SEO Consultancy

Technical SEO Audit Service

Professional website audits with clear actionable recommendations.

Professional SEO Audits Via My SEO Audits Business –
SEO-Audits.io

I’ve recently launched a new dedicated SEO Audits business due to demand. Visit https://seo-audits.io to see audit options and to book online.  

Here at Daniel Foley SEO Consultancy I provide full technical SEO audits that identify all issues relating to a websites “on page” or “on site” elements. A technical SEO audit can be used by businesses / web developers to implement fixes that correct issues related to rankings and indexing. Once implemented, rankings will likely increase for target keywords, however, technical SEO audits only form part of an overall SEO strategy.

For most businesses looking to improve their organic search positions, a technical SEO audit will usually take place early on in any project. Correcting a websites design, build, crawlability and structural factors makes it not only easier for visitors but also for search engine crawlers such as Googlebot to crawl and index content.

 

How much does an SEO Audit Service cost?

Technical SEO audit costs are entirely dependent on the business / website and target ranking niche. A website audit will cost substantially less for a small website i.e. 10 pages vs a more complex site such as an eCommerce website which may have in excess of 1000 pages.

On average SEO audits will cost:

  • £1000 – £1500 for small websites
  • £2000 – £3000 for medium sized websites
  • £4000 + for large complex sites

 

My minimum charge for auditing a website starts at £500.

I provide a free quotation before any work is agreed, I will usually require access to Google Search Console.

How long does an SEO Audit take?

SEO audits can generally take between 4-5 working days on average. I offer a 24 hour emergency audit service but there is a premium for this service. Larger, more complex websites audit’s can take 2-4 weeks, however, prior to any work being commenced you’ll be made fully aware of how long your SEO audit will take.

In general:

  • 4-5 days for small websites
  • 5-10 days for medium sized websites
  • 10 + Days for large complex sites

 

These are only general timelines, some audits may take less time.

What does the SEO Audit include?

The SEO audit will include:

  • A full position summary review of your website
  • An overview of keyword performance
  • Site crawl health check
  • Page rendering health check including mobile friendly render checking
  • Site index & URL coverage health check
  • Navigation review
  • Page cache and crawl budget review
  • Technical checks including a code review, tag checks
  • Tag checks including Google Analytics, Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager
  • Blocked resources, elements and media files summary
  • Website URL integrity checks (HTTP / HTTPS / WWW / NON WWW)
  • Index bloat & weak content checks
  • Duplicate content & copyscape checks
  • Internal linking checks
  • Cannibalisation and canonicalisation checks
  • ROBOTS.txt file checks
  • Page header tag and content affinity checks i.e. H1 TAGS, H2 TAGS ETC.
  • Title and meta description checks
  • Directive tag checks i.e. no index tag, canonical tag
  • CTR evaluation
  • Page indexability & browser resource accessibility
  • Internal links and external links check
  • Speed and performance checks using Think with Google / Pagespeed Insights
  • Core Web Vitals report
  • Best Practices Overview & Guide
  • Development and coding feedback

 

Please note the list above is not exhaustive, there are generally a lot more checks involved including micro-checks.

With my SEO Audit what will I receive?

Because SEO is such a personalised service with requirements changing depending on the website being audited, the format that I deliver an audit in may vary. In general, I provide SEO audits in a Google Slides presentation with an optional downloadable PDF.

Your audit may also come with:

  • Spreadsheets of crawl data with actionable instructions
  • Downloadable guidelines for developers
  • Videos of highlighted issues and resolutions

Everything to do with your audit will be tailored around findings and the complexity of the issues found. Video audits are usually provided to highlight more complex website issues relating to everything from crawl budget to duplicate content, broken links to website code composition.

What website platforms can you conduct audits on?

As an experienced SEO, I am able to audit websites on ANY platform and in any language. Most day to day technical SEO audits are on:

 

However, I also audit websites on a semi regular basis running:

  • Single Page Applications including Node JS / Angular
  • Javascript Website SEO Audits
  • REACT SEO Audits
  • #c / Dot Net and PHP websites
  • Flat file HTML websites

 

There are no platform exclusions – I can provide an audit for any website code / language or framework.

