To get a better understanding of why you’re business should be auditing its SEO and/or investing in an SEO audit, you must first understand what an SEO audit is.
An SEO audit can take many forms, it just depends on who is conducting the audit. But, in the very simplest form, an SEO audit refers to the process of evaluating different elements of a website that impact its performance in organic search (also known as SERPS). The main goal of an SEO audit is to find areas of improvement on your website to increase and gain rankings.
Some of the elements that are included in the audit that can impact your SEO:
- Technical SEO issues can include the following:
- Indexation analysis – are the right pages being indexed?
- Status Codes – do you have any errors, or improper redirects? How many 301’s, 303’s 404 error codes?
- Page Speed – how fast or slow the website is loading. Is there a way to speed up the website by resizing images?
- URL Structure – is it optimized and does it make sense?
- XML Sitemap
- Canonical Tags
- Duplication
- Crawlability
- On-page SEO issues
- Potential off-site problems
- User experience issues
- Content gaps and opportunities
- Competitive marketplace insights
- Mobile optimization – most users (80% are on mobile, is the site optimized for mobile?)
At Local Marketing Solutions, we are data-driven and analytical, so we take our audits very seriously because they lay the foundation for a successful search engine optimization campaign… and if done wrong, or incorrectly can negatively impact your business. So you might be asking yourself, what do our SEO audits include? Well, we’re happy you asked because we actually offer two types of SEO audits (separate from our SEO monthly management), a free audit and an in-depth SEO audit.
What’s included in our FREE SEO Audit:
Our FREE SEO audit looks at your website and provides you with a glance at where you currently stand. This audit will show you a birds-eye view of your website and includes:
Some technical SEO factors such as:
- Indexing and crawlable
- Redirects (and errors)
- Encoding and technical factors
- Links/Images
- Minimal on-page audit
- Keyword research based on current rankings (search volume, etc.)
What is included in our in-depth SEO audit:
Our in-depth (paid SEO audit) dives deep into your website and your competitors. It is a head-to-toe assessment of your business and essentially a guide on what changes to implement on your website. It includes:
- Kickoff Data Analysis – where do you currently stand?
- Customized keyword ranking report – filter all your data across all analytical platforms to get a birds eye view of what is working.
- Technical SEO audit
- Conversion optimization/website design audit
- Competitive analysis
- Keyword gap analysis
- Backlink gap analysis
- Content recommendations
As you can see, not only do we look at your site from a technical standpoint, but we also provide keyword gap analysis, backlink gap analysis, and social media analysis of your top 3 competitors. We also break down the keywords you should focus on in creating the content (with examples of up to 10 content pieces) based on keyword difficulty and even break down how to structure the content, and where to link to within your site.
And the best part? If you decide after looking at it that you want us to implement the changes and take over, 50% of the cost gets deducted from your first month of the SEO management fee.
You can purchase a paid SEO audit for $597 which include audits on up to 100 pages. For larger audits with websites with greater than 100 indexable pages, please contact us.
The information captured during our process allows you and your team (or us) to make the best recommendations for your specific website and situation. Please keep in mind the turn around time after payment is 10-14 days to allow us to analyzing and uncover all potential issues and make impactful recommendations.
How often should I do an SEO audit?
If you’re not working with a digital marketing company that is managing your SEO, we recommend at least twice a year. If you are working with an agency they should be looking at the data, and be aware and making changes based on the information they are seeing.
Which SEO audit do you recommend?
It truly depends on where you’re at as a business. Are you ready to level up and beat your competition? Are you ready to invest in search engine optimization? Do you have time or someone on your team to implement the recommended changes? Are you budget-restricted so going to take it on as another task as the business owner?
All of these are important questions to ask, because while both audits will give valuable information… nothing will change if nothing changes. This means you can have all the data in the world, but if you’re not adjusting to that data, or putting the work in, the results will remain the same.
Our free audits are powerful and contain a lot of important but we truly believe if you want a thorough “DIY” broken-down strategy to help boost your SEO, our paid SEO audit is the one to invest in.
Either way, we offer both options as no two people want or need the exact same service, so decide which one is best for you and let’s get to work and if you have any questions or need a customized audit, please feel free to contact us.
When you’re ready to hire a digital marketing agency for monthly SEO work, it’s important to think about the cost of search engine optimization. When you purchase one of our audits, you get to know us on a small scale. Then if you decide to work with us, that cost comes right off the initial monthly fee. We let the data and results speak for themselves and look forward to working with you!
