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If you’re wondering whether an SEO audit is worth it, you’ve come to the right place.
We’re not here to waste your time but the truthful answer is it depends.
Free SEO audits are usually incredibly generic and are used to up-sell you into a service/product.
High-quality SEO audits can offer incredible insights into your website and how you can drive traffic.
In this article, we’ll try and cover everything needed for you to make an informed decision regarding an SEO audit.
Furthermore, if you want to save money we’ll show you how to carry an SEO audit out yourself.
Simply put, an SEO audit is an evaluation of your website’s ability to rank on search engines such as Google and Bing.
A thorough SEO audit will highlight the weaknesses and opportunities of your website (whether this be your content, backlinks, or site performance).
You’ll come away having learnt what you’re doing wrong and what you can do to improve upon your website.
You’re basically paying for a checklist of everything you need to do to increase the amount of traffic you’re receiving.
Where SEO audits get complicated is that the quality differs massively depending on where you go. We’re going to try our best to advise you on exactly what you should expect from an SEO audit and how you ensure your SEO audit is worth it.
If you’re a business owner, odds are that you’re focusing on multiple things all at once. Whether that be fulfillment or sales.
Odds are that you don’t have the SEO expertise to perform a thorough analysis of your website.
This is where an SEO audit comes in handy, you can use a subject matter expert to give you a checklist of everything that needs doing.
Just knowing what needs to be done allows you to form a plan of action. You now have a clear route to SEO improvements.
You can then decide whether you want to outsource the work or whether you feel confident enough to attack it.
There’s an ugly truth within the SEO world.
There are a lot of SEO agencies that have clients on a monthly retainer only for them to do a minimal amount of work.
There may only be a few things that need doing to significantly improve your SEO.
In cases like this, it’s not very cost effective to pay SEO agencies to improve your site.
Instead, you can buy an SEO audit for a fraction of the price and then make an informed decision regarding whether an SEO agency is needed. This alone makes an SEO audit worth it.
The SEO industry is an ever changing beast, mainly because of constant algorithm changes.
The likes of Google want to provide their users with the best possible user experience. And this means constantly tweaking their ranking algorithm.
Therefore, it is best practice to get an SEO expert to evaluate your site in accordance to any updated algorithm changes.
Whilst these can be minor changes, it will help you stay ahead of your competition (it could make the world of difference in the most competitive of niches).
Generally, an SEO audit is split into sections but it is very dependent on the auditor.
Many auditors utilize a SWOT technique where they list the website’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Furthermore, they’ll often breakdown the different aspects of SEO and advise you on what you can do to improve upon each area.
These include your technical SEO (the performance of your site), your on-page SEO (your content), and your off-page SEO (your website’s authority).
In general, you should come away from an SEO audit knowing what you need to do and why you need to do those things to improve your SEO.
A local SEO audit is similar to a general SEO audit in the sense of identifying areas for progress.
However, there is one key difference.
Local SEO audits are geared towards improving your search engine presence within a local market.
These audits are popular among businesses who target a customer within a specific location.
SEO audits will look at everything you can do to improve your visibility for local searches that are relevant to your business.
In our opinion, local SEO is among one of the most effective methods of marketing for those who rely on a local customer base.
This is because every year more people are looking to Google for reviews and opinions on businesses. And you want your own business to be front and centre.
We generally recommend that you get an SEO audit at least once every 6 months.
If you’re working with an SEO agency, they should be informing you of exactly how your website is performing so it’s usually unnecessary to look for SEO audits.
We advise on 6 month intervals because it’s enough to see whether your current strategy is working and to find new opportunities for SEO growth.
Furthermore, it’s regular enough to keep up to date with any of the algorithm changes that we mentioned earlier.
In short, 6 month SEO audits are worth it for all business types.
If you want to be even more on top of your SEO strategy then you could even move this to a 3 month interval.
With a 3 month interval, you could gain better insight into your progress in keyword rankings and conversion rate optimisations.
Generally 12 week intervals are long enough to identify patterns and trends.
You’ll need to determine how much you want to get out of your SEO campaign to then make a decision regarding whether a 3 month SEO audit is worth it.
Only through an SEO audit can you gain insight into your site’s strengths and weaknesses.
We often find website-owners spending hours on low priority SEO tasks just because they didn’t take the time to perform an SEO audit.
For example, if you’re releasing content multiple times a week, you’re going to see diminishing returns on increasing your output.
You would be much better served optimising your technical SEO or your off-page SEO strategy. However, you won’t know that without an SEO audit.
One of the most frustrating aspects of SEO is it’s hard to tell if an SEO strategy is working (especially for those that are new to SEO).
To identify progress you need someone to analyse your ranking positions, organic conversions, and many other factors.
Not only is this time consuming but it can be hard to do, especially for those with a limited SEO skillset.
By buying regular audits, you can sit back and let a professional analyse your site.
They will then let you know with regards to what’s working and what’s not. And you can then adjust your SEO strategy as you see fit.
If you operate in a competitive niche, odds are there’s an annoying competitor who always manages to beat you in the search engine rankings.
No mater what you do they always seem to be a step ahead.
This is where an SEO audit can help close the gap.
A lot of SEO audits will analyse your key competitors and give you an overview of what they’re doing to beat you.
You can then look at your competitor’s strategy for inspiration and look to incorporate elements of it within your strategy.
