A comprehensive SEO audit looks through your website, making sure it’s firing on all cylinders so you can track your traffic and your conversions!

Search engines want the best content showing for their users, and you want your content delivered to as many people as possible.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of making the content of a website available for search engines’ crawlers so that you can capitalize on the vast quantities of organic search traffic going into Google each day.

Since you can’t get where you want to go without knowing where you are, this process begins with an SEO audit.

During an SEO audit, SEO experts look at your website and determine what’s keeping you from ranking on Google’s first page (or any other search engine).

This article will highlight the twelve aspects the experts at Algorithmic Global look at during an SEO audit, so you know what kind of information you can expect from your report!

Google Analytics

Let’s talk about how crucial Google analytics is to SEO.

Knowledge is power. In this instance, the traffic sources to your website and which pages people view.

There are also conversion actions, like phone calls and form submissions.

That’s why the first step of an SEO audit is making sure Google Analytics is correctly set up.

If you don’t have your analytics set up, the right SEO expert can help you figure out what kind of data to track.

But if you’re starting with Google Analytics, it’s essential that you learn how key metrics work (like hits and page views).

Search Console

Another Google property provides valuable information about what people are searching for when they find your website.

It’s called the Google Search console.

The information includes what someone is searching for, how they found your website (for example, typing in a search engine or clicking on an ad), and the landing page.

This data can help you determine which keywords to work into your content to rank higher with those looking for similar things as those who already showed up at your site.

During the SEO audit, an SEO expert checks if Search Console is set up and running correctly.

Page Speed

Page speed is the time that elapses from when someone clicks on a link until they get some content. It’s also called “page load time.”

Page load time matters because people expect your website to be fast to find what they need quickly.

If you want visitors to keep coming back, make sure your site loads quickly without crashing their browsers or devices!

The most accurate way to measure page speed is by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool. You input a web address into the search bar, then click “Analyze,” and it returns your page’s load time.

Part of the SEO audit is checking the page speed and making sure it’s not too long. In case you’re wondering, pages should ideally load in less than two seconds.

Content

The next step of the SEO audit involves the website’s content.

There are two glaring considerations SEO experts are on the lookout for: duplicate content and thin content.

Duplicate content is when a website has the same content on two different pages.

Thin content is when there’s not enough original, unique material to keep visitors returning to your site.

Two other aspects inspected during the SEO audit are proper keyword density and readability throughout the page.

Proper keyword density refers to how often you use keywords concerning other words used; it shouldn’t be too high or too low.

Readability checks whether all sentences are written at an eighth-grade reading level, appropriate for most audiences.

The goal with this part of the process is finding spots where readers may get confused and lost while browsing through your site’s content — that could lead them to abandon your site for one that’s more informative!

On-page SEO

On-page SEO has more to do with how the website’s pages are constructed, not necessarily what’s on the page themselves.

During the SEO audit, we’ll look at things like your title tags and meta-descriptions and search for broken links.

The title tags are some of the most critical parts in terms of SEO—you should choose these carefully to represent what the pages contain accurately.

Title tags and meta-descriptions are shown on the search engines’ results page, so these also help generate clicks.

Another part of on-page SEO inspected during the SEO audit is the alt text on images. Alt-text is crucial for accessibility—it describes what’s shown in the picture for those with visual impairments.

Off-page SEO

Most of the off-page SEO inspected during an SEO audit involves looking at the link building, specifically the outbound and inbound links to the website.

The links from authoritative sites are more likely to be clicked than those from less reputable sources. It’s vital that high-quality content attracts other bloggers and publishes to mention your blog post in their articles or share it with their followers via social media.

There are downsides to overly aggressive link building. Purchasing links or getting involved in blog networks that solely exist for link building could create penalties for your website.

During the SEO audit, the SEO expert will make sure the search engines don’t see links from sites that could cause a penalty.

Sitemaps

A sitemap is a list of all the pages within a website. Part of the SEO audit is making sure the sitemap exists so a search engine can read it and check if it’s submitted to Google (since it’s the world’s largest search engine).

Another part of the SEO audit is making sure the sitemap is available for all users on the footer, so people who find the site through organic search can know where they are within the site.

Site architecture

This part of the SEO audit looks at the site itself and the way it’s organized. This site audit includes looking at the length of the URLs and how they’re categorized.

The URL is the web address of a site on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

It needs to be shorter than characters (including spaces) and should not exceed 155 characters in length, including punctuation marks, but excluding special symbols such as underscores (‘_’) or dashes (‘-‘).

Very long URLs can confuse users due to their length and complexity, which may lead people to close the page before reading your article because they don’t

If the website has a lot of content, some pages will likely be deleted or moved. Part of an SEO audit is looking at what happens to those old pages, making sure they are redirected properly and permanently, so Google knows where to go when someone searches for them.

Indexation

During the SEO audit, we’ll look at the information search engines are allowed to crawl on your site.

A website shouldn’t show certain information like dates and authors on a search engine results page. Your SEO expert checks to see if this information isn’t on there.

There are also links on websites that search engines shouldn’t follow. It’s another aspect of indexation your SEO expert inspects during the site audit.

Schema markup

A lot of your website’s SEO power comes from the schema markup you place on your pages. 

Schema is a way to tell Google what kind of information they’ll find there and where those bits are located.

If you don’t have any schema markup on your pages that applies to their type or topic, we recommend adding them as soon as possible. This way, Google and any other search engine crawling your page know what kind of information is on the page.

There are many types of schema markup—during the SEO audit, we’ll check which ones are present on your site.

Plugins

Plugins are small pieces of software that can be embedded into your site to add extra functionality.

For example, when you upload images to WordPress, there’s a plugin called “Imagify,” which automatically makes those images smaller and more lightweight, so they load faster.

During the SEO audit, we’ll check if the plugins on your website do what they’re supposed to do: filling in gaps or adding features for users who want them.

A common misconception is that plugins slow down sites – this isn’t true at all! Image compression plugins make a site faster.

Local SEO

When we conduct an SEO audit, we’ll look at a company’s citations, their location pages (also called “NAP”), business hours, phone number—anything that will help them rank higher in local searches.

These considerations are essential if you’re running a small brick-and-mortar store with high foot traffic. People are looking up directions or reviews on their preferred search engine before they visit your physical storefront.

If someone has visited your website but can’t find out what time you close because there’s no sign outside telling them so, that could mean fewer visitors who might become a paying customer.

Local search is one of the most prominent and influential factors on Google when ranking in organic search. We spend a lot of time checking for consistency across every place your website’s information appears online.

Algorithmic Global SEO audit

Each of these twelve aspects involves several checks. We’ll make sure we find any reason your site isn’t showing on Google’s (or any other search engines’) first page during our SEO audit.

It’s our job to tell you what we find and where your site stands in terms of rankings on search engines, traffic, and revenue potential. We’ll also give suggestions on how to improve your website so it can perform better for whatever business or industry type it supports.

If you’re interested in a site audit, give us a call or reach out via our contact page. We can discuss all twelve different aspects involved with an SEO audit, as well as some tips for improving your website performance moving forward!