In the era of complete digitalization, marketing tradition has transformed. Starting a business does not require a huge office, loads of equipment, an army of staff. All you need today to kick start on your career path is a single computer and, of course, the right SEO audit tools.
More of the businesses exist only in the online world. Furthermore, the safety concerns around COVID-19 pandemic outbreaks demonstrated that this kind of operation may yield very positive results.
All of the mentioned cleaned the floor for online marketing. Promoting in a traditional style, with billboards, printed flyers, etc. is so rare nowadays. Only huge enterprises that can stretch the budget enough to afford it may still be using old-style methods. However, everyone is running a website or social media for their services, thus turning to online promotions.
It is clear that your business, regardless of operations or services that you provide, needs online marketing.
The question is: How to run it successfully? In such a growing competition, how do I make myself stand out?
One of the comprehensive online marketing concepts that when mastered makes a difference between failure and success is Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
If you have ever been thinking about why you get particular pages as a result of your search query on Google or other engines and not the others, the answer lies in a quality SEO strategy. The page that appears on top of the results page is the one that is optimized the best.
With modern-day short attention spans and hustling lifestyles, users do not want to spend too much time on looking for information they need. If you do not believe this, ask yourself when did you last go to the second page of search results. The chances are you would not be able to bring up such a memory. Thus, the higher you rank, the better you perform.
SEO would help you improve visibility and gain more quality traffic, increase conversations, and leads. But, how does SE Optimization does this for your site?
As we mentioned before, it is a comprehensive approach to the website’s performance and therefore it consists of 200 different factors. It is divided into two categories: On-page and Off-page Optimization.
What is On-page optimization?
This is a technique that refers to all the actions you can take within your site to improve it. It includes:
- Choosing and ranking for the right keywords. That is a road sign you post to your potential customers to get to you.
- Writing a powerful meta description that will summarize the content and hook a reader to choose you. Check here for more information https://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description
- Use tags! The title tag is the first thing that users see when they get to the search results page. Doing it a wrong way could get your great content completely out of reach. The alt tag is an image display to Google’s eyes. It explains what is on the picture so the engine can understand it and make use of it.
- Website’s speed! This factor cannot be stressed enough. Google prioritizes the faster site in the rank. Moreover, the slow loading speed would turn users away. Read this guide to find out how to improve the speed of your site for its best performance: https://www.seoliquido.com/website-speed-matters-how-to-improve/
- Improve your content!
On the other hand, Off-page optimization refers to external actions you take to make your site more valuable. These include backlinks, social promotion, domain authority, and so on.
You can learn more about these two SEO aspects on this address: https://www.seoliquido.com/on-page-off-page-search-engine-optimizations/
However, in this post, we are going to focus on another extremely important SEO practice- SEO Audit. In the further text, you will be presented with best SEO audit tools, along with the resolution of ‘’Free online SEO audit vs Technical SEO audits’’ doubt.
What is SEO Audit?
In simple words, by running SEO Audit tools, you are giving your site a health check-up. It is an analyzing process of how well does your site does. The results of the investigation should pinpoint potential issues, show the room for improvement, and help you improve your marketing strategy in a variety of ways.
To engage in this process, you would need to use certain online SEO tools. Systems could be in the form of free online SEO audit tools or technical SEO audit service which is a paid favor to the analyst.
Make sure to go through the article to find an option that suits your business needs and see what we recommend.
Free online SEO audit tools
Woorank
The Woorank is a website checker dealing with both on-page and off-page domain. It finds broken links and analyzes backlinks. What makes this online SEO audit tool stand out is that it concentrates on solutions by giving you recommendations on how to improve ranking. Reports are available for download as well.
Woorank offers a 14-day free trial to newly registered users. After it expires, you can choose between multiple packages. As of pricing, Pro service costs $59.99 and Premium stands for $179.99 a month. They offer a custom package for enterprises where the price is negotiable.
SEMrush
A famous On-page SEO checker, SEMrush is a tool targeted for tracking and analyzing competitors’ data. This is an important concept for successful SEO as you can integrate fruitful strategies of your competition to your own marketing idea.
This blog post explains the importance and provides some tips for competition analyzes: https://www.seoliquido.com/how-to-steal-the-rankings-traffic-and-leads-of-your-competitor/
SEMrush on-page SEO tool features backlink and keyword analyzes. In addition, the system provides a complete website audit and SEO ranking audit. For convenience, analytics are available in Excel format.
MOZ
One of the largest in the SEO business is Moz. Most of the SEO experts rely on Moz, using metrics it provides, such as domain authority and page authority. Additionally, it is a renowned SEO ranking checker.
Moz offers free and pro services. Some of the free online SEO audit tools it features are Keyword Explorer, Business Listing, Business Console, Research Categories, Moz Bar, and Open Site Explorer.
Yoast
One of the strongest SEO plugins that are available at the moment is Yoast. If you own a WordPress site, you should consider installing it. Its most prominent feature is a sitemap, a necessary concept for SEO. Plus, it is completely free to use.
