Regular SEO audits are necessary to ensure that your site’s SEO strategy is fully functional. These audits will not only identify problems, but they will identify opportunities to maximize the effectiveness of your site’s SEO. Despite their importance, however, many companies don’t know exactly what SEO audits are or have an idea of how much this service will cost. This has led to many businesses simply using SEO tools instead of getting a full audit from an agency.
Read on to learn more about SEO audits, including what your company can expect to pay.
What Is An SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is an assessment of how well optimized your site is for search engines. An audit will analyze various aspects of your site’s SEO to determine the areas in which your site is well-optimized and where it needs improvement.
Some SEO tools claim to be able to do a full SEO audit. However, these tools simply do a quick scan of your site and make a few automated recommendations. A real SEO audit is carried out manually by a team of highly trained and experienced professionals.
How Much SEO Audits Cost: An Overview Of SEO Audit Pricing
The cost for an SEO audit varies widely due to several factors, including the size of your site. The pricing for a full SEO audit from an established marketing agency generally ranges from $495 to $17,000. While $17,000 may sound like a lot of money, it’s important to note that only extremely large and complex sites would pay anywhere near this much. The vast majority of SEO audits cost less than $2,000.
The Biggest Factor That Affects SEO Pricing For Audits
The most important factor in how an SEO audit is priced is the number of pages a site has. This is because each page must be manually reviewed by a highly trained professional. While it may be tempting to only have your most trafficked pages audited, this can result in serious SEO issues going undiscovered. For example, even a less-trafficked page could have a 404 error (a serious technical SEO issue).
How Tight Deadlines Can Affect SEO Audit Cost
The other major factor in determining the cost of an SEO audit is the turnaround time. An SEO audit on a normal timeline may take 30 days to complete. However, most agencies will complete an SEO audit on an accelerated timeline for an additional fee. It’s important to let your agency know how quickly you need the audit to be completed.
The Types Of SEO Audits
Social
Many people don’t think of social media marketing and SEO as being linked. It’s true that these forms of marketing require completely different strategies and skillsets. However, social media marketing and SEO are deeply connected.
One of the most important aspects of modern SEO is the number of social signals your site is getting. This is essentially how many social media shares your site is getting. If your site is getting a lot of social signals, this will help it rank higher in search results.
A social SEO audit will analyze the social signals connected to your site. It will also check to see if your site is integrated with your social media accounts by displaying social sharing buttons.
Link
Many SEO experts regard links as the most important component in SEO. A link-based SEO audit will look at the external links pointing to your site. It will also look at the internal links between the pages of your site.
There are several factors that a link audit will cover. Of course, a link audit will analyze the quantity of links your site has, both internally and from external sites. However, the quality of the external links is actually more important than their quantity. The quality is essentially determined by the SEO of the linking site. A link audit will also look for toxic links, which are links that hurt your website’s SEO because they are from disreputable sites. Finally, a link audit will look for broken links, which are links on your site (either internal or outgoing) that no longer work.
As you can see, link audits are a large undertaking. The SEO tools that do link audits are notorious for missing broken links and failing to identify external links. This is one of the most important aspects of an SEO audit, so the lackluster performance of SEO auditing programs in this area is a big reason to get a manual SEO audit from an agency like Marketing-Jive.
Competitive: How Your SEO Matches Up To Local SEO & General SEO Competition
A competitive SEO audit compares your site’s SEO to the SEO of several of your biggest competitors. Depending on the type of business you have, these could be local competitors or they may be companies from another country. Competitive SEO audits are quite challenging and time-consuming because they require a thorough analysis of not only your site, but several other sites. However, an experienced SEO professional can perform an accurate competitive SEO audit especially for a local SEO service.
On the other hand, SEO auditing programs struggle to perform useful competitive SEO audits. In fact, many SEO tools do not even have a comprehensive competitive SEO auditing feature. The programs that do have a competitive SEO audit feature generally do not perform very well.
