More visitors will click on your website in the search results if it has a captivating meta description. Even though Google only provides meta descriptions 37% of the time, it is still important to ensure your most important pages have great ones. Your pages are likely being scanned as part of your daily crawl budget if they are popular, receive organic traffic and links, and are well-linked internally across your site.
How to perform an SEO audit (with checklist)
For example, sites that implement schema often see increased click-through rates because of rich snippets. One study by Search Engine Land noted a 20-30% increase in CTR for pages with structured data generating rich results (like review stars). While I won’t claim schema will magically boost your rankings, it does make your existing rankings more effective by making them stand out. Off-page SEO, primarily your backlink profile, is the next critical area. Think of backlinks as “votes of confidence” from other sites – they remain one of the strongest ranking factors. But quality matters far more than quantity, and bad backlinks can actually hurt you.
For example, you can pull keyword rankings and backlink data from Semrush. Then combine it with Google Search Console data to highlight clicks and impressions. “We wanted to democratize the depth and quality of professional SEO audits, typically costing over £1,000, by making them accessible to every business, absolutely free.”
SEO audits are the best first step in creating an SEO strategy based on your specific website, niche, and business goals — no matter what stage the website is in. After analyzing and dealing with internal issues, we are prepared for keyword analysis. In the SEO world, keyword research and competitive analysis are almost synonymous. In a way, off-page ranking factors are the result of your work.
SEO Link Audit
SEM allows you to capture traffic from the high-visibility paid spots while also working to rank for more specific, less competitive variations of the keyword. Search BHS Links Engine Marketing (SEM) is an umbrella term encompassing all strategies used to increase traffic and visibility in search engines. PPC, on the other hand, is a form of paid advertising where you pay for clicks. While there are different types of PPC, with search engine PPC, you bid for your website’s placement at the top of SERPs. These are the sponsored results you often see above the organic listings.
- Always aim to leave the reader with immediately actionable next steps such as calls-to-action or links to resources.
- You can do that in Ahrefs’ Site Audit; just head to the Content Quality report.
- To illustrate, I also ran Noob Norm through some other SEO audit tools (after the fixes).
- But Google is also continuously adapting how they assess your site’s speed.
- Here, we highlight pages that have zero internal links pointing to them.
Internal linking
Search engine algorithms prioritize well-optimized websites that provide a seamless user experience. By identifying technical, content, and backlink issues, an SEO audit helps maintain a website’s relevance and authority. Regular audits allow businesses to stay competitive in search rankings, adapt to algorithm updates, and improve their digital presence. In the expansive realm of digital marketing, an SEO website audit emerges as a comprehensive examination that provides an in-depth analysis of a website’s visibility in search engines.