Introduction:
SEO audits are conducted to monitor and ensure the optimum running of a website. It is an important monitoring factor that is helpful in keeping a website’s SEO strategy up to date. A website’s search engine optimization is crucial for its survival. A poorly optimized websites misses out significant amount of attention from potential customers and large number of search engine traffic.
To see what SEO is and how does it work, read the following blog posts: What Effect Does SEO Have On Your Search?
The Importance of Conducting SEO Audits:
To conduct an SEO audit on regular basis is necessary to consistently maintain the long-term performance of a website. An SEO audit keeps an eye on the technical aspect of your website crucial for its success. These elements could be the on-page and off page.
These elements are essential to improve site’s search engine visibility and conversion. To get further insight on what are the technical elements of SEO are go through these articles:
Which of These is Part of Technical SEO?
What Is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is an evaluation method that checks how well a website is optimized to be easily found by search engines. It identifies a website’s shortcomings that are preventing it from ranking well and also points out the opportunities that can be used to one’s advantage to gain more visibility.
Website audit encompasses a full-fledged analysis of all the ranking factors that determine a website’s place in search engines result pages. This useful process holds a complete insight into a website, its components, engagement rate, individual pages and overall traffic.
A Website audit is solely done for performance analysis and marketing purposes. It is primarily the overall wellness check of a website.
An SEO audit generally looks up in following areas of a website and provides feedback.
- Its ability to be indexed and crawled.
- It functional architecture.
- Its competitor’s analysis and benchmarking.
- Effectiveness of search keywords and phrases
- The kind of user experience it provides.
- On-page SEO elements such as content management, load speed, mobile friendliness etc
- Back link profile
Types OF SEO Audits:
Type of SEO audits that can be held on the basis of the aspect you want to evaluate are:
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Link Audit:
A link audit is done to evaluate a website’s link profile by evaluating the quantity and quality of links associated with it. For example, if you are an agriculture related organization, gardeners and nurseries might share your blogs linking to their sites. Audit checks those links for their quality and value.
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Competitive Audit:
A competitive audit is done to analyze competitors’ website’s performance in comparison to yours. It assesses their strengths and your weak points and provides valuable feedback benchmark via scorecards. This is done in order to uplift your website in comparison to competitor’s to outperform them.
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Technical Audit:
A technical audit evaluates the technical elements of a website’s on-page and off-page SEO. This involves content evaluation, identifying toxic backlinks, removing duplicate content, assessing interactive tools, checking for mobile friendliness, page load speed etc.
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Social Audit:
It evaluates your presence and influence on your social media channels. It evaluates how many people connect to your website through your social media profiles. How often they like, share, react, and comment on your work on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok etc.
It evaluates the link between your website and social media profiles, how strongly are they connected and how frequently the sharing buttons on the website is used that makes people share your website to others.
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Content Audit:
A content audit checks your website content for its quality, usefulness and engagement level. It assesses individual web pages, blogs, service pages, images, videos, targeted keywords, title tags and meta descriptions on every web page.
How to best optimize your content and images for SEO; give a read to following blog posts to expand your knowledge:
Type of SEO Audit that Should Be Conducted:
You might be wondering which type of SEO is best suitable for your website. Judge it on the basis of your business needs and your managerial skills. For best outcomes, conducting all types of SEO audits is recommended. Reviewing every element of the website through competitive, content, social, technical and link audit can greatly boost your website’s SEO performance.
Determining How Much to Charge for SEO Audit:
If you are not clear about as to how much you should charge for a search engine optimization (SEO) audit, learn through this guide to determine what should be the appropriate price range for companies looking for conducting SEO audit.
