What is a keyword audit & why it matters for your business?

When it comes to SEO audits, professionals and business owners often consider technical, content, and on-page audits. However, one of the most crucial types of audits for identifying business opportunities is a keyword audit.

A keyword audit helps you pinpoint search terms that can significantly impact your traffic volume and conversion rates. This can lead to more effective customer acquisition and increased revenue. 

Not all businesses perform equally in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Some keywords attract high demand, while others see minimal searches. Conducting a keyword audit allows you to see the data before investing substantial time and resources.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through Vanguard 86's keyword audit process and offer practical tips for conducting your own.

These tasks often include:

• SERP analysis
• Keyword ranking analysis
• Keyword intent check
• Keyword difficulty assessment
• Current rankings evaluation
• Traffic potential analysis
• Competitor analysis

Additionally, these audits can include backlink and page speed analysis, which are important as they influence how well you can rank for certain keywords.

Our approach starts with a seed phrase related to a product or service, ensuring focused and goal-oriented analysis. Since competitors may rank differently for various keywords, concentrating on seed phrases helps align our strategy and ensure consistent data.

What this means for your business

Conducting an SEO keyword audit is vital for discovering key search terms you may not currently be ranking for, or improvements that could be made to rank higher for existing terms. 

These keywords are crucial as they align with your offerings and attract highly targeted users. Keywords with buyer intent often lead to higher ROI compared to informational or navigational keywords.

For instance, if you offer dairy shed construction services and have a landing page but aren’t ranking for related commercial search terms, you will likely miss valuable clicks and potential leads.

A keyword audit provides essential insights. It helps you gauge traffic volume, decide whether to create new landing pages or optimise existing ones, and understand competitor strategies regarding content and backlinks. By gathering this information, you avoid proceeding blindly and ensure your SEO efforts are well-directed.

A real-life keyword audit example

We recently conducted an audit for Vanguard 86’s SEO programme to develop a strategy for attracting targeted clients across New Zealand and Australia. This example should provide more clarity on the data and metrics you should consider when performing your own audit. 

Keyword data 

The first task we undertook was extensive keyword research. Knowing what we wanted to offer, we searched for high-volume keywords with lower difficulty scores, considered their search intent, and checked if there were existing pages already ranking for these keywords. We used third-party tools like Semrush and Google Search Console (GSC) to analyse current keyword rankings.

Another aspect of our keyword research was examining the types of pages that appeared in the search results. We found that certain keywords ranked for similar pages, which helped us determine whether we needed to create multiple pages or if a single page could effectively cover these semantic phrases.

Estimated traffic opportunity

Using estimated CTR averages from Backlinko’s case study, we were able to estimate the average number of clicks for the top three positions for the given keywords. We determined that “seo nz” and “search engine optimisation nz” had the most potential. Targeting these keywords increases the likelihood of driving traffic with related semantic search terms as well.

Traffic opportunity is important because some keywords with low search volume may also have high difficulty, meaning substantial effort might yield minimal results. If this were the case in this audit, we would have conducted further keyword research to find terms with better search volume opportunities. If you’re noticing poor results, consider targeting broader search terms to improve volume, as the current phrases might be too niche and not widely recognised by users yet.

Competitor overview

Identifying the competitors who rank well for the keywords discovered during the research phase allowed us to analyse the type of content they were creating on their landing pages. We also assessed their domain authority, the number of total keywords their pages were ranking for, and their potential monthly traffic earnings. This information helped us understand what Google was prioritising in the search results, which in turn provided clarity and allowed us to refine our SEO strategy to meet current standards.

From the table above, it’s clear that our main competitor for the target keywords is Pure SEO. Since our competing webpage is relatively new, it will require ongoing optimisation to achieve top rankings.

Competitor keyword positions comparison

We discovered that Pure SEO was ranking for the highest number of keywords among five competitors. However, we needed to compare whether they were ranking for the exact keywords identified in the initial research phase. This comparison provided further clarity and helped us understand where our competitors stand in the top results.

As you can see, Pure SEO is ranking in the top position for the majority of the keywords we want to target, which reinforces our research and approach.

We also discovered that "SEO pricing NZ" would be more effective as a supporting article with its own landing page, rather than optimising our services page. This is because no competitors are ranking well for this search term; the top results are filled with blog posts rather than service pages.

Backlink analysis

Backlinks are one of Google's most important ranking factors. To target keywords that our competitors are ranking well for, we needed to identify key metrics such as the number of backlinks, the number of referring domains, whether the links are no-follow or do-follow, and the quality of the links each page is receiving.

Pure SEO has a higher number of links pointing to their service page and has actively engaged in link building. This is something we need to consider in our own strategy, as it can be challenging to outrank a website or page that has high-quality backlinks.

Page speed performance

Page speed performance and user experience are crucial factors when ranking for specific keywords. If your website is slower than the top-ranking pages, Google is likely to favour better-performing pages in search results. While this is just one of many ranking factors, it’s important to consider it when conducting a keyword audit.

For page speed, we use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool to get scores for both mobile and desktop. We also check each website's Core Web Vitals, as this can be an advantage if competitors' scores are low or failing.

Interestingly, Pure SEO has one of the worst-performing pages compared to our competitors. However, The Web Guys are ranking for the second most search traffic and have an excellent mobile speed score, which aligns with Google's recent algorithm updates. We may consider improving our mobile page speed in the future if needed, or after we’ve implemented other strategies to improve rankings.

SEO recommendations

We have now gathered enough data to develop an SEO strategy based on our audit findings. This strategy is prioritised from least important to highest impact and includes recommendations and tasks for both site-wide and technical improvements. Note that implementing these changes will require time to see the results.

As you can see, the information found has been turned into actionable steps that we can implement. Once these recommendations are carried out, we can start seeing positive results for the keywords identified at the beginning of the audit.

Our keyword audit

Keyword audits are a crucial SEO tactic that many businesses overlook or aren’t aware of. Without knowing which keywords you’re currently ranking for, which keywords you should target, and who holds the top positions for those keywords, you’re essentially engaging in blind SEO. This can lead to spending time and resources on a strategy that might not yield results.
Understanding the types of keywords you can rank for is also important, as some phrases drive a higher ROI than others.

If you’d like us to perform an SEO audit on your business's website to identify keyword opportunities that align with your services or products, learn more about our offerings here.