit