It’s impossible to improve something that you aren’t tracking and measuring, which is why search engine optimization (SEO) audits are so important.

SEO professionals understand that getting your sites to rank highly is a constant battle, with a landscape that changes almost every day. You have to stay on top of the latest adjustments to the Google search engine algorithm (and more) – and you have to focus your energy on the areas of your search engine optimization strategies that are getting the best results.

Experts in the world of SEO are going to conduct audits on a pretty frequent basis, covering the details we highlight below so that they can squeeze every drop of leverage out of your search engine ranking strategies.

An audit can help you shoot up the rankings faster than you would have been able to otherwise all while giving you inside information about your industry, your market, and your search engine work.

What Exactly Is An SEO Audit, Anyway?

A proper SEO audit is going to dig deep into your search engine optimization campaigns, looking at how well they are performing (or not performing) as well as why you’re getting the results you are right now.

Think of this as getting a bit of altitude above your search engine optimization efforts. Instead of being down in the trenches putting in work to boost your rankings you are instead looking at your campaigns as a whole, figuring out where the weaklings are (and strengthening them) and ramping up efforts that are getting you the best results already.

It’s also important to understand that SEO audit is not a top to bottom search engine optimization strategy. This is instead something you want to do after you already have SEO work in place, not a game plan that you should be working off of to get started.

You’ll also want to make sure that you are still conducting manual analysis of key parts of your overall SEO campaigns, too. The audit gives the big picture of your campaigns but you’ll still need your eyeballs on core aspects of your SEO work to see exactly what’s going on “under the hood” with those specific tactics and strategies.

When Should I Be Auditing My SEO?

Almost all professional search engine optimization agencies are going to perform an audit as soon as they bring on a new client.

This is very often the first thing done, giving the new agency an opportunity to have a look at the kind of search engine optimization work done in the past. That allows the agency to see what’s working and what isn’t, where resources need to be allocated and where they can be moved around, and what kinds of results have been coming in to act as a bit of a benchmark already.

From there, though, you’ll want to perform search engine optimization audits on a quarterly basis – sometimes even more frequently than that. Weekly search engine optimization audits are probably too frequent to give you any workable data, but monthly and quarterly SEO audits are where you’re going to want to focus your energy most.

Step By Step SEO Audit Overview

Set SMART Goals

The first piece of the puzzle when conducting a new SEO audit is to figure out what your search engine optimization goals are to begin with.

Just as you wouldn’t set out on a cross-country road trip without an idea of where you’d like to end up you can’t begin search engine optimization without having goals you’d like to hit moving forward.

Really think about your strategic objectives and how search engine optimization can help you get there. It’s impossible to have any real success in SEO without these kinds of goals you can track and measure your progress against.

Conduct Keyword Analysis

Secondly, you’ll want to knock keyword analysis right out of the park.

The odds are pretty good that you are already ranking for a handful of keywords but you want to know if those keywords are worth ranking for to begin with or if you should be focusing your energy elsewhere.

Because the world of online business is so hyper-competitive these days you need to be sure that you are spending your time, energy, and resources targeting the right keywords. This is a major part of your success or failure, and something that a proper SEO audit is going to be able to help you with.

Spy On Your Competition

It’s always a good idea to “spy” on your competition to have a look at the keywords they are targeting, the success or struggles they are having with search engine optimization, and to see where you may be able to gain a bit of competitive leverage over them – helping to bring more customers and traffic to your site that might have gone to theirs in the past.

Top SEO audits are going to have a close look at your competition to understand what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong so that you can leverage their efforts to get even better results without a lot of heavy lifting.

Technical Analysis Is Critical

SEO audits are also a good time to have a look at how your own website is holding up as far as search engine ranking friendliness is concerned.

You’ll want to make sure that your website loads as quick as possible, takes advantage of responsive and mobile friendly design, and isn’t plagued with keyword cannibalization.

It’s important that you take care of any of these technical issues ASAP so that you can start shooting up the search engine ranks, releasing these anchors that were holding you back – invisible anchors you may not have even known existed until you conducted your SEO audit to begin with.

Work With SEO Professionals For The Fastest Results

There are a handful of other things that a proper SEO audit will handle for you, but at the end of the day it’s always a good idea to work with search engine optimization professionals that cannot only shortcut your success but can also provide a lot of expertise and insight you may not have had outside of this industry.

Search engine optimization experts know exactly how to conduct audits that really work, the kinds of audits that can help you transform your search engine optimization strategies in a hurry.

It’s these kinds of audits that will have you climbing the ranks in Google (and the other major search engines) almost immediately.