Can you implement fixes from SEO audits?

In most cases yes, I have extensive CMS experience and some programming capabilities so for most, I am able to implement technical SEO audit fixes on websites both at a CMS level or code level. Once an audit has been provided, if you do not have the webmaster or development resource in place to correct / fix website issues I can provide this service.

With my implementation, I can make sure all issues are resolved.

Do you offer pre-migration & post-migration website audits?

Yes. If you are planning to move your website from one platform to another, are migrating your website or are going through a consolidation phase I can provide full SEO consultancy as well as pre and post migration SEO audits to prevent traffic / ranking losses.

Failed website migrations or buggy migrations / SEO mistakes can cause substantial ranking losses and search traffic decline.

With my support, I can provide full guidance, auditing and consultancy.

Can I get a free SEO audit?

I do not personally offer FREE SEO Audits primarily because audits require a great deal of expertise and manual checks. Most free SEO audits are provided by SEO tools that provide low level insights into potential issues with your website, in nearly all cases, SEO tools that generate audits will not delve deep enough into a website and the technical issues that go beyond something that a basic crawl could highlight.

 

SEO Results Delivered For Clients

Daniel Foley has delivered substantial results for businesses across a whole variety of different business verticals/niches from finance and healthcare through to education, home improvement, manufacturing and more.

Daniel Foley helped SCI MX with an SEO strategy that saw traffic growth of over 140% for hundreds of keywords around protein powder, shakes and protein snacks as well as thousands of new long-tail blog keywords. SCI-MX’s traffic profile has continued to grow throughout 2020.

SEO Campaign

Ranking Duration: 12 Months

Working with iProspect, Daniel Foley worked on an SEO campaign for The Open University helping to deliver a technical SEO audit alongside SEO. The Open University had seen growth of over 30% organically. Technical SEO audits helped to alleviate ranking lag.

Technical SEO Campaign

Ranking Duration: 4 Months

Daniel Foley worked with Holidaycottages.co.uk on an SEO strategy to increase rankings for keyword searches across the west country from holiday cottages to dorset cottages. Daniel Foley and the marketing team were able to deliver growth of over 75%.

SEO Campaign

Ranking Duration: 14 Months

Key SEO Audit Output & Analysis

Full Overview of Site Issues

A complete overview of all site issues with hollistic recommendations, priority recommendations and general SEO guidance.

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Find out everything to do with your websites build, structure and SEO composition.  Fully manual audits conducted without SEO tools.

Understand Visitors & Clients

Understand how your potential clients / site visitors are using your website, where they bounce and what can be done to improve UX / engagement.

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A NAP audit ensures that all third party sites and directories that list your business do so with a consistent phone number, address and contact details. This consistency is important for localised search engine optimisation.

Domain Level Factors

From internal to external backlinks, understand how your domains link profile & trust figures are impacting on organic performance.

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From 404s to canonical tags, broken page titles to image compression, pagination resolution to SCHEMA – I’ll fix all of the technical issues associated with your website.

Reputation Management

I’ll help your business to build positive reviews, address negative reviews and to build a positive picture of your brand online.

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I’ll help build a positive, trustworthy view of your business / brand. Trust is another key ranking signal that will help with local search performance.

Actionable SEO Recommendations

A no jargon approach to SEO recommendations, implementation & tools to test to ensure complete resolution of issues.

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Easy to implement SEO recommendations for webmasters / developers to action and implement.

Site Architecture

Understand more how site architecture is impacting ability to rank for target keywords. Fully detailed report within your SEO audit.

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As part of your organic strategy I’ll produce exceptional, high quality, semantically relevant content that engages end users.

Performance Factors

From page speed insights through to Core Web Vitals – understand how your websites performance impacts ability to rank.

