Written by: Ryan Christopher Walsh
Date: 15th/03/2024
Just as you wouldn’t embark upon a major construction project without first creating some architect plans, neither should you start to improve your business search engine optimisation without first carrying out an SEO audit.
Thankfully there are many SEO tools, such as Moz Pro, Ahrefs and Google Search Console that make this work a piece of cake. The hard part is then finding a highly experienced SEO consultant to interpret the information and come up with a plan of action as to how they plan on improving your company website.
For example, depending on what the SEO audit report says, they may recommend:
– Removing duplicated content marketing
– If there are toxic backlinks the marketing consultant may recommend disavowing them
– If the content marketing is “content thin” then improvements will need to be made to this work
– If there are indexation issues, these will also need to be rectified, such as “no-index” code left on pages for example
– And there are thousands of other areas which could also be improved as well
You’ve come to the right place to find out how carrying out an SEO audit could help your business, as we have been helping businesses now for more than ten years to improve their search engine optimisation in Wales.
So, before we do start any SEO work, one of the first places we start to carry out an SEO audit.
Off-Page SEO, On-Page SEO, Technical SEO
Just as a car’s engine can go into “limp home mode”, drastically reducing the car’s performance, something similar could happen to your company’s website if it were to incur let’s say a manual action penalty, imposed by Google.
It’s also perfectly possible that a technical issue, stopping the pages from being crawled and indexed, such as robots.txt full of “no-index” code, could be holding your business’s search engine optimisation back. Therefore, these technical issues, as well as other on-site issues and web design issues, need to be fixed to get some businesses onto page one of Google.co.uk.
Indexation issues start with these, because if these are not fixed then the business won’t appear on Google
In a nutshell, if the pages can’t be indexed by Googlebot, that is, if they can’t be crawled and indexed by Googlebot on a regular basis, this means that those pages will blog post and have no chance of ever appearing in Google’s results. So, one of the first things an SEO consultant must do is see if there are any indexation issues. You can often use the Google Search Console to do this, as this tool should tell you if there are any indexation issues.
Toxic backlinks
The business might have a website, but it’s not even ranking on the first ten pages of Google and sometimes this is because of “toxic backlinks”. The business owners might think, well we’ve sacked our previous SEO company, we’ve got rid of them, and that’s the end. However, if the previous company has completed low-quality work, for example, if they’ve built low-quality toxic backlinks, this can have a lasting effect on the website.
The business can, therefore, incur a Google Penguin penalty- a business incurs this if it has a lot of low-quality spam links. The effect of such a penalty can be long-lasting, a business can rank much lower in Google’s organic SERPs after this penalty, and it can sometimes take some businesses years to recover from such a penalty.
So often, the SEO consultant needs to see if there are any significant problems, such as duplicated content causing an algorithmic penalty or perhaps, as we mentioned earlier if there are any toxic backlinks.
Toxic backlinks can be disavowed, however, this work should be carried out by an SEO expert.
Why do we need an SEO audit?
The long and short of the matter is, sure there are millions of companies which offer free SEO audit reports.
But as the old saying goes, nothing comes for free in life.
So, often instead of just an SEO report that’s offered for free, you need a comprehensive report, which is then interpreted by a highly experienced SEO consultant who sits down and digests the report to see which areas need to be improved.
So, is it worth paying for an SEO audit report?
Well, we would say most definitely, however, an SEO report is only useful if the person interpreting the data is highly experienced, highly knowledgeable and understands what areas need to then be improved.
Therefore after reading say the Moz Pro report, the SEO consultant should then be able to come back with a series of recommendations on how they would like to improve your business’s organic search engine optimisation.
How frequently should you carry out a website audit?
Well, you should most definitely be carried out when the company changes SEO company that’s for sure. However, the frequency of how often you should carry out an audit does depend on the size of the website, for example, a multi-million-pound business, that owns an e-commerce website is obviously going to be carrying out SEO reports more regularly than a sole trader, with a 7-page website.
Yet regardless of the size of the business, the SEO consultant should always be looking at whether there are any toxic links, or duplicated content marketing, and even if there a lot of content marketing generated by AI, then this could damage the businesses organic SEO.
How long does it take to undertake an SEO audit?
