Local SEO: SEO Audit - How to Evaluate Your Website's Current SEO

As an SEO consultant with over 10 years of experience, one of the most important things I do for clients is to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit of their websites.

This involves thoroughly analyzing all the critical on-page and off-page factors influencing search engine rankings, traffic, and performance.

In this guide, I'll walk you through my exact process for auditing a website's SEO health. I'll share how I evaluate the key elements across technical SEO, content, backlinks, local search presence, and more.

Follow along, and you'll learn:

• My step-by-step SEO audit checklist
• Tools to analyze website optimization status
• How to identify issues hurting performance
• Tips to improve website visibility

Let's dive in and learn how to assess your current SEO standing.

Why Conduct an SEO Audit?

Before we get into the specifics, let's briefly discuss why auditing your website's SEO is so important:

• It provides a baseline to measure future optimizations against.
• You can catch critical issues early before they seriously hurt rankings.
• It gives you data-backed insights on what to focus on improving.
• You can assess how your SEO compares to competitors.
• It ensures you don't miss any major optimization opportunities.
• Ongoing audits allow you to track progress over time.

Think of an SEO audit as your website's regular health checkup by a doctor. You uncover any problems and receive prescribed fixes to improve performance.

Now let's get into the step-by-step audit process.

My Website SEO Audit Checklist

I start every site audit by working through this comprehensive SEO checklist I've developed over my career:

1. Technical SEO Audit

• Mobile-friendliness check via Google Mobile-Friendly Test
• Page speed test via PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom
• HTML validity via W3C Validator
• SSL certificate installed
• Robot.txt tester via Screaming Frog
• XML sitemap is present
• No excessive 404 errors via the Screaming Frog crawl
• Image alt text and compression
• Structured data implementation

2. On-Page SEO Audit

• Review page title lengths, keyword usage
• Check heading utilization and keywords
• Evaluate page URL structure and keywords
• Assess the internal linking structure
• Readability analysis via the Hemingway App
• Analyze content subjects, pillars, and age
• Review depth of content and multimedia usage
• Check for keyword cannibalization
• Site architecture and navigation intuitiveness

3. Off-Page SEO Audit

• Backlink analysis via Ahrefs and SEMRush
• Check recent backlink growth velocity
• Review link anchor text ratios
• Analyze the type and authority of linking domains
• Evaluate overall domain authority and trust
• Cross-reference with competitors
• Check for toxic links needing disavowal

4. Local SEO Audit

• Google My Business listing completeness
• Review other key directory listings like Yelp
• Citations consistent with GMB details
• On-page use of local keywords and location
• Area code in phone number
• Location-optimized schema markup used

5. Review Analytics and Rank Tracking

• Check organic traffic trends in Google Analytics
• Keyword ranking progress over time via SEMRush
• Assess traffic-to-ranking ratios
• Identify ranking fluctuations and anomalies

This covers all the vital elements I analyze to paint a complete picture of a website's current SEO health and opportunities.

Now, let's look at my tools and strategies for auditing each section.

SEO Audit Tools and Process

Having the right set of SEO tools makes it easy to analyze websites in depth. Here are my favorites:

Technical SEO Audits

• Google Mobile-Friendly Test: Checks mobile optimization.
• PageSpeed Insights: Assess site speed and areas for improvement.
• Pingdom: Additional speed test from multiple geographic regions.
• W3C Validator: Checks that HTML code is up to web standards.
• SecurityHeaders.com: Reviews security HTTP headers status.
• XML Sitemaps: Validates sitemap completeness.
• Screaming Frog: crawls the site to identify errors and issues.

On-Page SEO Audits

• MOZ Bar: Checks page titles, metadata, and headings.
• Surfer SEO: Analyzes on-page factors and HTML code.
• Hemingway App: Evaluates content readability.
• BuiltWith: Shows what technologies sites use.
• Google Search Console: Provides some on-page optimization insights.

Off-Page SEO Audits

• Ahrefs: Complete backlink analysis and metric tracking.
• SEMRush: Backlink snapshot with useful sorting filters.
• Majestic: Alternative backlink index to compare against others.
• Google Search Console: Lists some referring domains and toxic links.