SEO auditing programs in general have problems with inaccuracy and with overlooking issues. These problems are only magnified with an automated competitive SEO audit because the program is looking at multiple sites. Like link SEO audits, competitive SEO audits are far more accurate when performed by a trained professional rather than an automated program.
Content Marketing (SEO Content Audit)
An SEO content audit focuses on on-page SEO. It evaluates whether you used keywords correctly, whether your content was the right length, and whether your images were properly optimized. An automated SEO audit can be fairly accurate when it is evaluating content. However, there is one significant downside to an automated SEO content audit.
An automated SEO content audit cannot evaluate whether you are targeting the correct keywords in your content. The SEO tool does not know your overall keyword strategy.
In contrast, an SEO professional carrying out a manual audit will be able to evaluate each piece of content in terms of its place in your overall keyword strategy. This means that they can suggest changes to content that targets the wrong keyword. Fixing this can be as simple as making a couple of find-and-replace changes. An automated content audit would never catch this.
Technical
A technical SEO audit is perhaps the only aspect of SEO auditing that can be performed well by an automated program. Technical SEO auditing involves searching for slow loading times, 404 pages, and the like. These issues could cause Google to give your site a severe SEO penalty. This would result in falling far down the list of search results for all your targeted keywords.
Even technical SEO audits are more effective when performed by a human. This is because automated technical audits are not always accurate. An SEO professional would likely use an automated technical SEO scan as a starting point, but they would manually check any issues to ensure that the scan was accurate. Also, an SEO professional can quickly and easily fix technical SEO issues for you.
Comprehensive
A comprehensive SEO audit combines all of the types of audits listed above. It is the most thorough type of audit. Using an automated SEO tool to do a comprehensive audit would result in many issues that you would have to deal with at once. This is because the issues that automated SEO auditing has with each type of audit would pile up if you try to perform all these audits at once.
It’s best to go with an SEO professional when you need a comprehensive SEO audit. This is because an experienced professional will have an organized process that allows them to work efficiently and accurately through every type of audit. They will also be able to fix these issues when they have completed the comprehensive audit.
Which Type Of SEO Audit Is Best?
While many SEO tools and some agencies offer different types of SEO audits separately, it’s best to get a comprehensive audit. This is because there are so many different factors that go into ranking highly.
It’s certainly possible that your site has fantastic on-page SEO but is lacking in off-page SEO. This will make it impossible to rank for competitive keywords. An audit that focuses only on content SEO will miss the problems your site has with off-page SEO. In fact, such an audit would also miss problems with other aspects of on-page SEO, such as technical SEO issues.
A comprehensive SEO audit is the best choice for companies most of the time. The only situation in which an audit that focuses on one aspect of SEO is warranted is if your company knows its SEO is rock-solid except for one area. Even if your company is in this situation, it’s best to have an established marketing agency like Marketing-Jive do a comprehensive SEO audit before starting professional SEO services to see if there are issues your company is not aware of.
The Differences Between Automated SEO Audits & SEO Agency Audits
SEO Audit Tools
SEO analysis tools can be useful if used properly. However, they are certainly not a substitute for a full SEO audit from an established agency like Marketing-Jive. SEO analysis tools can provide a snapshot of your site’s SEO strengths and weaknesses. These tools may be able to find some issues, especially technical SEO issues, by quickly scanning your site. Some of the best SEO tools even provide recommendations for how you can fix issues and make your SEO more effective.
However, using automated SEO tools is not anywhere near as comprehensive as a manual audit from an experienced professional. Automated SEO tools will miss many issues, especially if you have a large and complex site. Also, these tools can only suggest fixes. They cannot actually fix your site’s SEO issues.
If you think your site might have SEO problems, it’s a good idea to use automated SEO tools to get a better idea of what’s going on. This will help you be more prepared when you contact Marketing-Jive to get a comprehensive SEO audit.
