In the digital world, your website's visibility is key. An SEO audit is your first step to uncovering why your website might not be getting the traffic you'd hope or expect it to be getting. It's provides a deep dive into a website's performance, identifying barriers to search engine visibility. This process lays bare the technical, on-page, and off-page elements needing improvement.

Here, we explore the intricacies of SEO audits, pinpointing issues and unlocking opportunities for growth.

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is a full analysis of your website, evaluating things such as its structure, content, and backlink profile and uncovering any inconsistencies or errors.

A robust SEO audit goes beyond superficial metrics. It dives into user experience, site speed, and mobile responsiveness. Each factor plays a significant role in how search engines perceive your site. It should also highlight how users interact with your website. Are they staying? Are they engaging?

These insights are golden, informing future content strategies and design improvements.

Why is it important to perform SEO audits on a regular basis?

SEO audits are important because the goalposts are constantly changing, and user behaviour is consistently shifting.

What is valuable one day may be outdated the next, with everything from reputable backlinks to relevant keywords changing in the blink of an eye.

A regular SEO audit will enable you to keep on top of anything that could be negatively impacting your search engine ranking and will encourage you to keep making changes to stay ahead of the competition.

What kind of issues and opportunities could arise from an SEO audit?

With all that in mind, what kind of issues could an SEO audit pick up - and what opportunities could arise from performing a regular audit.

Issues that an SEO Audit can identify

First and foremost, an SEO audit will help you to diagnose any issues which affect how your website works, how fast the pages load, and how seamless the user experience is. Being able to assess page stability and load speeds, as well as the quality of your content and any broken links or pages, enables you to isolate issues and fix them before they have a negative impact on your search engine ranking.

Some of the key things that can be uncovered in an SEO audit include:

Technical issues: Problems like slow site speed, poor mobile responsiveness, and crawl errors that hinder search engine indexing.

On-page SEO weaknesses: Missing or poorly written title tags, meta descriptions, and headings that affect page relevance and user engagement.

Poor quality content: Content that lacks depth, relevance, or keyword optimisation, making it difficult for search engines and users to find value.

Broken links: Both internal and external broken links that lead to poor user experience and negatively impact site authority.

Duplicate content: Issues arising from identical or too similar content across multiple pages, diluting search engine visibility.

Site structure problems: Inefficient website navigation and URL structure that impede user experience and search engine crawling.

Missing alt texts for images: Overlooking image optimisation, including alt attributes, which can enhance accessibility and relevance.

Lack of HTTPS security: The absence of SSL certification that can impact trustworthiness and search engine rankings.

Inadequate mobile optimisation: Failing to provide a seamless experience for mobile users, crucial for ranking after mobile-first indexing updates.

Poor user experience (UX): Elements that create a negative user experience, such as intrusive pop-ups, hard-to-read fonts, or confusing layouts.

Outdated or irrelevant backlinks: Links from low-quality or unrelated sites that can harm the site’s credibility and search ranking.

Content gaps and opportunities: Areas where competitors have covered topics that your site has not, representing opportunities for growth.

Slow page load times: Pages that take too long to load, leading to higher bounce rates and lower rankings.

In short, if you are losing customers at a certain point on the website or customer journey, an audit can help you to pinpoint that moment and make changes accordingly.

Opportunities that an SEO Audit can introduce

An SEO audit can help to inform website changes according to what your competitors are doing, and what works well for them.

Keyword research is a big part of your ongoing SEO strategy, with this research involving the assessment of competitor keywords and how to integrate productive keywords into your own strategy. An audit can also help you to align your strategy with current trends and understand how your site compares with others.

What’s more, an audit can identify gaps in content which will help your site to reach a new audience or to engage an audience that is there but not being catered to in your existing content. Things like website FAQs and regular blog uploads can help you to constantly refresh content and ensure that you are sharing insight and information for everyone.

If you’re unsure where to start with an SEO audit but would like to try and identify any initial problems with your site, our advice is to place yourself in the shoes of the customer or website visitor and carry out a complete end-to-end journey to see where any obstacles lie. Test different buttons, click on links, and assess the stability and page load speed of every element across your site.

But in reality, to conduct a robust SEO audit, you need the help of an expert.

That's where Social Loop can help. Audits are one of our core SEO services, with our team prepped and ready to help you uncover any issues that may be preventing your site from reaching its full potential.