Local SEO Audits

• Moz Local: Centralized directory management and local SEO analyzer.
• Google My Business: Details of GMB presence and performance.
• BrightLocal: Audits local citation consistency.
• Whitespark: Identifies missing local citations.

Analytics and Rank Tracking

• Google Analytics: Provides organic traffic and goal conversion analytics.
• Google Search Console: Lists keyword rankings and top performing content.
• SEMRush: Tracks keyword ranking changes over time.
• Ahrefs: Ranks tracked keywords by search volume.

These tools allow me to dive deep into all aspects of technical SEO, content, backlink profiles, local search presence, and more.

Now let's discuss my strategy for conducting audits across each of these areas:

Technical SEO Audit Approach

I start with technical SEO as issues here impact other optimizations. I test the site for:

• Mobile friendliness on all devices. Zooming/pinching indicates room for improvement.
• Fast page load speeds under 3 seconds. I confirm with multiple tools as speeds vary by geography.
• Proper 301 redirects, UTF-8 encoding, and valid HTML with no errors.
• Presence of XML sitemap and robots.txt with no blocking issues.
• SSL certificate installed and forced HTTPS redirection in place.
• Limited 404-page errors from broken links. I crawl the site to identify them.

Fixing technical problems lays the groundwork for other more advanced SEO best practices.

On-Page SEO Audit Approach

For on-page SEO, I manually review pages to see:

• Well-optimized title tags and headings using target keywords.
• Descriptive URL slugs using hyphens instead of underscores or numbers.
• Useful internal links to deep content, not just home and contact pages.
• Readability metrics within acceptable ranges.
• Thorough content pillars providing value, not just commercial intent.
• Multimedia elements like images, charts, videos to engage visitors.
• Proper introduction of keywords and natural integration within copy.

On-page optimizations must balance both search engines and human visitors.

Off-Page SEO Audit Approach

For backlink audits, I analyze:

• Total number of backlinks and referring domains pointing to the site.
• Backlink growth trends over a 6-12 month period.
• The anchor text ratios, ensuring a natural profile not over-optimized on exact matches.
• Referring domains' authority scores and relevance.
• Presence of any obvious toxic links that need disavowing like link networks.
• Comparisons against competitors to identify new link building opportunities.

High-quality backlinks remain crucial for ranking competitively for valuable keywords.

Local SEO Audit Approach

If optimizing locally, I ensure:

• Complete and consistent NAP details across directories like Google My Business, Apple Maps, Bing Places.
• High-quality citations registered on 50+ relevant sites like YellowPages, Yelp, Manta.
• Prominent use of local keywords and location names on the website.
• Inclusion of structured data like local business schema markup.

Local SEO establishes relevance and proximity when searching for local services.

Analytics and Rank Tracking Approach

Finally, I analyze:

• Organic traffic trends over 6-12 months to spot growth or declines.
• Goal conversion performance and funnel optimization opportunities.
• Rank tracking for target keywords to assess recent progress.
• Changes in rankings week-over-week to identify potential algorithm impacts.

Ongoing analytics allows me to connect SEO efforts to business results.

This covers my comprehensive process for auditing the current state of a website's SEO from multiple angles.

Identify Issues and Make Improvements

The most important part of an SEO audit is interpreting the results to call out issues and recommend fixes.

I compile all the audit findings into a report that covers:

• Technical problems to resolve like site speed.
• On-page optimization opportunities.
• Toxic links that require disavowing.
• New link building tactics based on competitors.
• Fixing gaps like local citations or structured data.
• Initial set of priority keywords to target.

I present this to clients along with my proposed solutions and next steps. The audit provides the roadmap for optimizing SEO efforts for maximum impact.

It also establishes a baseline to track progress against moving forward through periodic re-audits every 6-12 months.

Over time, I've seen the SEO auditing process directly lead to increased organic traffic, lower bounce rates, more conversions, and higher client search rankings.

It truly is one of the most valuable investments for any website owner.

Now, I'd love to hear from you - what SEO audit findings have you uncovered for your own or client websites? Which issues or fixes made the biggest impact? Let me know in the comments below!

For more tips, check out my in-depth guides on the importance of keyword research and building local citations. 

Let me know at contact@mansoorbhanpurawala.com if you need help formulating an effective SEO strategy!