The Charge Price Depends on the Cost of an SEO Audit:
Basically, the charge rate of an SEO audit depends on the cost of doing it. Whereas, the cost is dependent on several more factors including:
Factors to Consider When Pricing an SEO Audit:
- The size and complexity of a website
- Varying Industrial and Marketing trends
- Scope of the Audit how deeply or briefly it is done
- The complexity of ever changing search engine algorithms
- Expertise and Qualifications of the professional auditor
- Level of competition
- Client’s budget, affordability and expectations
How Much to Charge for SEO Audit:
Following are some general guidelines to consider while figuring out how much to charge for an SEO audit:
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Basic SEO Audit:
A basic SEO audit that typically takes 1 to 5 hours can be charged somewhere between, $200 to $1,000. It includes assessing a website’s technical SEO, link profile and on-page optimization. This basic level audit is right for small to medium scale businesses that have a simple website structure.
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Standard SEO Audit:
This level of audit is appropriate for medium scale businesses with a moderately complicated website structure. It typically takes five to ten hours to complete. It encompasses a broader analysis of a website’s technical SEO, link quality, content assessment and on page optimization. The rate for standard SEO audit lies between, $2,500 to $5,000.
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Advanced SEO Audit:
Advanced SEO audit involves even more detailed evaluation of the website’s on-page optimization, technical SEO, content quality, link profile and user experience. Businesses having a complex website structure should go for advanced SEO audit. It takes around 10 to 20 hours to complete and should be charged within $25,00-$5,000.
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Comprehensive SEO Audit:
A comprehensive SEO audit involves an in-depth analysis of the website’s on-page optimization, link profile, technical SEO, user experience, content quality and competitor analysis.
It takes more than twenty hours to accomplish this kind of audit and it should be charged between, $5,000-$10,000 or more. It is best suited for high profile enterprise-level businesses that have a large and complicated website structure.
Application of Charges for an SEO Audit:
Charges to an SEO audit are applied based on their different categories and the method through which they are done.
- Flat Fee: Flat fee structure charge a flat, fixed amount for the entire audit, irrespective of the amount of time taken and services provided.
- Hourly Rate: Hourly rate charges per hour of the time used up conducting the whole audit.
- Value-Based Pricing: Value based pricing does not take into account the amount of time spent in conducting the audit instead it looks to the total value provided to the client at the end. Like the percentage of the total increased traffic or revenue gained through the audit.
- Retainer Fee: Charges an ongoing fee per service, more services you utilize you pay accordingly, including regular audits.
SEO Audit Pricing Strategies:
Audit prices are also charged according to different mechanisms and strategies using which the audit is conducted.
- Package Deals: SEO audit service can be charged as a whole by making bundle services together on a discounted rate.
- Tiered Pricing: Tiered pricing takes into account different levels of services at different price points.
- Retainer-Based: This charges a recurring fee for the services in progress.
- A La Carte: Charges separately for individual services.
- Value-Based: Charges the audit based on the total value/benefit provided to the client through the audit.
SEO Audit Offers/Deliverables:
It refers to the ways in which audit reports are presented to the client by the auditor.
- Written Report: SEO audit findings can be presented in a comprehensive document featuring all the shortcomings, findings and suggestions.
- Action Plan: An action plan is given to the client to direct the website in the right direction through a list of tasks recommended to implement.
- Presentation: A visual presentation gives a better review than the written report and summarizes the whole report findings and action plans.
- Ongoing Support: It is an additional service provided to clients to further support them in improving their SEO by making regular check-ins and monitoring. It helps to consistently drive the website’s SEO process in the right direction.
Wrapping Up:
Businesses worldwide conduct SEO audits to improve their websites’ SEO and get better outcomes. A careful and thoroughly conducted audit helps you to understand where your website currently stands in the SEO field and where steps should be taken to further improve the game.
The ultimate benefit of conducting SEO audit is that your website gets steered in the right direction, upgrades and ranks well in search engine result pages for high-value keywords. It helps you take the right steps at the right time.
Pricing an SEO audit depends on various factors such as the website’s complexity, scope and value provided to the client. There are different mechanisms and strategies mentioned above that help you charge clients at optimum level for the audit services. By understanding them and the factors that influence pricing you can adopt best practices for charging an SEO audit.