How To Run a Site Audit Like A Pro

A comprehensive guide to running website audits

Is your website not living up to its full potential? Are you scratching your head, wondering why your traffic is stagnant, your bounce rate is skyrocketing or your conversions are dismal? Don’t panic! We’ve all been there. There’s a process for figuring out where things have gone awry — the online site audit. Think of it as an annual physical check-up for your website, ensuring potential problems are caught before they become major headaches (or lost profits!).

What is a website audit?

A website audit is a comprehensive analysis of a site’s performance, structure, and overall health to identify issues affecting user experience, search engine rankings, and functionality. It typically covers technical SEO factors such as page speed, mobile site responsiveness, crawlability, and indexation, ensuring search engines can properly access and rank your pages. Website content audits assess the quality, relevance, and optimisation of on-page elements like headings, metadata, and keyword usage.

Additionally, audits evaluate internal linking, backlink profiles, and security vulnerabilities to improve site credibility and performance. Regular website audits help businesses identify areas for improvement, fix errors, and enhance overall visibility, ensuring their site remains competitive in search results and provides a seamless user experience.

Basically, a website audit dives deep into the nitty-gritty, uncovering hidden issues that could sabotage your success. We’re talking about sneaky technical glitches, SEO mistakes and hiccups and user experience roadblocks that can send potential customers running to your competitors. It’s a simple equation: Better website = more traffic, leads and sales.

At Online Marketing Gurus, we consider site audits non-negotiable for any business serious about online growth. After all, wouldn’t you rather be proactive about your website’s health than scrambling to fix problems after they’ve already cost you money?

What is the difference between SEO audit and website audit?

An SEO audit focuses specifically on factors that impact a website’s search engine rankings, such as keyword optimisation, backlink quality, site structure, and technical SEO elements like crawlability, indexation, and page speed. It aims to identify issues preventing a site from ranking well and provides recommendations to improve organic visibility.

A website audit, on the other hand, is broader and assesses the overall health and performance of a site, covering not only Search Engine Optimisation / SEO but also user experience, security, design, functionality, and technical aspects. It looks at factors like broken links, mobile responsiveness, loading speed, and compliance with web standards.

While an SEO audit is a subset of a website audit, both are essential for ensuring a site is optimised for search engines and provides a seamless experience for users.

What is the difference between an SEO review and an audit?

An SEO review is a high-level assessment of a website’s search engine performance, focusing on key factors such as keyword rankings, traffic trends, and basic on-page optimisation. It’s often a quicker, less detailed analysis that provides an overview of how well a site is performing and highlights potential areas for improvement.

An SEO audit, on the other hand, is a more in-depth and technical evaluation of a website’s SEO health. It involves a thorough analysis of factors like site structure, crawlability, indexing, backlink profile, page speed, and content optimisation. SEO audits provide detailed insights and actionable recommendations to fix issues and improve rankings.

While an SEO review is useful for getting a general idea of performance, an SEO audit is essential for diagnosing deeper issues and implementing a long-term optimisation strategy.

The Guru’s site audit checklist — 4 essentials for a healthy website:

A comprehensive audit evaluates your website’s performance across various dimensions, from technical SEO to user experience, to identify issues hindering online visibility and success. Let’s get to work!

1. Technical tune-ups

• Page speed — In the digital age, patience is a virtue in short supply. If your website takes too long to load, visitors will bounce in a heartbeat. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to check your site’s speed and pinpoint areas for improvement.
• Mobile responsiveness — A mobile-first and mobile friendly website design and development ensures your site looks sharp and functions flawlessly on all screen sizes. Google’s Mobile-Friendly website Test is a handy tool to check if your site passes muster.
• Broken links & 404 errors — These digital dead-ends are not only frustrating for users but can also hurt your SEO efforts. Regularly crawl your site using tools like Screaming Frog or Broken Link Checker to identify and fix broken links.
• Crawlability and indexability — If search engines can’t crawl and index your site, you’re basically selling a product no one can find. Make sure your site’s robots.txt file isn’t blocking important pages, and your XML sitemap is up-to-date and submitted to search engines.

