An SEO audit is like a SWOT analysis for your website. You will identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Armed with this knowledge, you can make changes to your website that will – hopefully – improve your rankings. And to achieve this, you need a few SEO audit tools on your side.
Remember that SWOT analysis looks at internal and external factors, and the same can be said for an SEO audit. In general, an SEO audit should include the following:
- On-page factors
- Website content
- Off-page factors
You could also include competitor research in your audit. It’s helpful to revisit your competitor research more frequently. You can’t assume that your competitor’s marketing strategy will never change, or there may be new competitors entering the field.
No matter how large or small your website is, you’re going to see some tools to simplify the process. SEO tools can automate large sections of the data gathering, allowing you to sit back and look at the insight rather than wasting time manually scraping the information you need.
The SEO audit tools you need to know
In this blog, we will look at some of the most common SEO audit tools you need to know about. This information will be useful for the following people:
- CMOs looking to get involved with the SEO audit process
- Website owners who want to run their own SEO audit
- Business owners who want to understand the SEO audit provided by their marketing agency
Screaming Frog
The first tool on our SEO audit essentials list is Screaming Frog. This is a website crawler that will “scrape” information from your site and present it in spreadsheet form. This comprehensive tool will extract a treasure trove of information from your website. The free version will crawl up to 500 URLs, while the paid version will remove all limits.
Screaming Frog is nothing short of comprehensive. It will pull on-page and off-page information for you to sort through and use to inform decisions. If you’re missing your target keyword in an H2 tag on any page, Screaming Frog will catch it.
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
A mobile-friendly website is non-negotiable, so it makes sense to check that your site is functioning as it should on all devices. If you’ve recently made any changes to your site, it’s important to check in to ensure everything looks as it should.
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool will let you know if there are any issues with usability or loading times, which are two of the most common problems to plague mobile sites.
SEMRush
This comprehensive SEO tool will allow you to automate many parts of your SEO audit. This means you’ll get periodic reports on your site progress without lifting a finger.
SEMRush is also excellent for competitor analysis, as it will show you which websites appear most commonly for keywords that are relevant to your site. So if a new player enters the field, you can quickly keep on track of their activity.
Even the free version of SEMRush offers excellent insight, but to unlock the true power of this tool, you’ll want to upgrade to a paid account.
Auburn’s FREE SEO Audit Tool
If you want a quick snapshot of your website performance, Auburn’s keyword optimisation tool can help. Simply enter your page URL and your target keyword to find out how well the page is optimised for a single term. You can run the audit as many times as you want, so this is an excellent free option for small business owners with highly niche keywords.
Our tool is designed for business owners and CMOs who want to know why their pages aren’t ranking, or aren’t ranking high enough. You could even run the audit on a competitor website to help you to understand what they are doing well.
The Auburn team can help you to grow your business online. To find out how we use search marketing to build businesses online, get in touch today.