SEO Audit for Small Business

An SEO Audit for small business is a comprehensive review of the “digital health” of a web site to understand if it’s well ranked by search engines, drives traffic, can be easily accessed by the visitor and most importantly, generates conversions: leads, new revenue, White Paper downloads, social engagement.

We get asked by clients frequently do give them a review of their overall SEO Elements. We do a quick snapshot for some at no charge on the front end of some contracts. But, for most clients we do a formal 3-5 hour SEO audit of their business and invoice them for a fixed rate or per hour.

We are going to map out the discrete elements for an SEO Audit for Small Business below. The analysis component is of course critical to understanding what’s working and what isn’t.  Then, mapping out a comprehensive SEO, Content Strategy and integrated Social Media Marketing campaign.

SEO Audit for Small Business

  • Web Site Analysis with these discrete elements: Hosting and Server Provisioning, Domain Name, Overall Design & UI, Menus, Global Navigation, Usability, Calls to Action, Load Times, Social Media Account Integration, Google Caching Dates, Number of Pages Indexed, Cross Browser Functionality (IE, Firefox, Chrome), Section Pages, URL Canonicalization, HTML Code, Plugins.
  • On Page SEO Analysis: Meta Tags, Image Optimization, H1/H2 Tags, Cross Linking Elements, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Review, Outbound Links, Backlinks Review (Root Domains linking back, Sites, etc), Pages Indexed Analysis (content on site versus what is found by Search Engines)
  • Web Site Content Analysis: Overall Content Quality: Length, Syntax, Word Analysis, On Page SEO Elements, Calls to Action (as in “Web Site” review above), User Analysis (helpful, informative, engaging, etc.), Image Integration, Video (YouTube) Integration, Content Syndication elements and platforms: Posterous, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Tumblr and second tier platforms.
  • Social Signals Analysis: Review of Social Media Accounts encompassing Facebobook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, usage of Bit.ly for link shortening and analysis, shareability with social community, Klout, PeerIndex (although this platform is more important for European based brands), integration of all with web site to measure and optimize engagements.

It’s difficult to single out any one of these four metrics as the most important for an SEO Audit for Small Business.  As all of these marketing variables work together in a synergistic manner - the sum is always going to be greater than any one part!

  • http://twitter.com/MattLBrennan Matt Brennan

    There are really so many different factors that contribute to good SEO. It’s really important to have the on-site factors under control before you start to wonder about spreading your content and achieving links. Nice post.