SEO Audit
Before embarking on a lengthy and costly SEO programme, conduct an assessment of your current position, competitors, and growth potential. Use this information to determine where to invest to see measurable growth in your business.
What is an SEO Audit & why is it important for business?
An SEO audit is an analysis of a website to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to help increase traffic in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). These audits often include information about page speed, authority score, backlink profile, on-page optimisation, and technical SEO.
There are dozens of tools available for conducting SEO audits, such as SEMrush and SEOptimer. However, much of the information they provide can be overwhelming for non-specialists, and not all of it will be useful for driving real results. The key is to identify which aspects need improvement.
Our SEO audit is conducted by an experienced SEO specialist and analyses key data points that influence your ranking on Google. Uniquely, we also analyse the top SERP results to assess how competitors are achieving that rank, so we can hone in on where you need to improve on your website.
The simplest way for you to conduct an SEO audit is to have us conduct one for you, read on to learn more.
What does our SEO Audit include?
Our audits are designed to determine if there is potential to achieve high rankings in the search results for your products, services, or business categories.
Here's what's included:
- Keyword ranking analysis: Data for one seed keyword and between 10 and 30 related search terms.
- Keyword intent: Uncover the level of buyer-readiness behind each keyword, from informational to sales-ready.
- Keyword difficulty: Discover the level of competition for specific keywords and understand how challenging it will be for you to rank well for them.
- Traffic potential: The amount of website traffic you could potentially gain by improving your rank for that keyword.
- Competitor analysis: Identify the top 5 digital competitors in your defined space, including their page addresses, the number of keywords they have in the top 3 positions, domain authority, and estimated search traffic.
- Backlink analysis: Discover the number of backlinks to your site, and competitor sites.
- Page speed: Reveal whether your website's page speed is hampering your SEO and how your competitors do in this area.
- Technical issues: We highlight any technical issues (like crawling, indexing, etc.) that may be harming your website rankings.
How much does an SEO audit cost?
Our SEO audits cost $430 each.
An audit is focused on one seed keyword, which typically aligns with a key service or product offering from your business. You can learn more about seed keywords, and how to choose one, here.
An SEO audit is required before we scope and propose an SEO programme to improve your rank in that area, but it's not mandatory for you to undertake an SEO programme once the audit is complete. You can take our SEO audit to another SEO company, or implement the findings in-house, should you wish.
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Choosing a seed keyword
A seed keyword is a business category or segment for which you want to rank, as it represents a core business area.
The audit takes a business-led approach. This means we focus on a product, service, or business category, and create the audit around your offering. An example of this would be a joinery company with an audit focused on what they sell, in this case, windows. 'Windows', 'Aluminium windows', or 'thermally-broken windows' are all potential seed keywords.
Broad or narrow?
A broad seed keyword covers a wide area and is ideal for a general assessment of a segment. An example of a broad keyword would be 'digital marketing'. A narrow keyword hones in on specificity, and is ideal for geographic or niche service, 'digital marketing agency Sydney' would be such an example.
A broad keyword audit may surface narrow keywords in the peripheral results, but won't be super focused on the competition for those keywords. That will require another audit.
Top 3 benefits of our SEO Audit
The SEO audit is designed to give you the insights needed to make strategic business decisions. The audit showcases the relevant keywords from your seed phrase, competition in that space, and areas for growth and opportunity.
Current landscape
The SEO audit shows the current situation for the business category. This includes the keyword potential, current competition, and relevance of the words you're focusing on.
This research, augmented by your own business analysis, helps you see the business opportunity resulting from SEO success.
Investment insight
Once complete the audit helps you to see the value in fighting for a specific keyword or group of keywords. Presented in a format that all stakeholders can understand it becomes easier for the business to decide on where to focus its efforts.
Measurable outcomes
By assessing your current position, those of your competitors, and the technical ranking of your website you have real benchmarks with which to measure future success.
Whether you take this audit and implement the action plan yourself, or have us do it you can see whether the work is paying off.
Trust our team of experts
Based in New Plymouth, New Zealand, Vanguard 86 is a certified Google Partner specialising in top-tier SEO services nationwide and in Australia.
Our team includes dedicated experts in SEO strategy, copywriting, programming, and advertising, collaborating to enhance your online visibility and drive targeted traffic to your website.
Whether you aim to outrank competitors for specific search terms or increase traffic to newly launched products or services, you can rely on our expertise to achieve optimal results.
Ready to take your SEO efforts to the next level?
If you like what you've seen so far then it could be worth chatting about your SEO. For an exploratory call where we'll work out whether we're a good fit for you simply send us some basic details using the form and we'll get back in touch within 24 hours.
Frequently asked questions
An SEO audit costs $430 + GST (if applicable).
Each audit is typically turned around within 5 business days. This can depend on the volume of audits being conducted at the time but our SEO specialist will inform you of a projected delivery date before you confirm your quote.
Use the form above to enquire. Our SEO specialist will be in touch within one business day to set-up a meeting and gather initial information from you. This will include an outline of the seed keyword/s you're looking to focus on.
From there our specialist will send you a quote to confirm the work being undertaken and confirm the delivery date for the audit. Our SEO specialist will typically book a 30-minute summary call to run through some key findings and the analysis. This is your opportunity to ask any questions you may have.
You can conduct as many audits as you like. It's common for businesses to choose quite broad seed keywords and then book another audit on a more focused keyword as this is closer to what their business needs.
It's also recommended that an SEO audit is conducted on the same keyword in 12 months so assess how the landscape has changed. This will help outline which keywords have increased or declined in popularity over time, and whether new competitors have entered the market.
The audit outlines several recommended actions to improve your rank. These are fairly high-level but will be useful to someone familiar with your CMS.
There is no optimisation work included in the audit, but the audit does enable us to provide a very detailed proposal for the work required to improve your rank. This would then be included in our custom SEO programme.