If you want to try it out, read this comprehensive guide to Yoast: https://www.seoliquido.com/yoast-seo-plugin-one-of-the-best-plugin-used-by-seo-experts/
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a desktop program that does complete website audit. It analyzes site links, outbound links, meta descriptions, broken links, site’s security and loading time, and so on. It crawls a website as a whole, thus offering worthy insights into your SEO performance.
This service is free for up to 500 analyzed URLs.
Google Search Console
With a huge database, Google Search Console is one of the most important technical SEO audit tools. It works on crawling and indexing fixes. Some of the actions it operates include data delivery on HTTP status, looking for duplicate content and broken links, finding 404 errors, and much more.
To get most out of Google Search Console, read our comprehensive guide before you start using it.
Google Analytics
Although it is not strictly among SEO audit tools, Google Analytics is a vital resource for the success of any online marketing campaign. It features data such as organic traffic, time spent on the website, page speed, traffic sources, and bounce rate.
A powerful feature is that you can link it with Google Search Console these work efficiently as a pair.
Yet if you are still unsure about the difference between the two, this link provides accurate explanation so you can easily incorporate both of the systems in your campaign: https://www.seoliquido.com/learn-the-difference-between-google-analytics-and-search-console/
Other useful SEO friendly website checkers
KEYWORDS
Answer the public
This is an innovative tool that you may find useful. Unlike other SEO tools in this category that create a database using Google Keyword Planner, Answer the public gathers queries everywhere on the web, including social media, forums, and blogs.
After gathering data, the system transforms it into favorable key words which it organizes effectively. Furthermore, it has a nice interface, arranging results in a sort of mindmap.
Ubbersuggest
Service of this kind other sources usually provide as a Premium offer. However, Ubbersuggest is a 100% free tool.
You can type in the word to score for or paste a link to the site you would like to outrank. Keywords are analyzed for difficulty, search volume, and CPC. Alongside, Ubbersuggest would, well, suggest keywords based on your data.
Another component that you may find useful is a comparison feature.
OTHER
Exploding topics
A cutting-edge tool, Exploding topics, helps you to find emerging trends and discover topics before they get popular. It is very useful for updating old content and creating new ones, as you can work on attracting users’ attention.
It allows you to enter the category that is related to your business niche.
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
Since Google has introduced Mobile-First Indexing, a policy that gives priority to the sites that are optimized for mobile devices, developers realized the importance of the matter. Users are nowadays mostly on their remote devices, so the page that is suitable for this would rank higher.
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test has a feature that would point out loading issues and demonstrate how to improve the code for the best cross-device use.
Website technical SEO audit tools – GTmetrix
Although some of the tools we have looked at above offer technical SEO audits, GTmetrix is a specialized technical SEO audit tool. It analyzes and warns regarding technical issues on the site that are impacting user experience, an important ranking factor.
How it works: The system gathers your performance data, analyzing it following Search Engine’s principles. It gives out the performance score and index rate. GTmetrix offers insight on how to improve speed based on page size and a number of requests.
Are there any downsides?
Even though some of the things look simple, it is only surface level. Search Engine Optimization is a long and laborious process that requires skill and experience for maximum performance. With free tools, experience, and persistence, you would be able to fix some things related to your ranking. However, if you are looking for a remake, you should consider investing a bit in a professional technical SEO audit service.
Google algorithms and Internet mechanisms carry special complexity that requires a deep understanding to be hacked to your advantage. Learning so is great. However, if you want to see results within a shorter period of time, hiring professionals would to the trick. Moreover, you can receive long-term guidance that would secure your road to prosperity on the Internet.
All of the tools we featured would be extremely beneficial as it is described. You should investigate them and find solutions that work well for your business.
But, have in mind that a vast majority of tools would not be entirely free. Take all costs into account and look for a budget-friendly investment that would for sure pay of.
SEO audit pricing
Depending on the size of the company and consequently the size of the website, an SEO audit fare may vary. On the bottom line, you can expect to pay from $650 (£500) up to several thousand. However, pricing depends on the company. Make sure to do thorough research before choosing a cooperant, as some service providers may overprice their offer.
For instance, you can get a complete SEO audit service for a price ranging from $655 (£500) to $1300 (£1000) at SEOLiquido company.
Compare the fares and find the best solution for your pocket.
Our final takeaway
Before you go, check out this website audit check-list we have prepared.
- Step no.1 – Speed up the site
- Step no. 2 – Check the indexing- Google should be indexing only one version of your site
- Step no. 3 – Fix indexing issues
- Step no. 4 – Spot Zombie page
- Step no. 5 – Check organic traffic
- Step no. 6 – Improve On-page Search Engine Optimization
- Step no. 7 – Improve your content
- Step no. 8 – Work on Off-page Search Engine Optimization
- Step no. 9 – Analyze your backlinks
- Step no. 10 – Find and resolve broken links
- Step no. 11 – Improve links
- Step no. 12 – Fix the code to make your site mobile-friendly
- Step no. 13 – Spy on your competition
- Step no. 14 – Optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets
- Step no. 15 – Run SEO audit tools
What SEO audit tools are you using?