Repeat the SEO audit checklist
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 4:14 am
How to Conduct an Effective SEO Audit in 2024 [Worksheet Included]
Understanding how SEO can drive business results
Conducting an SEO audit takes a lot of time and effort and can be lost pretty quickly.
In this article, we'll go over how SEO can help you drive real business results so you can focus on what matters most.
Related: How to Conduct a YouTube Audit .
In this audit checklist
Understand your audience and create effective content
How to figure out which types of content drive the best business results
SEO Growth Potential
Focus on AHA-Moments and the Customer Journey
Conducting and expanding your keyword research
On-page SEO
Frequently Asked Questions
Understand your audience and create effective content
In marketing, we often talk about vanity metrics . Especially when it comes to setting up your social media marketing strategy , but understanding which metrics are most important to you in terms of SEO and content and which metrics are holding you back from making the right decisions is crucial.
I often hear from CMOs and VPs of Marketing:
“We don’t just want more traffic, we want the right kind of traffic”
I agree 100%. That's obvious to me. But the reason they mention it is that too often SEOs focus only on increasing traffic numbers and in their eyes, they did a good job.
I would say that is the wrong approach. As an SEO (in-house or freelance), you should always understand:
What has worked well in the past in terms of generating leads, MQLs, and sales?
What does that tell us? What types of content are actually driving business results and why?
What areas have we not yet explored and want to experiment in?
Starting point of the SEO audit
When you understand these three elements, you can dive into:
Prioritize the types of content that are most valuable to us;
Do on-page optimization for these types of content;
Internal link optimization;
(optionally) making external links.
Additional Resource: On-Page SEO Optimization Checklist + Free Worksheet
If you were to stop reading this SEO Audit article and just focus on the points above, you would probably already be successful in generating more and better business results with the help of SEO and content.
How to figure out which types of content drive the best business results
Okay, let’s dig a little deeper. How do you figure out which pages, kazakhstan business email list types, keywords, etc. are driving the best business results so we can learn, optimize, and scale what works?
First of all, it might be different if you are doing the SEO Audit for a B2B or B2C website. With B2B websites, it can be a bit more difficult to get the right data, especially since the “time to purchase” is usually longer than, for example, an e-commerce website.
Still, the way I approach it is by looking at:
Are there individual pages that indicate success?
Are there groups of pages that indicate success?
Product page group;
Group of pages and articles that focus on the same keywords;
Group of page types (video pages, example pages, etc.);
How to figure out which types of content drive the best business results
Example:
At StoryLab.ai we write about a variety of topics and have several types of pages. When doing an SEO audit, I would look at:
Which individual pages attract the most users and sales?
How many visitors for all product pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
How many visitors for all example pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
How many visitors for all Social Media Marketing pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
How many visitors for all SEO pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
How many visitors for all Video Marketing pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
What we see is that product pages by far attract the highest value traffic. For every 5 visitors, we get 1 new user.
We also see that social media related content attracts more users per visitor compared to SEO and Video Marketing .
So that's great information to use to make some decisions.
It doesn't mean that by having this data, we no longer write SEO articles (otherwise, we wouldn't have written this SEO Audit article). But it does mean that most of our link building efforts are directed to our product pages and social media related pages.
What is missing from this analysis to help you make the right decisions?
Data value: Is this analysis based on just a handful of visitors? If so, you can't really say anything yet. You need more traffic.
Understanding how SEO can drive business results
Conducting an SEO audit takes a lot of time and effort and can be lost pretty quickly.
In this article, we'll go over how SEO can help you drive real business results so you can focus on what matters most.
Related: How to Conduct a YouTube Audit .
In this audit checklist
Understand your audience and create effective content
How to figure out which types of content drive the best business results
SEO Growth Potential
Focus on AHA-Moments and the Customer Journey
Conducting and expanding your keyword research
On-page SEO
Frequently Asked Questions
Understand your audience and create effective content
In marketing, we often talk about vanity metrics . Especially when it comes to setting up your social media marketing strategy , but understanding which metrics are most important to you in terms of SEO and content and which metrics are holding you back from making the right decisions is crucial.
I often hear from CMOs and VPs of Marketing:
“We don’t just want more traffic, we want the right kind of traffic”
I agree 100%. That's obvious to me. But the reason they mention it is that too often SEOs focus only on increasing traffic numbers and in their eyes, they did a good job.
I would say that is the wrong approach. As an SEO (in-house or freelance), you should always understand:
What has worked well in the past in terms of generating leads, MQLs, and sales?
What does that tell us? What types of content are actually driving business results and why?
What areas have we not yet explored and want to experiment in?
Starting point of the SEO audit
When you understand these three elements, you can dive into:
Prioritize the types of content that are most valuable to us;
Do on-page optimization for these types of content;
Internal link optimization;
(optionally) making external links.
Additional Resource: On-Page SEO Optimization Checklist + Free Worksheet
If you were to stop reading this SEO Audit article and just focus on the points above, you would probably already be successful in generating more and better business results with the help of SEO and content.
How to figure out which types of content drive the best business results
Okay, let’s dig a little deeper. How do you figure out which pages, kazakhstan business email list types, keywords, etc. are driving the best business results so we can learn, optimize, and scale what works?
First of all, it might be different if you are doing the SEO Audit for a B2B or B2C website. With B2B websites, it can be a bit more difficult to get the right data, especially since the “time to purchase” is usually longer than, for example, an e-commerce website.
Still, the way I approach it is by looking at:
Are there individual pages that indicate success?
Are there groups of pages that indicate success?
Product page group;
Group of pages and articles that focus on the same keywords;
Group of page types (video pages, example pages, etc.);
How to figure out which types of content drive the best business results
Example:
At StoryLab.ai we write about a variety of topics and have several types of pages. When doing an SEO audit, I would look at:
Which individual pages attract the most users and sales?
How many visitors for all product pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
How many visitors for all example pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
How many visitors for all Social Media Marketing pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
How many visitors for all SEO pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
How many visitors for all Video Marketing pages combined do we need for 1 user and 1 sale?
What we see is that product pages by far attract the highest value traffic. For every 5 visitors, we get 1 new user.
We also see that social media related content attracts more users per visitor compared to SEO and Video Marketing .
So that's great information to use to make some decisions.
It doesn't mean that by having this data, we no longer write SEO articles (otherwise, we wouldn't have written this SEO Audit article). But it does mean that most of our link building efforts are directed to our product pages and social media related pages.
What is missing from this analysis to help you make the right decisions?
Data value: Is this analysis based on just a handful of visitors? If so, you can't really say anything yet. You need more traffic.