It's important to have some direction and "next-steps" in your SEO campaign, audits will do just that.
Audits aren't just about fixing what's wrong (although they are very good for identifying issues that are holding a site back), they can also give a roadmap into what you should prioritize.
Audits can help give you "quick wins" in an SEO campaign for a new client…
Internal links underutilized? Quick win.
Big issues like hacks or malware? Quick win.
Sitemap not being used or not done correctly? Quick win.
You might be curious by now about what kind of audits we do and what goes into each of them.
Let's talk more about that.
The technical SEO Audit focuses on more complex aspects of SEO that will require you to dig into code to identify and fix:
And more…
To get an idea of what our technical SEO audits look like and what we pay attention to, you can read more about everything that goes into this audit here:
When it comes to completing an audit like this, you can get lost in the details. The 80/20 rule applies here, you'll only want to focus on the technical aspects that really move the needle.
The really cool thing about technical SEO audits and fixes is that they mostly benefit the website on a sitewide level, so the influence of your work will be far reaching. In contrast to optimizing a single page, for instance.
In my opinion, Technical SEO is something a lot of SEOs don't give enough thought or attention to. Partly because it's more complicated that writing content and building links, and partly because it can be a pain in the ass.
But the effort can be worth it because a site that has these elements nailed down will have a much better time appeasing Google and other search engines.
With the latest batch of Google Updates, content audits (and keeping track of your content inventory) is something that you should put very very high when prioritizing importance.
Unfortunately, I think most SEOs just aren't doing this, which means this is an enormous potential competitive advantage for you.
The nice thing about content audits is they aren't incredibly difficult or technical like the Technical SEO Audit, you could teach your dog to do it (ok, I'm exaggerating a little here)
But the simplicity of the Content Audit shouldn't detract from it's importance.
To see exactly what goes into our content audits, check out this page here:
We now know by the weight of Google's hammers just how important useful, accurate, and helpful content is.
Naturally, Google doesn't want junk content that's outdated. And having too much junk content on a website can drag the whole site down.
In this case, a few bad apples can spoil the whole bunch.
Having a Content Audit done will help you identify any issues with your pages so you can easily work on getting them fixed up and updated.
This audit is my personal favorite because there is so much human thought and manual work that goes into it. You will find a lot of value in getting a second opinion and perspective on your content and what you may need to update, upgrade, or change.
This can mean the difference between a page that is stagnant in the SERPs and struggling to rank, to a page that is rocking the top 5.
Over the years we've done thousands of citation audits and I'm pretty proud of the process it's evolved into.
Once in a blue moon someone will ask:
"How do you find citations? Do you use Whitespark, Brightlocal, or do it manually?"
My reply: "Yes"
We do all of these things to discover what citations are out there for a location!
....but then we take it a step further.
After we have the list of URLs we then visit each one manually and record what's shown on the site. This gives us a clear indication in the final report of exactly what needs to be fixed.
You can read even more about everything that goes into our citation audits here:
When signing a new local business as a client, I recommend running this kind of audit as early as you can. Having citations out there showing inaccurate information isn't good for your local SEO campaign and the cleanup will usually take a month or longer.
