Have you ever wondered how much does an SEO Audit Cost? Most SEO Agencies perform audits free of charge, as it’s an ideal lead generation tool. You enter your personal information, and in return, you receive a FREE SEO report.

Many of the reports you receive will be automated and won’t make much sense to someone with little knowledge of the web and its workings.

In my opinion and from experience, the audit should include the following information.

• Crawlability
• Page Speed
• Backlink Audit
• Keyword Overview

Crawlability

Crawlability is one of the most critical factors in a technical SEO Audit. Suppose Google can’t crawl the website well. It can’t index it well, and if it can’t index it well, you won’t rank.

Some of the issues that can harm Crawlability are;

• 404 Errors
• Duplicate Content
• Redirect Chains and Loops
• Slow Page Loading Time

404 errors

404 errors occur when a user or crawler tries to access a page that does not appear to exist on a domain. If you manage a website yourself, do not just delete a page or blog article without implementing a 301 redirect.

Although when you delete a page on a website, it disappears, and you can no longer see it. Google and other search engines will still list the page on the Search Engine Results page.

When the links are clicked, it will direct the user to a 404 error page. Not only does this impact the user experience, but it also causes harm to your search rankings.

Duplicate Content

Pages with identical content can have several ramifications on Google Search results and occasionally be penalised. The most common issues these causes are;

• The wrong version of pages showing in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page)
• Key pages are unexpectedly not performing well in SERPs and experiencing indexing problems.
• Fluctuations or decreases in core site metrics (traffic and rank positions)

Redirect Chains and Loops

A redirect loop happens when a URL is redirected to another URL, which initially redirects back to the URL requested, leading to infinite redirect cycles.

The redirect loop can lead the website to display a 404 error page, as mentioned above.

Slow Page Load Times

The speed of your site has a direct impact on Search Engine Optimisation and conversion rates. Not taking the time to fix these technical issues can cost you in the long run.

A study was carried out back in 2017 that proved this. A slow website also gives a poor user experience to the user who is browsing the site.

Google likes to provide its users with secure and fast websites to give them the best experience.

Source: Google/SOASTA Research, 2017

Backlink Audit

Backlinks pointing to your website that come from domain names with low domain name authority can impact your rankings negatively. Think of a backlink as a vote of confidence. So if these come from sources that aren’t trustworthy, you won’t be receiving any benefits.

Suppose Google knows the backlinks are from link farms or are associated with spam. It can harm your ranking, and you will be penalised.

Suppose they don’t look natural and have a high spam score. It’s best practice to Disavow these terms. Most spam links come from public blog networks and are pretty standard.

Frequently we come across websites that are utilising our client’s imagery on third-party websites. This impacts the bandwidth on your server and can cause issues with page speed on your site.

In our opinion, a link audit is a crucial part of the overall SEO audit.

Keyword Overview

We like to search the top 10 pages of Google to see what search terms your website already ranks. It gives us an idea of your existing presence and helps us discover any opportunities we could capitalise on and would take minimal effort.

Tools you can use for carrying out an SEO Audit

There are many SEO tools that you can use to carry out an audit on pages of your site.

A good tool for carrying out an audit is WooRank.  You can use this for Free for 14 days, and the cheapest package is £79.99 per month.

Here at ClickPower, we use a hybrid of tools to carry out your Free SEO Site Audits. These tools are;

• Semrush
• Screaming Frog Crawler
• Visual Inspection