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I’ll ensure your business appears prominently in Google Map Listings – showing off reviews and a positive view of your brand.

Link Building & Citations

I’ll work to build your websites domain authority with high quality, localised, niche relevant links bolstered by a citation campaign.

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From building high quality niche relevant links to getting your business featured in high quality publications – I can ensure your domain appears trustworthy and steers away from illegitimate link processes.

SEO Auditing Service

I provide a premium, professional SEO auditing service that will offer unparalleled amounts of information into the technical status of your website as well as other external factors such as backlinks, link quality, brand citations and more.

SEO audits are essential for making sure that your website is in an optimum configuration so that Google can crawl and index your website properly, making sure every page is indexable, that all elements of the page can be loaded and understood, making sure that Google and other search engine crawlers do not misunderstand website content, pages, and architecture.

Whilst this might all sound perplexing, for the most part business owners seldom need to understand the ins and outs of their website and how search engines perceive it. A site scan and report with recommendations will highlight all of the key problems found and how those problems are likely impacting your search engine rankings.

For most businesses, I produce a technical site audit that can then be dealt with by developers/webmasters or internal marketing teams. At this point I can also provide supportive SEO services and SEO consultancy.

Let’s Get Started

Isn’t it time you had more website traffic & more organic visibility?

What things are included in a site audit?

 

There can be hundreds of things included in an audit, again, it generally will depend on the nature of the website, the build, and size of the website.

Below are some of the things that are generally included in a technical seo audit:

 

A Full Position Summary Review Of Your Website

 

Before any technical seo audit takes place, I conduct a full position review of your website using data exported from Google search console. Google search console will provide insights into average positions over time, total keyword (query) coverage, non brand clicks and non brand impressions. It will provide an overview into how pages perform for target keywords and the overall trajectory. It’s important to assess this as this will shape how the audit is conducted.

A full position summary will look at your website pages and how they perform in Google for target keyword groups. Impressions will give an indication as to how many times a page has appeared in search and for which queries.

Knowing which queries or “keywords” are most important page by page, I can begin to assess why pages may or may not make progression organically over time.

These items are important as part of an SEO strategy for both mobile and desktop search.

 

“Understand where you rank, brand vs. non brand clicks & impressions”


46% of UK Businesses in 2018 invested in SEO as one of their main marketing channels. This figure is expected to grow significantly throughout 2019 and 2020.

What My Clients Say

We used Daniel Foley’s agency Assertive Media for our SEO strategy. They delivered a new website focused around our target audience along with an SEO strategy that delivered outstanding results. We are now number 1 for over 100 of our target keywords and are booked up for the rest of the year.

Darren Yorke

Director, tiling-courses.co.uk

I have found Daniel Foley to be always only happy to help and give pointers/advise whenever it has been needed (even if it means outside of working hours to help me/us achieve deadlines etc.). His wealth of knowledge in the SEO world is incredible. We’re very pleased with the results & quality of work and saw an increase in traffic & enquiries as a result.

Isabel Pacheco

Head of Marketing, Aspen Healthcare Group

We used Daniel Foley & his agency to develop Can’t Pay My Fine which is a revolutionary new website to help people with free government funded support. They built the website, delivered a content strategy and have taken us from 0 visitors to over 300 clicks a day for a whole range of legal searches – overall they’ve transformed our business.

Nicholas Rosenfeld

Director, Cantpaymyfine.co.uk

SEO Audits – What’s Included?

This ties in with the full Google position summary. I can provide a comprehensive overview of keyword performance looking at core keywords and long tail keyword performance as part of your site’s SEO.

Understanding where keyword impressions exist can help to highlight important pages as well as identifying opportunities for quick ranking wins.

 

Site crawl health check

 

A site crawl health check will highlight all issues encountered when crawling a website. Generally, a site crawl will show all internal website re-direction, HTTP status codes, pages blocked by tags (noindex, nofollow), pages that are canonicalised and more.

