What is an SEO Audit Service and How Can it Help Your Website?

Everything you need to know

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Photo by the author at Lavendai Creative

If you’ve spent any time looking into SEO for your website, you already know that it can be a beast of a project. There are on-page and off-page markers, adjustments, and optimization techniques needed — enough to make anyone’s head spin. An SEO audit service can bridge the knowledge gap. Showing you just what applies to you — taking all those whirling pieces and calming them into an easy-to-follow action plan. 

So let’s talk about it — what an SEO audit service is, what it does, how much it costs, and if it’s worth it. Let’s dive in.

What is an SEO Audit Service?

An SEO audit service creates a snapshot report documenting where your website’s SEO sits today. It then presents action steps to take your website where you want it to be. 

The audit combs through and analyzes your website against known algorithm ranking factors and offers actionable insights to improve your rank and results. Ideally showing you exactly what you need to do and why.

Why would you want a Website Audit?

An audit saves you a lot of time and money. 

If you’ve spent any amount of time looking into SEO, you already know how much work it really is. So if you’re a busy small business owner or a lean team without a ton of marketing bandwidth, a custom SEO audit can put you leaps and bounds ahead of where you are today (without investing in learning it all from scratch).

It gives you exactly what you need to do to avoid the trial and error phase of optimization. It also helps you avoid simple mistakes that could tank your ranking — ones you otherwise may have missed.

What is in an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit varies in scope depending on the vendor providing it to you. Free audits offered by websites like UberSuggest and SEMRush* are great for a start — they’ll give you very generic advice like “make your website faster on mobile” or “remove broken links” which apply to just about every website out there.

A more in-depth custom SEO audit service will: 

  • Comb through multiple pages on your website (not just the home page)
  • Look at and give you results for both on-page and off-page factors
  • Generate an easy-to-read report so you understand what you’re looking at
  • Offer an early SEO strategy
  • And create a prioritized list of action steps to improve your results from those that are both the most impactful and least amount of work, to those “nice-to-have” but slightly less impactful adjustments.

How Much Does an SEO Audit Cost?

An SEO audit ranges in price. From some vendors, they’re free but less in-depth or prescriptive. Most in-depth audits hover around $500 each (though actual price will vary by vendor).

Is an SEO Audit Worth It?

It totally depends on you and your business.

If you have the time and bandwidth to learn about SEO and how to improve your website yourself, the learning curve may be worth it for you in the long run.

But if you want to start seeing website traffic, leads, and sales results faster than that, or get the most out of the time you’re already putting into your website, then an SEO audit is well worth it.

*This is an affiliate link