2. On-page seo elements

• Title tags and meta descriptions — Examine whether your title tags accurately summarise each page’s content, incorporate relevant keywords naturally and adhere to character limits. Likewise, assess if your meta descriptions are compelling enough to entice users to click through to your site.
• Header tags (H1, H2, etc.) — Header tags create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users and search engines to navigate and understand. Verify that each page has a unique H1 tag that succinctly describes the main topic, and use H2, H3 and subsequent tags to break down your content into logical sections.
• Keywords — Review your keyword research to see if you’re targeting the terms and phrases your audience is actually searching for. Assess whether your content naturally integrates these keywords without overstuffing, which can negatively impact your rankings.
• Content quality — Evaluate whether your content is informative, up-to-date, engaging and free of grammatical errors. Fresh content keeps visitors on your site longer and signals to search engines that your site is active and relevant.
• Internal linking — Scrutinise your internal linking structure to ensure it’s logical, intuitive and facilitates the discovery of related content. Well-placed internal links enhance user engagement and boost your site’s SEO performance.

3. Off-page elements

• Backlinks — When reputable sites link to yours, it tells Google that your content is valuable and trustworthy. Analyse your backlink profile to identify the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to your site. Look for any toxic or spammy backlinks that could be harming your rankings and take steps to disavow them.
• Social signals — Assess your website’s social media presence and engagement across various platforms. Are your social media profiles active and up-to-date? Are your posts generating likes, shares and comments? Positive social signals can improve search engine rankings and increase brand awareness.

4. User experience

• Navigation — Is your website’s navigation intuitive and easy to follow? Can users effortlessly find the information they’re looking for? Analyse your menu structure, internal links and overall navigation flow to ensure a seamless browsing experience.
• Site structure — A well-structured website is like an expertly-organised library — everything has its place, and it’s easy to find what you need. Assess your site’s hierarchy, categories and overall organisation to ensure it makes sense to users and helps them quickly locate relevant information.
• Calls to action (CTAs) — Your calls to action / CTAs are the guiding lights that lead users towards desired actions, like subscribing to your newsletter, requesting a quote or making a purchase. Evaluate their placement, visibility and wording so that they’re clear, compelling and strategically positioned throughout your site.
• Overall user-friendliness — Put on your detective hat and scrutinise every aspect of your website through a user’s eyes. Is the font size legible? Are the colours visually appealing? Does the site load quickly and function smoothly?

Streamline your site audit through powerful tools

We’ve outlined the essential elements to check during a site audit, but let’s face it, manually combing through every nook and cranny of your website can be a tedious task.

Claim your free digital site audit

Luckily, some tools can simplify this process. We’ll give you a step-by-step guide using Semrush because that is what we use at OMG. However, many other tools, such as Screaming Frog, Google Search Console and Ahrefs, are just as powerful.

How to generate a site audit report through Semrush

• Log in to Semrush — If you don’t have an account, sign up for a free trial to get started.
• Create a new project — Enter your website’s URL and give your project a name.
• Set up your site audit — Customise the audit settings to match your needs. You can choose which pages to crawl, how often to run the audit and which issues to prioritise.
• Let Semrush do its thing — Sit back and relax while Semrush, your friendly neighborhood website SEO checker crawls your site and analyses the data.
• Review your report — Once the audit is complete, you’ll receive a comprehensive PDF detailing all the issues found on your site. You can now examine this report or send it along with recommendations to a decision-maker in your organisation.

The Semrush site audit statistics page

This report page provides a comprehensive snapshot of your website’s health, highlighting key areas that may require attention. Let’s break down the elements found here:

• Markup — This indicates the percentage of pages on your site that contain structured data markup, which helps search engines understand your content better and can lead to enhanced search results with rich snippets.
• Crawl depth — This shows the distribution of pages based on the number of clicks required to reach them from your homepage. A balanced crawl depth indicates a well-structured site.
• HTTP status code — Ideally, this should be at 0%, meaning there are no broken links or pages with error codes.
• Canonicalisation — This refers to the percentage of pages with canonical tags, which prevent duplicate content issues by specifying the preferred version of a page. If a significant number of your pages lack these tags, there’s a risk of search engines indexing multiple versions of the same content — potentially harming your SEO efforts.
• AMP links — If your site uses Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), this metric shows the percentage of your total pages that are AMP pages, as well as the percentage of those that have errors. AMP is a Google-backed project designed to create faster-loading pages for mobile users. If you have such pages, monitor this section to ensure they are error-free, as AMP errors can negatively impact your mobile search rankings.
• Sitemap vs. crawled pages — This compares the number of pages found in your XML sitemap (which tells search engines what pages to index) with the number of pages actually crawled by Semrush. Ideally, these numbers should match closely, indicating that all the pages you want indexed are accessible to Google. A discrepancy could mean your sitemap needs updating or some pages are blocked from crawling.
• Incoming internal links — This metric reveals the distribution of internal links across your website’s pages. A balanced distribution, where most pages have a moderate number of internal links, is generally preferable for optimal site structure and navigation.
• Hreflang usage — If your site targets multiple languages, this metric shows the percentage of pages using the hreflang tag correctly. This tag tells search engines which language a page is in and which geographic region it targets. Implementing hreflang tags properly is crucial to avoid duplicate content issues and ensure the correct version is shown to the right audience.

It should go without saying that the Semrush Site Audit function is just one piece of the puzzle. While it’s a powerful tool for identifying technical issues, don’t forget to complement it with a thorough manual review of your website.

Are SEO audits really worth it?

Yes, SEO audits are absolutely worth it, especially for businesses looking to improve their online visibility and organic traffic. An SEO audit helps identify technical issues, on-page optimisation gaps, and opportunities for better keyword targeting, ensuring your website is fully optimised for search engines. It also uncovers problems like slow page speed, broken links, duplicate content, and poor mobile usability that could be harming your rankings.

Regular SEO audits provide actionable insights to improve your site’s performance, enhance user experience, and stay ahead of competitors in search results. By addressing issues found in an audit, businesses can achieve better rankings, increased traffic, and higher conversion rates, making it a valuable investment in long-term digital growth.

Why are is running an SEO audit so important and when do you know if you need to run one?

Running an SEO audit is crucial because it helps identify technical, on-page, and off-page issues that may be preventing your website from ranking well in search results. Regular audits ensure your site remains optimised for search engines, providing insights into areas such as site speed, mobile usability, broken links, keyword effectiveness, and backlink quality. By addressing these factors, businesses can improve their search visibility, user experience, and overall website performance.

You should run an audit if you notice a drop in SEO rankings or organic traffic, slow website performance, indexing issues, or if your site has undergone significant changes such as a redesign or migration. It’s also a good practice to conduct routine SEO audits at least every 6 to 12 months to stay ahead of algorithm updates and maintain a strong online presence.

Get a FREE website audit valued at $4000

Congratulations! You’ve successfully navigated the ins and outs of a site audit. You’re now armed with the knowledge to transform your site into a high-performing, lead-generating machine. But remember, just like your car needs regular tune-ups, your website requires ongoing optimisation to stay ahead.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or unsure where to start with interpreting (let alone implementing) your audit findings, don’t worry! Our online digital marketing team of experts at Online Marketing Gurus is here to help. We offer a FREE comprehensive site audit (valued at $4,000) with no strings attached. Our expert SEO agency gurus will analyse your website from top to bottom, identify areas for improvement and provide actionable recommendations. We combine data-driven insights with a human touch to ensure your website is firing on all cylinders.

Contact us today, and we’ll put our 10+ years of experience and award-winning expertise to work for you. If, after the free session, you decide not to work with us, it’s all good. We promise not to spam you with pushy sales tactics. We’re all about providing value and helping your business succeed.

About the author

Danny Andrawes

Danny Andrawes, Chief Executive Officer of OMG, plays a pivotal role in shaping the agency’s strategic direction. With nearly 20 years of experience, he progressed from Content Specialist and Digital SEO Specialist to CEO, leveraging his impressive background in SEO/SEM delivery, client acquisition and retention, and change management to enhance OMG’s service offerings. Danny’s leadership emphasises client partnerships and the integration of cutting-edge tools to optimise digital campaigns, positioning OMG as a trusted partner for businesses worldwide.