Crawling tools will generally highlight other things such as:

  • URL / URL PATH / URL DEPTH
  • Page Title, Title Length, Characters
  • Meta description, description length and character count
  • Header tags (First H1, First H2, First H3 etc)
  • HTTP Status codes (HTTP 200 OK, HTTP 301 PERMANENT RE-DIRECT, HTTP 302 TEMPORARY RE-DIRECT ETC.)
  • UTF / ANSI ENCODING
  • Canonical Tag Path
  • Crawl Directives
  • Page Size (Raw HTML) and total page size
  • Known internal links
  • Known external links

 

Generally, most people will use tools such as Screaming Frog SEO spider, Deep Crawl, Jet Octopus, SEMRUSH or AHREFS to conduct website crawls. Each website seo tool will offer their own variants of crawl data.

Google search console is also one of the best tools to access website crawl data as you can use the URL coverage tools to see a variety of warnings including:

  • Not found (404)
  • Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag / no index tag
  • Alternative page with proper canonical tag
  • Page with redirect
  • Crawled – currently not indexed
  • Blocked by robots.txt
  • Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical
  • Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user
  • Soft 404

 

This part of an audit is critical, because, how a website performs organically is somewhat dictated by how much of it is indexed correctly. Errors such as 404 are bad for user expereince, pages blocked by noindex tag are omitted from Google search results, canonical tags instruct google to associate 1 page with another and so on.

Technical SEO audits should always include a full website crawl summary with an actionable list of issues to clear things such as:

  • Broken links – having lots of broken links internally is bad for SEO in that link equity might not be distributed properly between pages, as well as it being something that can frustrate end users

 

  • Pages that are incorrectly blocked – this happens, millions of websites across the web often have incorrect tag settings that means pages are blocked from Google unintentionally, it’s not unheard of for complete websites to be blocked from Google by accident

 

  • Internal URL re-direction, again, for best practice websites should avoid using internal re-direction both 301 (permanent) and 302 (temporary), re-directs that stack up over time can get messy and do not form part of best practice

 

  • Duplicate pages and duplicate content – bad for SEO, it is confusing for Google and search engines, sometimes if the wrong variant of a page sharing similar content is indexed, it can cause average positons for keywords to fall

 

 

Page rendering health check including mobile-friendly render checking

 

Page rendering refers to how a page looks to different user agents when data is requested. Page rendering shows how a user agent would see the page – this is especially for search engines and crawlers such as Googlebot.

Page rendering can show whether or not a page can be properly loaded and whether all the resources for that page are accessible – this will generally have an impact on whether or not a page is mobile-friendly.

Page rendering also plays a part in Google’s core web vitals.

In a technical SEO audit, page rendering will use Google’s URL inspection tools and mobile-friendly testing tools to make sure all resources can be loaded.

 

Site index & URL coverage health check

 

Technical SEO auditing will also include a summary of a website’s index in search engines such as Google Search and Bing Search. An index check can be used to find anomalies such as stray URLS, indexed staging sub domains, media URLS and other things that are best being kept out of the search index.

Pages indexed will be checked as part of the technical SEO audit process.

A coverage check will make sure there are no other issues related to site index. A cross check of URLs reported vs google search console data will be undertaken to look for omitted results which may also impact other SEO factors relating to index bloat or “unwanted content”.

As part of an SEO audit, there will be checks for spam and other unwanted content. Technical SEO audits can reveal whether a website has injected malware, hidden content, comment spam and other elements that can have a negative impact on SEO.

 

Navigation review

 

Inside a technical SEO audit there will be a review of a website’s navigation. Fundamentally, navigation shapes a big part of user journey and can also impact on how pages on your website are crawled and indexed.

An SEO audit will always include “best practice” elements, navigation being a prominent one as navigation alone can make a big difference to how a website performs in organic search.

Niche, search intent, and a plethora of other factors will dictate what navigation structure should be applied. For example eCommerce websites will generally have larger more complex navigation whereas small business service websites may have much simpler navigation.

