The Value of SEO Site Audits

The larger and/or more dynamic the website, the more things can go wrong. People add pages, remove pages, change pages, change links, make typos in links, upload images, change page contents, not to mention external sites linking to old or incorrect URL’s (wasting valuable link equity), and a multitude of other things. Web Design and Development Departments or Agencies can make structural changes, code changes, updates, introduce new functionality, Google and other search engines can introduce new guidelines or algorithm changes, and so on, all of which can have a dramatic effect on SEO.

You also need to review aspects like the internal linking of a site, anchor text, meta data, alt tags, etc., at scale, to assess the key aspects that will make a difference and deciding on the priority of work, rather than reviewing everything on a page by page basis.

At Zelst we have used Moz for, what seems like, ever, and still like it. In addition, we use Semrush extensively, Ahrefs, and Screaming Frog, which is an amazing tool. We have also used Searchmetrics, which is now part of Conductor, and have trialled and tested a variety of other tools.

We also rely on free tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, the Structured Data Testing Tool, PageSpeed Insights, and Bing Webmaster, for essential insights. As well as using these as stand-alone resources in themselves, all our paid tools also integrate with Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and Analytics, which provides even more depth and context to their findings.

Most SEO Platforms claim that they are a one-stop shop, providing a full range of analysis tools, and it might be possible, as well as considerably cheaper and less time-consuming to rely on just one platform, however, as experienced SEOs, we recognise the importance of having reliable and robust data, and each of the platforms does provide unique, and, often, very different insights.

We use our knowledge and experience to understand what the data means and how we can best use it to make a difference and ‘move the needle’. We also know how we can use the best each platform offers and what platform offers the best information or analysis on a range of factors, so that we can review and apply changes that will make a difference.

Whilst you can manually see some issues on a page, it is not possible to spot every broken link, redirected link, page without a title tag, image without an alt tag, page without a viewport tag or any of the, literally, hundreds of issues that could affect a site's performance in search, the traffic it gets and the user experience offered, without relying on a really good SEO tool (or a number of tools). This is especially true when you have a large site, where it can even take an automated bot a number of days to crawl.

The SEO Tools Bots can also ape the Google Bot and so give an experienced SEO an insight into what Google sees.

Whilst a good SEO tool will tell you if a page has a Title Tag and Meta Description and if they are of the right length, what they cannot really do is to tell you whether they are relevant and optimised for the page and the keyword themes you are targeting, and whether it is better than those of all the other pages you are competing with in the SERP.

Tools will tell you if links exist on a page, but they will not tell you if they are going to the right destination, whether the links are relevant on the page, or the context of the link.

Tools often can’t differentiate context, so, for instance, they may flag that links to a 302 redirect exist throughout the site, without taking into account that maybe these are links to social media pages (which all redirect to a login page), or that links to a buy button will often 302 to a basket page, or that links to URLs which are “no indexed” or blocked by the robots.txt file often have a purpose, and there is a reason why those URLs were blocked or no indexed.

Essentially the tool can undertake the heavy lifting but you need an experienced SEO to analyse and interpret the data, and decide what needs to be changed.

You need to use automated tools to provide the scale of analysis that is required, however, how you use that information is the key, and it is important not just to slavishly follow a series of recommendations.

As John Mueller, lead Search Advocate at Google says:-

At Zelst, we are purely focused on getting results and ‘making a difference’, seeing little benefit in churning out a huge list of recommendations that we know either, can’t or won’t be done. Similarly, we see no gain from ticking a load of checkboxes just to ensure that we achieve a 100% score on a site audit tool.

We recognise that a lot of recommendations relate to technical matters that are either endemic to a certain platform, like WordPress, Shopify, Magento, etc., and for which it might not be possible to change or which development teams or agencies either do not have the resource or budget to deal with. Other technical items might be outside best practice but have been implemented to provide the best user experience, and we get that.

Experience and knowledge of a client’s website and business are essential in understanding the items that cannot be dealt with, and being able to live with that issue in the best way possible; understanding which issues are worthwhile and viable to address and which are not, and also seeing issues that may not be flagged as an issue in a tool, but which will have a significant effect on the search visibility and user experience of a site.

At Zelst, we don’t just offer a load of suggestions. We only provide recommendations for changes that can be actioned and will deliver meaningful results in realistic timescale. We implement those changes wherever we can and assist others, like in-house teams or developers, to make the changes that we cannot, wherever they are viable.

We only see the benefit in our work, where our clients will be able to see the benefit in a timescale that works for them.

We see Technical SEO and fixing issues diagnosed from a site audit as a way of enabling content to be found.

If you have great content on your site, but there are issues that will hinder the Search Engine’s ability to crawl, index and properly understand your content and its relevance to its users, then your sites pages will not be as visible and perform as well as they could in search.

By contrast, if you have a really well technically optimised site but poor quality content, your pages will not perform in search.

So, essentially, the way to get the best results from your website and to make sure your organisation is seen and gets found in Search, is to have great quality content which is well optimised and conduct regular SEO site audits to ensure that is the case.

If you’re interested in improving your Technical SEO, or need help with SEO Site Audits, Contact Zelst Now.