A Technical SEO Audit is a thorough and meticulous health check of a website, comparable to taking your car in for a service. A high-quality audit will highlight all of the essential issues that must be fixed in order for the site to be roadworthy on Google and other search engines. It will also help to identify minor flaws and weaknesses that, if fixed, could help to give you the edge on your search competitors.
Find out how to fine-tune your website for Google
Many SEO agencies offer website audits that are essentially machine-generated reports, where you will receive a green tick or a red cross to indicate a pass or fail for various technical, on-page and off-page related issues. Whilst there will always a be a certain level of tick boxing with any SEO audit; my advanced reports are always custom written and feature commentary, advice and added insight that is specific to your business and web property.
Get detailed, clear, actionable advice
A standard report is usually around 40 pages long (and could be substantially longer for more complicated, larger websites). Every report features an assessment and outline of areas for improvements on the following topics.
- Your Google set-up – checks to identify if Google Analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager and Optimize are installed and configured properly
- Indexing issues – for example, identifying issues with crawl paths to remedy pages not ranking well. Identifying low quality or ‘thin’ content URLs for exclusion from Google’s search results
- Crawl errors – for example, identifying issues such as 404 “not found” status URLs and internal 301 redirects
- Technical SEO set-up – for example, ensuring robots.txt and XML sitemaps are configured correctly. Identifying any canonicalisation issues and providing advice on how to fix them
- Mobile-friendliness – for example, testing responsiveness, page rendering and page speed; ensuring the layout of content is suitable for mobile users
- Site security – in particular, ensuring that HTTPS is enabled and configured correctly throughout the site
- Site architecture – providing advice on the structure of the menu system, folder structures, internal linking and any issues with URL formatting
- Key landing page checks – for example, ensuring that the homepage, category, sub-category, product and service level pages are optimised well and user-friendly
- Calls to action and goal tracking – ensuring that your site is set-up well to convert and that appropriate events and goals are being monitored in Google Analytics
- Local SEO set-up – for example, reviewing your GMB set-up and individual GMB local listings and outlining areas for improvements; ensuring local business schema mark-up is configured correctly; reviewing local citations and reviews
- Backlinks – analysing the volume and quality of backlinks pointing to your site and cross comparing this to your key competitors.
Why use this service
This type of audit is suitable for any individual or business looking to either improve their search engine performance or to double-check that nothing has been missed by your in-house team or agency. My service is particularly suitable for in-house teams and agencies because I am not looking to replace your existing staff or contractors, in fact, the opposite. I am happy to work alongside your existing providers to ensure that your SEO efforts are working as well as they can be. I spend a lot of my spare time keeping up to date with changes to Google’s algorithms and general changes in the search engine arena, so you can rest assured that my audit will include the latest & most advanced advice regarding your website.
How the service works
The process is simple and starts with an initial consultation by phone.
- Initial consultation – we discuss your business, your online objectives, keyword targeting and history of SEO work
- Proposal – I will send you an outline of costs based on our discussion
- Planning – once agreed on the terms of the proposal, I will schedule in a time for me to complete the assessment
- Discussion and follow-up – we will go through the report over the phone and identify if additional time is required by me to help your in-house or agency staff to address the issues identified. We will discuss the creation of an SEO roadmap to set out the strategy for your site.
Contact me for a sample audit
If you would like to see an example Technical SEO Audit that I have written, you can either send me a message using the form on this page or you can drop me an email on my contact page. I will aim to get back to you within 24 hours of your request. Want to know what qualifies me to audit your site? Read more on my background.
Recent testimonials
“James is attentive to detail, prompt on delivery and a pleasure to work with. His auditing work and insight into SEO provides clear action and advice on how to better position a wesbite and rank organically for traffic that converts. Highly recommended.”
“I’ve been lucky enough to have James do two SEO Audits for me. He is a true leader in his field, and his insights have been extremely valuable. An extremely talented SEO, someone who will ensure your website is aligned for success.”
“James is a reliable and very experienced SEO specialist. Our agency has worked with him on a number of client technical SEO audits and has so far always over delivered. Can’t recommend him highly enough.”