A Technical SEO audit will highlight the optimum navigation configuration for a site including pillar pages, URL layering, and use of anchor text. Most website navigations should be set up in such a way that it meets end-user needs, most people will want an optimised navigation that reduces the number of clicks required to access useful content be it product content, service content or general information.

 

 

Page cache and crawl budget review

 

Another important element in any technical SEO audit is a review of the websites cached pages and how crawl budget is being used. Page caching is a good indicator of page value and caching frequency can be an indicator to whether or not a page needs more frequent content updates.

Page caching can also highlight anomalies in page rendering.

Crawl budget reviews tend to only be applicable to larger website with 1000s of pages.

Crawl budget refers to the amount of data Google or search engines are likely to download in any one crawl. Crawl budget is important as sites with large content driven pages can suffer from slower indexing.

Legacy google search console data shows pages downloaded per day / amount of data downloaded per day.

 

Technical checks including a code review, tag checks

 

Technical checks will form an important part of a technical seo audit. Code analysis and tag checking will help to isolate any issues that may impact website crawling and rendering. In general an SEO audit will highlight any pages where code may be broken or where html tags may not be closed properly leading to malformed pages or unwanted data in Google search.

Code reviews and tag checks are also useful for highlighting potential exploits or security issues which may make a website more vulnerable.

 

Tag checks including Google Analytics, Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager

 

Tag checks can also refer to “tracking” tags or injection based tags such as Google Tag Manager. Properly configured tracking tags are essential not just from an SEO audit perspective, but also for a reporting perspective.

In a technical SEO audit, I’ll generally run a tag debugging session where I’ll look to make sure all tag implementation is correct and that all data being collected and reported is correct.

Some of the tags checked include:

  • Google tag manager
  • Google analytics (standard implementation / UA4 implementation)
  • Standard GTAG
  • Google Optimise
  • Google ads / conversion tracking

 

I can and usually will also debug any other tracking being used by other third party platforms including Adobe Analytics.

 

Blocked resources, elements and media files summary

 

Within a technical seo audit of a website, it’s important to make sure the right things are blocked, equally, it’s important to make sure the right things are also accessible and not blocked. On many websites, there will undoubtedly be files and resource that do not need to be indexed or crawled.

The blocking configuration will be unique to each website and many websites running CMS (content management systems) will have files/folders that need to be excluded by default. During an SEO audit there will be an assessment of website architecture, this will include content / files and media that should and should not be indexed.

Ensuring the correct content is excluded by robots.txt and making sure media based content is accessible is important for maintaining a healthy website index.

 

Website URL integrity checks (HTTP / HTTPS / WWW / NON WWW)

 

In Google and in most search engines, URL consistency is important for preventing canonical and cannibalisation issues. Inconsistent URLS can mean things like both non WWW and WWW URLS showing up in Google searches, it can also involve both secure (HTTPS) and non secure (HTTP) URLS being picked up which again, is bad for SEO.

Within a technical SEO audit it’s important to cover URL consistency as mixed URLS in Google search can create issues with cross-competing pages. Inconsistent URLS create issues relating to duplicate content, cannibalisation and can also wreak havoc with google analytics data.

Client sites should maintain clean and consistent URL paths as part of good on page seo.

Incorrect URLS can also end up in autogenerated XML sitemap files thus exacerbating index issues.

 

Index bloat & weak content checks

 

Index bloat refers to pages within a website which offer very limited or no value. With more webmasters / site owners and content writers churning out content, there has never been a more important to keep on top of your websites content profile.

Index bloat occurs when pages within the domain generate no clicks and have poor impression performance, this means that pages not only do not appear for many queries or prominently, but also that they paint a negative picture of the website they reside in.

Index bloat and weak content also increase the likelihood of duplicate content occuring. Some people address these issues by applying a no index tag, but, for many this isn’t enough.