If you can incorporate their strategy whilst also further experimenting with your SEO, you’re going to over take them very soon.
The amount of poorly written content we come across would frighten even the newbies in SEO.
It’s painful to find website owners spend hours writing content without knowing anything about SEO. Nine times out of ten it’s a complete waste of time and doesn’t bring in any traffic whatsoever.
This is where an SEO audit can come in handy. Most proper SEO audits will advise you of how you could improve your content and whether your overall strategy is working or not.
They may even give you topics and keywords that you can target over the coming months. If you can gather SEO content briefs from an experienced consultant, it’s hard to go wrong.
One of the most overlooked factors with regards to SEO, is functionality.
Everyone’s obsessed with content and aesthetics but forget to look at the technical performance of their site.
It’s key to remember that Google prioritises high performing website to provide their users with the best possible user experience.
An SEO audit will take a deep dive into the technical performance and provide you with a checklist of actionable steps to improve upon the performance of your site.
And then you can either attempt it yourself or outsource the work depending on the complexity of the to-do list.
If you’re well versed in SEO and feel confident in your skillset, you can always look to perform your own SEO audit.
It’s worth noting that it will take a significant amount of your time and there will be some expenditure included to sign up for the appropriate software.
Not only that but the results are usually worse than paying for a new set of eyes to look at your website.
But if you feel confident in the task then we recommend that you check out the following resources:
We would start with Wordstream! They provide a simple 10 step process with regards to the fundamentals of your site.
As with most services, the answer is it depends. A serviced SEO audit can cost anywhere from £250 to £25,000. It all comes down to the level of service that you require.
And you may come across quite a few websites offering free SEO audits but we do advise that you stay clear from them – we’ll explain more later in the article.
When deciding your budget for your SEO audit, the first thing you need to do is to take a look at the depth of your site.
If your site does not have a lot of content on it then you’re not going to need much in-depth analysis. You may just need an SEO strategy which may only cost a couple of hundred pounds/dollars.
On the flip side, if you have an E-Commerce store with thousands of products that need to be optimised you may need to fork out significantly more for a higher level of service.
The next thing to consider is what do you want out of your SEO audit.
If all you want is to improve your local SEO and get onto the front page of your town’s search results then you may not need to spend much at all.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to compete with multi-million pound organisations are want to jump ahead of them then you may need to spend significantly more.
Again, it all comes down to the level of service you require.
It’s important to remember that you may not need a full SEO audit.
You can always purchase a technical/on-page/off-page/local SEO audit. This will work out much cheaper as it doesn’t require as much work as auditing every single aspect.
However, you must know the difference between each type of audit and only go for the one that you need.
Technical SEO – The crawlability, indexability, and rankability of your site.
On-Page SEO – The actual content on your site.
Off-Page SEO – The authority of your domain.
For example, if your site performs well, has a clear site structure, and has a ton of content on it then it may be worthwhile opting for just an off-page SEO.
Yes, an SEO audit is worth it. 100%
There’s nothing worse than watching a business attempt to do SEO without any strategy or know-how. In 90% of cases they’re just wasting countless hours on writing content that won’t receive even a slice of traffic.
By spending some money on an SEO audit, you’ll receive professional advice and a blueprint on how you could get some results off the back of a SEO campaign.
And then you can make the decision of whether you want to go at it alone or whether you want to outsource it to an SEO agency.
No. An SEO audit is not worth it if you have a monthly retainer.
Your SEO agency should be providing you with monthly reports with regards to your SEO campaign.
They should be tracking all keyword rankings, organic traffic, and organic conversions.
Furthermore, they should be communicating their SEO strategy throughout their campaign and constantly identifying areas for opportunity.
If they’re not doing any of the above, you need a new SEO agency!
The only exception to this is if your current SEO agency is not getting you results. Then it may be worthwhile getting a fresh pair of eyes to see whether your agency are doing their due diligence or not.
Remember just because you’re not seeing results from your SEO agency yet, doesn’t mean they’re not working. It’s a long game!
We alluded to this earlier in the article but please do stay away from free SEO audits.
Not because we want SEO professionals to get paid but because it’s in your best interests to do so.
If it’s free, their likely auditing your site via automated software tools. Or they’re spending only a couple of hours doing so.
Both of these options are not going to provide you with a high-quality SEO strategy that you can execute on.
Best case scenario you make minimal gains in your SEO campaign.
Worst case scenario you spend months executing on the provided lackluster SEO strategy only for you to not get any results.
Whilst we don’t advise you to go for free SEO audits, you can definitely do your SEO keyword research for free.
This is because there’s less room for error with identifying suitable keywords.
Websites like Ahrefs and Semrush will identify all keywords that are related to your domain. They can then show you how much search volume there is for these terms and where you’re ranking.
Furthermore, most of these websites come with free trials so that you can get the data you need without paying a single penny.
We do recommend that you spend some time learning to identify good keywords to target so that you don’t waste your time picking poor keywords which don’t convert.
Hopefully this article has been helpful with regards to deciding whether an SEO audit is worth it.
As you’ve learnt an SEO audit is worth it. Always.
Our answer is a resounding yes, they often save you a lot of time and wasted effort.
The real question is what level SEO audit do you need? And what are you looking to achieve with your SEO audit?
If you want to educate yourself on SEO and have a go at getting results yourself (entirely possible) then by all means check out our other posts.
See you in the next post.
Morgan
