You’re tired of feast and famine when it comes to your leads so you’re starting to look into getting some SEO help. First of all, go you! I know I’m biased but I love SEO and truly believe it is THE play for long-term, consistent business coming from your website.
But if you’re feeling overwhelmed once you actually start looking into options for help, you’re not alone. SEO can be a complex world to navigate and the last thing you want to do is pay for something you don’t need. An SEO audit sounds technical and advanced, but will it actually move the needle? Are they worth paying for? What exactly does an SEO audit include?
What is an SEO website audit?
An SEO audit is basically a thorough investigation into how your website operates, especially as it relates to search engines. This includes technical SEO, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and current keyword rankings. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big or small business; the basic components of an audit are the same.
When I work on SEO audits, I use a variety of software platforms that help me answer questions like:
- Is there duplicate content on your website?
- Are there multiple pages trying to rank for the same keyword?
- Are there broken links that need to be redirected to new pages?
- How fast does the website load?
- How fast do the images load?
- Are the URLs, page titles, and meta descriptions optimized for search engines?
- Do you have optimized image names and alt text?
- Are all headers properly tagged?
- Is there a clear site hierarchy?
- Are all pages accessible within 5 clicks of the home page?
- What is the user experience like?
- What are you currently ranking for?
Exploring these types of questions on your website gives us a good indication how easy it is for Google to crawl your website and understand what it’s about. And that’s VERY IMPORTANT if you want to show up in search results. If Google can’t “read” your website or clearly see what the main purpose of each page is, you’ve got a problem.
Even though SEO does revolve around Google in a lot of ways, at the heart of it, it’s still about users. After all, that’s the experience Google values and uses as a standard for rankings. How are real people experiencing your website? Does it load quickly or are they bouncing because they’re waiting too long? Are they able to easily navigate your website to find more content? So these components go hand in hand. If it’s good for Google, it’s (99% of the time) good for real people searching. And vice versa.
What’s included in an audit?
Let’s break it down. Here are the different categories that should be a part of a comprehensive SEO audit:
Technical SEO: website load time, page indexing, mobile friendliness, accessibility (alt text!), site hierarchy, and backlink profile.
On-page SEO: header structure, keyword usage (including stuffing and cannibalization), content quality, page titles, meta descriptions, and image naming.
Off-page SEO: backlink profile, direct search, brand reputation.
An SEO audit should also include an analysis of your current rankings, average organic search traffic, and any other relevant metrics that provide a clear baseline for your site.
An audit itself typically does not include additional keyword research or competitive analysis. Those are incredibly important parts of a solid SEO strategy, but technically not part of an “audit.”
How much does an SEO audit cost?
The short answer is that you can expect to pay as little as $500 or as much as $15,000. Helpful, right?
The longer answer is that it’s based on the size and complexity of your website. If an SEO consultant has to review hundreds of website pages, that’s obviously a lot more time-intensive than a website just built two years ago that only has 5 pages. So that’s where you’ll see a big range in pricing.
If you’re a large, corporate website, you should expect to pay at least a few thousand dollars. Maybe more if you’re working with a big agency. Ideally the price of the audit is rolled into a package that also solves for some of the issues you’ll discover, so that makes pricing even harder to discern for just the audit portion itself.
Small business with a newer website that only has a handful of pages? You may be closer to the $1,000 mark.
If you’re talking to multiple SEO service providers, it’s a great idea to get quotes from all of them. Would I necessarily go with the least expensive? Not necessarily. If it were me, I’d go with the consultant or agency who understands that just handing you an audit report doesn’t actually make a difference for your SEO. An audit is necessary, but it’s what comes afterwards that counts. Let me explain.
Should you get an SEO audit?
Do I recommend SEO audits? Absolutely yes. When I’m working with clients, they are a necessary part of my process. But do I recommend you pay some random SEO guy $1,000 for an audit alone? Nope.
Here’s the thing about SEO audits. Nothing is more overwhelming than getting a report of everything your website is doing wrong without knowing how to fix it.
So in my opinion, the best route is to make sure you’re working with an SEO consultant or agency that not only provides a thorough audit but also is going to provide the recommendations (or even better, the fixes) for the problems that they discover. You’re most likely to have a good experience with an SEO consultant who sees the bigger picture and isn’t trying to sell you a standalone audit.
The only exception to this is if you have your own SEO team already and you’re just looking for an extra set of experienced eyes to confirm or analyze some tricky issues. When I worked on a corporate SEO team for a financial company, we occasionally contracted out audits with specialists who had particular experience and it was helpful to get their insight on the audit, and then we took it from there with the implementation. So that’s possible for sure, but probably not applicable to most situations.
You’ll have the best experience working with an SEO consultant who is not only able to analyze where your website currently is (aka, the audit) but also set the vision for where it could go. That’s where the other stages of the process come in…keyword research, competitive analysis, content strategy, implementation.
If you’re interested in getting full-service SEO support, learn more about the packages I offer and get in touch to set up a free discovery call!
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