How to Do Your Own SEO Audit
If you want to do an SEO audit, simply hire an expert. Problem solved!
(Just kidding.)
In all honesty, you’d be a fool to trust any service provider with the reputation of your brand without doing a little fact checking on your own. Click here to learn more about the top 3 reasons why you should do your own SEO audit.
Read on to learn a few tips that will help you perform an SEO Audit, no prior experience required.
1) Know What To Look For
Your SEO specialist should already be providing reports that cover the basics:
- Keyword Placement
- Google Page Rank (PR)
- Link Reporting
- Traffic Analysis
- Leading Traffic Sources
- Leading Entrance Pages
You should have plenty more information than what’s listed above. That is just a small fraction of what’s important. However, the first thing you want to do is run your own tests on the same information to check for consistency and accuracy. This way, you can quickly find out if your SEO specialist is more of a con-man than a trustworthy contractor.
2) Know Where To Look
mall SEO Tools is the leading resource for SEO Audit reporting because our tools are free and easy to use. Use the link analysis tool to find out how many backlinks are pointing to any given page on your website (test each page individually, because it’s not beneficial if all links direct only to your home page.) You can also use our tools to determine the Google Page Rank of any sites that do contain a backlink to your website, as well as if that page rank is legitimate or fake.
There’s no need to invest more money on an SEO audit, because the information you need is available for free. You can also use Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to get most of the information you need. In fact, these free SEO tools are probably what your SEO person uses to generate your reports.
3) Know What To Expect
Hopefully, you’ve learned that “#1 spot in Google search results, overnight!” is a very bad idea and an unobtainable goal.
Hopefully, you already know that quality SEO is about maintaining a sustainable presence online, and how various elements often intersect.
Hopefully you have a sense of why link building should be done manually, and that publishing like-able or share-able content is the best way to generate high quality, authority backlinks.
Hopefully you understand that ranking on the front page for various search phrases is useless, and that identifying your highest value search phrases depends on search volume and conversion rate.
In other words, this section of the tutorial must be vague because no 2 website owners are looking for the same sets of specific information. However, in a nutshell you should know which information attracts your attention the most. This is what’s more important to you than anything else… the hardest part is deducing that information from a series of pie charts and numbers.
4) Know How To Apply That Information To an Actionable Plan
There should be good news, and bad news. This will only tell you what is working, and what isn’t. You’re very lucky if you have an SEO person who will already provide you with negative information and a list of suggested actions.
Unfortunately, most SEO providers are afraid that their clients will not understand what they do enough to forgive any “shortcomings” and will justify excluding certain information from SEO reports. In a sense, they are “beefing up the deliverables”.
Luckily, when you do your own SEO Audit you will always find areas that need improvement. Rather than feeling discouraged by weaknesses, simply call it to the attention of your SEO provider and (kindly) ask for help in finding a solution.
