Jul 28, 2021
Use SEO Audit Services to Build a Strategic Digital War Chest.
An effective search engine optimization campaign requires more than new content and some flashy keywords. To generate desirable organic traffic for your client, you need to account for their website’s technical health. An SEO audit can provide this critical insight and help your team develop a tangible strategy.
How Does an SEO Audit Benefit Your Clients?
Clients often want to know what you have done for them lately. They are trusting your agency and investing a significant portion of their budget in your team’s expertise. When you are able to show the fruits of your campaign, this leads to greater transparency and a healthier account relationship.
With an SEO audit, you can form a detailed, insightful, and long-term plan of attack for the client’s campaign. It will provide you with a full view of their website’s health, opportunities for new quality keywords, and a full lay-of-the-land when analyzing competitors. You can put all of this information into a monthly plan that demonstrates tangible value.
From the financial perspective, an audit also allows your team to accurately price campaigns and ensure profitability. This ensures that the client receives the maximum possible return on their investment and boosts their satisfaction with your services.
How Does an SEO Audit Benefit Agencies?
SEO audits also benefit agencies in a number of ways. For starters, it becomes your team’s strategic war chest when forming your strategy. Each day, week, month, or quarter, you can use the audit as a central launchpad for your client’s campaign.
Similar to the client-side, the audit also allows your team to forecast a more accurate picture of cost, revenue, and profit. Instead of estimates, you can provide a quote designed to both maximize the client’s budget and generate the most profit for your business.
Components of an Excellent SEO Audit
If you search for “SEO audit” on Google, you will find many third-party companies promising extravagant results for a cheap, one-time service. In many cases, these offshore providers import an SEO tool’s
Manual and Machine Analysis
A high-quality audit should contain points of analysis collected from both human SEO experts and industry-leading digital tools. Combining artificial intelligence with human-level insight allows your agency to offer clients a more complete, effective, and long-term strategy.
Website Content Quality
When it comes to SEO, content should accomplish two main goals:
1. Establish your client’s authority in their industry
2. Introduce and optimize for new keywords with high organic traffic potential
Beyond this, the content should also engage the client’s target reader. After reading a blog post or landing page, the visitor ought to feel inspired to engage further. This supports the website’s overall lead generation and conversion goals.
Technical SEO Health
When search engine algorithms crawl through your website, they do not see all the incredible designs and bright colors. Instead, they read its HTML code. If the website is plagued with technical errors, the algorithm will likely determine the site offers a poor user experience and not rank it highly for desired keywords.
Two examples of common technical errors an audit might uncover include pages with a low text-to-HTML ratio and slow page load times. After identifying errors like these, an SEO analyst can compile an action plan that corrects these issues on an ongoing basis.
By noting all technical errors and warning signs, you can plan to address these problems and prevent them from further impacting the website’s organic search performance. As you continue to add new optimizations to your client’s site, these technical issues will not impede your progress over time.
User Behavior Stats
How are organic search users interacting with the website? Are they dropping off before making it to the desired point of conversion? During the audit, tools like Google Analytics can analyze user behavior like bounce rate, the average time of on-site, and behavior flow to help your team identify any disconnects between strategy and intended results.
Optimization Information
Does the client’s website already feature some basic SEO elements like focus keywords and optimized metadata? If not, these should be noted and addressed as soon as possible. This provides your team with the opportunity to introduce immediate campaign deliverables that deliver a noticeable impact.
Essential SEO elements like the ones above tell search engine algorithms what your page’s content is about. Along with strong content and high technical health, your website stands a much stronger chance of ranking highly for desired keywords.
Link Profile
Is your client’s website receiving links from reputable online sources relevant to their industry? During an SEO audit, an analyst should examine these links and score their quality. If they are irrelevant, spammy, or toxic, they can impact your organic rankings. Search engines will note these links and if they do not align with your client’s content, they will likely assume your website does not have an authority level that merits a higher ranking.
Any “bad” backlinks can be disavowed and better ones can be obtained through the course of an SEO campaign. These should be noted and cataloged during the audit phase.
A Tangible Action Plan
After the client has received an audit, your agency should provide them with a tangible action plan. Provide a list of high-level, ongoing deliverables as well as a plan to address any immediate issues.
White Label a Better SEO Audit Today
Looking to provide a better SEO audit for your clients? Consider an agency partnership with Conduit! Our team combines over 20 years of hands-on experience with industry-leading tools and a custom audit that covers over 80 criteria – all white-labeled under your client’s brand.
To learn more about our SEO services that can benefit your agency, view our agency partnership page.