 

Duplicate content & copyscape checks

 

Most seo site audit tools skip over duplicate content or, they’ll highlight similar pages at best – but, won’t get down to the true duplicate content view that can be mined out of Google Search Console. Within the technical seo audit, there will be checks across the domain to isolate examples of duplicate content along with recommendations to remedy.

Whilst Google has gotten much smarter when dealing with duplicate content, it can and likely will impede average position performance – which, is never good for any seo strategy.

Copyscape checks are also a key part of technical SEO as it is imperative to check that your website’s content isn’t mined from somewhere else, or, isn’t being used by another third party.

 

Internal linking checks

 

A highly valuable but commonly overlooked SEO tactic, internal links are key to any SEO strategy and as such, form a key part of the technical SEO audit. Internal links help to improve user journey by making it easier to access other content within a website.

As long as contextual internal linking is done properly it can also boost SEO performance as well as improving user experience.

Within the technical SEO audit, there will be a full website check to evaluate average internal link counts, anchor text use and to identify whether there are any orphan pages within the domain.

Internal links also support link profile efforts externally – better internal linking provides a better distribution of link equity across pages within your website.

Internal linking can also be updated to weed out broken links & crawl errors between web pages on your website.

 

Cannibalisation and canonicalisation checks

 

Cannibalisation and canonicalisation checks refer to 2 very different tags, but both of high importance. Cannibalisation refers to the issue of 2 or more URLS within a website competing for the same keywords. Cannibalisation causes issues because it makes it more difficult for Google and other search engines to understand WHICH page to return – this can lower the average position for target keywords thus having a negative impact on a websites keyword positions in a search engine.

Canonicalisation refers to the process of using a tag to tell Google that a page should be “consolidated” or “given parent status” – canonicalisation allows 2 or more similar pages to remain active within a website – the canonical tag TELLS Google which page is the master page and that page will then likely rank.

Canonical tags are a “directive” meaning that they are not arbritary but guidance for google and search engine alike.

Tools like screaming frog SEO spider and Deep Crawl can highlight canonical tag usage.

 

ROBOTS.txt file checks

 

No technical SEO audit would be complete without a check to make sure the robots.txt is configured properly. Many SEO campaigns omit regular robots.txt checks when in reality, robots.txt is a great way to limit the crawl and indexing of sensitive content as well as content that should be excluded for security reasons.

Within the audit I can make sure that all entries are correct and that Google ignores content that shouldn’t be indexed whilst having sufficient permissions to access media used for page rendering.

Outside of an SEO audit, it’s important to regularly take a look at robots.txt to ensure there is no instance of site wide content blocking.

 

Page header tag and content affinity checks i.e. H1 TAGS, H2 TAGS ETC.

 

Perhaps one of the older “SEO” factors – header tags have been around a long time as has their relevance for SEO. Making sure primary keywords/terms exist within a H1 is still basic SEO with some weight, but, as Google has evolved & now has a much better understanding of content (Google BERT), header tag usage should be constructed in such a way that the content is broken down into topical entities.

During a technical SEO audit, a full header tag evaluation will take place to look at how header tags are used within the site, if they follow a basic step down the process with PARENT TOPIC, CHILD TOPIC (with the respective H1 tags / H2 tags / H3 tags / H4 tags etc. tag usage).

Content affinity checks look at the relationship between a heading and the following paragraphs of content / media

 

Title and meta description checks

 

Within the technical seo audit there will be a site wide export of URLS with the respective title and meta descriptions to look for all the usual issues relating to

  • Excessively short titles
  • Excessively long titles
  • Short Meta Descriptions
  • Excessively long meta descriptions
  • Abnormal character formatting

 

We’ll also be looking at CTR and truncation.

In more than 70% of cases, Google can and does rewrite meta descriptions, or, excepts are taken from page content and shown instead of pre-set meta data.

Meta is refined for the target audience to improve user experience.

 

CTR evaluation

 

A valuable process for SEO yet, something often omitted from most technical SEO audit processes. CTR or click through rate is the % calculation of the number of clicks that originated from a share of impressions.