Agency SEO Audits
If you’re serious about identifying and fixing any SEO problems your site might have, you need to have a team of experienced professionals do a comprehensive manual audit. They will find many issues that even the best automated tools would miss. Also, they can fix any problems they find (unlike automated SEO scanning programs).
After An SEO Audit
After completing an SEO audit, a reputable marketing agency like Marketing-Jive will provide you with an accurate report of each issue encountered throughout the audit. They will also provide you with recommendations about how you can fix each issue. Of course, agencies like Marketing-Jive can do these fixes for you. They will provide you with an estimate of how much implementing their recommendations may cost and how long it may take. Of course, the agency will wait for your approval before implementing their recommendations.
The Benefits Of An SEO Audit
An SEO audit provides your site with numerous benefits. Some of these benefits are quite obvious, such as ranking higher for your targeted keywords. However, other benefits may not be immediately apparent to companies who have not had an SEO audit before.
Speeding Up Your Site
One of the most overlooked benefits of an SEO audit is that it can help you speed up your site. This is because the loading times of your site’s pages will be evaluated during the technical SEO check. If your audit finds pages with slow loading times, fixing this issue will help your SEO. Of course, it will also improve your site’s user experience.
Discovering A New SEO Strategy
An SEO audit can help you identify which aspect of SEO you should focus on in the future. For example, an SEO audit may find that your content SEO is excellent but your site does not have many high-quality external links. You may then want to focus your SEO strategy on link building.
Ranking Higher
Of course, an SEO audit will lead to your site ranking higher once the recommendations from the audit have been implemented. However, many companies are not aware just how drastic the difference can be.
If you’re not an SEO expert, ranking near the bottom of the first page of results may not seem very different than ranking near the top of the second page. However, roughly three-quarters of searchers never make it past the first page. Thus, ranking several places higher could provide your site with a massive traffic boost.
Increasing Conversion Rates
An SEO audit can also lead to increased conversion rates. This may mean more sales or it may simply mean that more visitors sign up for your email list. There are two reasons behind this.
First, you are more likely to get conversions from visitors who clicked on your high-ranking search result. Second, your site will have fewer pages that load slowly. Long loading times kill conversion rates.
Increasing The Effectiveness of Your Entire Marketing Strategy
It’s important to view search engine marketing as part of your company’s overall digital marketing strategy. Search engine marketing is especially closely linked with email marketing and social media marketing. Successful search engine marketing efforts will help your company succeed in its email marketing and social media marketing efforts.
Excellent SEO will lead to your site getting far more traffic. This means that more people will be signing up for your email marketing list. It also means that more people will be clicking on the links your site has to its social media accounts. Over time, this will lead to organic follower growth.
How Often Your Site Needs To Be Audited
How often your site needs to be audited depends on the size and update frequency of your site. If you have a large site that adds multiple new pages per day, it would be best to get a comprehensive SEO audit every quarter. On the other hand, if your site has relatively few pages and you rarely add new content, you may only need a comprehensive audit once or twice per year.
An automated SEO auditing program will not be able to tell you when your site needs to be audited again. This is because the program will not know how you plan to develop your site. A comprehensive SEO audit from a trained professional, on the other hand, will help this professional figure out when your site will need to be audited again. Too many companies make the mistake of not getting a comprehensive SEO audit again for years. Instead, it’s best to follow the recommendation made by the SEO professional who performed your site’s audit.
An Agency SEO Audit Will Give Your Site A Boost
A comprehensive audit from an SEO agency is a sound investment for any business. Not only will such an audit identify any SEO problems, it can even find technical issues with your website. Also, a comprehensive audit will identify SEO opportunities that you are missing out on.
If your business needs an SEO audit, Marketing-Jive is here for you. They have extensive experience with conducting SEO audits for sites of all sizes. Not only can Marketing-Jive help you find problems with your site’s SEO, they will fix these issues quickly and effectively. Contact Marketing-Jive today to get an SEO audit.
