SEO audit
What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit is a structured review of how a website performs in search and why. It looks at the domain from the outside, the way search data sees it: how much organic traffic it gets, which keywords and pages bring it, how its rankings are spread and moving, how strong its link profile is, and who it competes with. The output is a short list of opportunities in order of importance.
The most useful findings are usually opportunities, not errors: striking-distance keywords that rank just below the top 3, a keyword gap with the closest competitors, and sites that link to those competitors but not to you. Because it reads search data rather than the site itself, an SEO audit works for any domain: yours, a client’s or a competitor’s.
A site audit is the technical half. It crawls your own pages for problems such as broken links, redirect chains, missing titles and slow templates. A complete review runs both: the SEO audit says where traffic can come from, the site audit says what on the site is in the way.
Why SEO audit matters for SEO
An audit shows where effort will pay off. Most sites have a handful of keywords, pages or links that matter far more than everything else, and an audit finds them.
Running one on a competitor shows what works for them, where they are slipping and who links to them. Running it regularly on your own domain catches lost rankings before they cost much traffic.
How to do an SEO audit
- Pick the market: rankings are per country, so audit the one that matters.
- Check the totals: organic traffic, keywords, Domain Rating and referring domains, against your closest competitors.
- Look at how rankings are spread and moving: how many keywords are in the top 10, on page 2, new and lost.
- List keywords at positions 4 to 20 and the pages that rank for them. Improving those pages is usually the fastest win.
- Find the keyword gap: what your closest competitors rank for and you don’t, on your topic and within reach.
- Find the backlink gap: sites linking to your competitors but not to you.
- Run a site audit for technical issues, then rank everything by impact and effort.
SEO audit FAQ
What is the difference between an SEO audit and a site audit?
An SEO audit reviews a domain’s search performance from search data: traffic, rankings, keywords, backlinks and competitors. It works for any website.
A site audit crawls your own pages for technical problems such as broken links, redirects, missing tags and slow pages. The two answer different questions, so a full review runs both.
How often should I do an SEO audit?
Monthly or quarterly for your own site, and after any big change such as a redesign or a migration. For competitors, whenever you plan content or links against them.
How long does an SEO audit take?
A tool-based audit of one domain takes under a minute. Turning it into a plan, deciding which pages to improve, which keywords to target and which sites to contact, takes an hour or two.
Related SEO terms
Striking distance keywords are queries a page ranks for just off the top spots, roughly positions 5-20, where small improvements can bring big gains.
A keyword gap is the set of keywords your competitors rank for and you don’t. Keyword gap analysis finds them so you can target them.
A link profile is the full set of backlinks pointing to a site: who links, how many, with what anchors and attributes, and how it changes over time.
Technical SEO is making sure search engines can crawl, render and index your site, covering speed, redirects, canonicals, sitemaps and mobile.
A site health score is a single number, usually 0 to 100, that an SEO audit tool calculates from the technical issues found when it crawls a site.
A content audit is a review of every page on a site, with data, to decide which to keep, update, merge, redirect or remove.