Click through rate can be an indicator of title and description quality and is something that should be optimised over time with experimentation.

A technical SEO audit will take into consideration keywords currently on page 1, top 10, top 5, top 3 and will look at average CTR rates over time. Again, another weighted SEO factor, CTR is something that should be present in every SEO audit.

Minor improvements to CTR can make a significant difference to clicks as well as increasing average positions.

 

Page indexability &resource accessibility

 

Page indexability refers to “how easy it is for search engines to actually index content on a website”. Whilst it might seem like an insignificant part of any technical SEO audit it’s actually very important, especially for larger content-driven websites.

Resource accessibility is important because it looks at how Google can pull in required resources such as JS (javascript), CSS (cascading style sheets) etc. when crawling a site.

Page indexability will look at things such as orphaned pages – which can occur in large websites with a disorganised internal linking configuration or when pages are only accessible via an xml sitemap.

 

Internal links and external links check

 

Internal link and external link checks look at the relationships between various link types. Internal links (contextual) help people to navigate between internal pages, it also bolsters how search engines treat content.

Within a technical SEO audit an overview of pages by link count is provided, highlighting pages that have poor internal link counts as well as pages that have excessive internal link references (outside of navigation links).

 

Speed and performance checks using Think with Google / Pagespeed Insights

 

Unlike beginner elements of an SEO audit, speed and performance checks can get a little more complex, especially when things such as FCP (first contentful paint), CLS (cumulative layout shift) and LCP (last contentful paint) are thrown around.

Speed and performance checks involve looking at a page on your site and testing site speed – pagespeed insights provides a page-level overview whereas think with google’s test my site feature gives a hollistic view of mobile speed across the entire website.

Site speed is becoming more and more important and is a common feature within most technical SEO audit documents. Google search console now has core web vitals included so you are able to see performance by device as well as how many pages are considered slow, fair or good.

For the May 2021 core update, it’s important for website owners to make sure their technical SEO is up to shape, including improvements to page speed as well as core web vitals. SEO performance can be further boosted by addressing speed.

Within the technical SEO audit – will be a section that breaks down first contentful paint, last contentful paint, cumulative layout shift and render blocking.

Google and search engines alike are expecting website owners to make their websites fast, quicker, easier to interact with – not having to wait to put it simply.

 

Core Web Vitals report

 

Core web vitals is connected with page speed, but, the concept is slightly different in that core web vitals takes into consideration how quickly a page loads and how quickly users can interact with it. Google knows that improving page speed by consolidating and deferring scripts can cause layouts to shift or time to interact to deteriorate.

Core web vitals looks at how quickly a user can interact with a page and whether or not their user experience is impacted during a page load – the most common of these being CLS (cumulative layout shift) which happens when scripts load after content causing the pages content to “shift” – which, is annoying and considered poor for user experience.

Within the seo audit, a check of the websites core vitals is taken as well as a waterfall evaluation from Google Chrome Developer Tools.

 

Best Practices Overview

 

Within the technical SEO audit will be a best practices overview to see how well your site / client site conforms to key SEO factors. Using a traffic light system to highlight priority SEO factors over lower value factors – it’ll be easy to see what factors are weighted against the current version of your site and what can be done to find and fix everything.

An audit checklist is provided to give a summary view of all the factors evaluated (as well as any skipped).

From crawl errors to content marketing, from broken links to google analytics configurations – nothing is left unturned during the audit.

 

Development and coding feedback

 

There will be a section that takes a look at general coding composition as well as development feedback for security, custom web functionality, single page applications, javascript functionality such as dynamic javascript content & more.

 

Technical Audits – What you need to know

Conducting a technical SEO audit using free tools is generally something that is ill advised. Most experienced SEO consultants would advise against it primarily because free SEO tools and free seo auditing tools generally miss most of the weighted SEO factors.

In the wrong hands, implementing guidance from single model tools can do more harm than good when it comes to technical SEO and organic performance.