Well, there are various SEO tools that are extremely good, we recommend MOZ Pro, it’s brilliant tool that can be used on any company website.
Moz Pro can then generate a report often in the blink of an eye, however as you would expect, this data needs to be interpreted by an expert.
Otherwise, if you don’t hire an SEO company to interpret the data, well you’re just having, let’s say, a 25-page document that doesn’t mean anything to the business owner. However, a highly experienced agency will be able to interpret all of the information outlined in the SEO report quickly and then recommend which areas need improving.
Which SEO tools would you recommend using?
Well, there are some that require a monthly subscription, and we would highly recommend Moz Pro, we think this is a really good SEO tool. We think it’s absolutely fantastic, and in our 10 years of experience, we think it’s one of the best tools out there.
Then, you also have a Google Search Console our SEO agency uses Google Search Console on a daily basis for our clients. This, again, is a fabulous tool and it’s free, so all businesses should have it.
It’s brilliant because it’s made by Google (Alphabet), so the information it provides is reliable and also very up-to-date. You can check things like website backlinks and see if there are indexation issues and see if any manual actions may hold your website back.
With Google Search Console you can find the following information relating to your business SEO:
Are there any Google Manual Actions in place?
You can use Google Search Console to see if any manual actions could hold a website back.
If there are any Google Manual Actions, then do consult with an SEO expert on how you can get these issues fixed.
Does your website have any indexation issues?
You can use the Google Search Console, as well as many other SEO tools, to check for possible indexation issues that may hold your business’s search engine optimisation back. For example, a “no-index” tab being left on the homepage, will mean that the homepage will never ever appear within Google’s SERP’s.
So, if you want a page or blog post to appear in Google’s SERPs, you need to make sure the page can get indexed by Googlebot.
Keywords
You can also track where your businesses keywords are ranking, using Google Search Console- simply click “Performance” button and then select “Average Position” you will then instantly see where your business ranks in Google’s SERP’s.
Duplicated content and why it needs to be removed
There are various tools that you can use as plagiarism checkers, to see if there is an duplicated content marketing on your website. And our SEO agency would urge you to use them because if there is duplicated blog posts, this could mean the business gets a Google Penalty, which can sometimes mean the whole website is removed from Google.
We recommend using Copyscape to see if there are any duplicated pages or blog posts on your website.
Add a sitemap and a robot.txt file
We highly recommend having both a Robot.txt and also adding your company’s site map to Google Search Console, this will help Googlebot to find all of the pages and blog posts on your company website.
It’s a bit like giving someone trying to find a location a sat-nav unit, obviously, then they will find their destination much easier.
This is the same as when you give Googlebot a sitemap, you are giving Google a list of all the pages, and blog posts on your website, so they can be much more easily indexed.
You can use “Screaming Frog” or “Moz Pro” to find any 404-page errors on your website
You can use various SEO tools, such as Screaming Frog, to look for 404-page errors.
You do need to rectify and fix any 404-page errors, because having 404-page errors, causes a bad user experience for your customers. It’s a bit like, going to a shop, that should be open, yet the shutters are down, you will be disappointed because you wanted to buy something.
This is a bit the same, when someone clicks on your business in Google’s SERPs, and then they instead of seeing the product they wanted, lets say it was a Bosch dishwasher, instead, they see a 404-page error instead. Most likely what will happen, is they leave your website, causing the bounce rate to increase, which is not good for your business’s search engine optimisation.
Mobile Responsiveness- Does your website work on a smartphone?
Before you agree with your web designers that the website is finished and you are happy with the website they have made for you, you must ensure it works perfectly on smartphones and tablets.
Does the website work well on say an Android smartphone? Does the website work well, on an iPhone?
You need to check to see if everything works correctly. If things don’t work efficiently for the customer, it will likely cause a high bounce rate- which will negatively impact your business’s search engine optimisation.
As any good marketing agency will tell you, they need to work hard to reduce the company’s bounce rate as far as possible.
We have over ten years of experience helping businesses to improve their SEO
Many marketing agencies come and go. However, ours has stood the test of time. We’ve worked with some fantastic businesses in the Cardiff area to help ramp up their sales. While we are not the cheapest marketing agency by a country mile, we can guarantee that every aspect of our work is white hat, and top quality.
If you would like a free quote, why not call us?