SEO audit tool platforms are generally good for those learning SEO to practice on hobby sites or non-commercial sites. Implementing base level recommendations on a trading website can have negative consequences if not dealt with correctly.

What is an SEO Audit?

 

An SEO audit is a document containing the findings of a website analysis that relates to the facts that impact how a website performs in organic search. An SEO audit is generally a list of findings and recommendations that highlight the issue and provide a resolution or general guidance (best practice).

An SEO audit will generally include factors relating to a websites build, structure, performance, content and link profile – however how much a technical SEO audit contains will depend on whether it is conducted by an experienced SEO consultant, an SEO agency or whether someone has used an seo audit tool.

 

Free SEO Audits – are they any good?

 

As with anything “bespoke” – it will depend on who has conducted the audit and their level of SEO expertise. Free SEO audits are generally going to be much lighter and contain less in-depth information making them of lower value.

SEO audits can become extremely complex, especially when mapping out user journeys, behaviour flow, segmented device level information & more – which is generally a far cry from basic SEO audits that scrape the surface of a website highlighting basic site issues such as crawl errors, a basic audit checklist, whether your website has an XML sitemap, keywords in h1 tags, any found no index tag, the use of blog post content, social media links and other basic information.

Some FREE SEO Audits may provide some useful information for basic websites, but, in general most small, medium / large businesses with a website of more than a few pages in size will likely need a properly structured paid seo audit.

 

SEO Audit Templates

 

Googling SEO audits or technical seo audit templates will likely bring up hundreds of results – there are countless resources on the internet in regards to a site audit template – it is advisable to download and use an SEO audit template from a bonafide resource as many templates will likely omit one or more important SEO factors.

Technical SEO Audit templates usually come in the form of an Excel Spreadsheet, Google Sheet or a a pre-structured word document.

Most technical SEO audit templates will include a list of items to check along with a column to mark when complete along with a notes column for anyone conducting an SEO analysis of a site to summarise anything found.

These templates can also be referred to as:

  • SEO Audit Checklist
  • SEO Audit Checklist 2021
  • SEO Audit Checker

 

 

Technical SEO Audit Benefits

 

The benefits of a technical SEO audit are many – the main benefits being:

  • A site audit can highlight ALL of the issues relating to a website and how it is crawled, indexed and ranked
  • Provide a foundation for a POA (plan of action) for resolution
  • Create a direction for an SEO strategy
  • Help to boost organic positions for target keywords
  • Increase site traffic from Google and other search engines
  • Improve user experience
  • Increase conversion rates
  • Improve overall brand visibility
  • Create a more sustainable flow of traffic
  • Reduce bounce rate
  • Improve time on site / average time on page
  • Generate a positive ROI (return on investment)

 

Why Work with Daniel Foley?

With over 20 years experience delivering performance search engine optimisation campaigns, Daniel Foley has significant experience in boosting local businesses visibility. From generating more social media awareness to helping brands build more trust. Whether you are looking for an SEO specialist for Small Business or even a Local SEO specialist in London – Daniel is your go-to SEO expert.

Reap all the benefits of an organic specialist without the large costs associated with digital marketing agencies.

Very good SEO consultant, helped our chain of Gyms rank across the UK, we've seen an uplift, would highly recommend. Daniel's very honest although not the cheapest.

Dominic Marsh Avatar Dominic Marsh
January 28, 2019

Best thing I ever done was use this company. Daniel Foley has increased our website views more than double thanks to his expertise. Super happy

Zoe Norris Avatar Zoe Norris
March 9, 2019

I have used Daniel for SEO consultancy for the last 3 years. He's helped our jewellery business to grow significantly online. We initially used Daniel for some SEO consultancy, but, after a few months we realised it would be better to just hand the SEO over to him completely. Since then our keywords are all showing prominently in Google and our analytics traffic is up 100's%. I can't thank Daniel enough and I hope this review encourages others to seek his expertise.

John Dodd Avatar John Dodd
February 21, 2019