If you’re looking for a strong foundation on which to build your online marketing efforts or need help determining the next steps in your SEO campaign, then my SEO Audit is perfect for you. Let me conduct an extensive analysis of your site and its current online progress, as well as that of your competition. Then, I’ll provide you with a set of documents that will outline specific modifications to your site and link-building strategies.
The SEO audits I conduct are not the same as those you may find online. I’m not saying those online tools aren’t fun to play around with, but I provide a more comprehensive analysis of your site; and return to you specific, actionable steps based on years of SEO experience. You won’t get any “your title tags are too short” statements here. Instead, I’ll tell you exactly what I think about them, and exactly how I would change them were I your SEO.
After we’ve taken care of our initial phone call, I should have everything I need to begin. The SEO audit begins with a round of keyword research to find out what search terms people actually use to find your product or service.
Website Analysis
With the list of keyword established, I can then use them as a gauge to determine how well your website is optimized for those terms. I will begin looking for any major problems with your code. Generally, I’m looking into the following:
- URL Structure
- Duplicate Content Issues
- Keyword Cannibalization Issues
- Aspects that may affect search engine crawlers
- Individual page focus
- Meta tag usage
- Title usage
- Alt Attributes
- Other on-page factors that help to determine search engine rankings
Link Analysis
Next, I’ll take a detailed look at your current link equity. This means I’ll be looking at not only the number of sites that link to yours, but also their type and value.
Competitive Analysis
Just as I perform an analysis on your site, so too do I analyze the sites of your competitors. I’m looking for all the same things I did on yours, but making note to their strengths and weaknesses. This is important as it helps us to quickly identify and adapt methods that are working for them, while exploiting the areas in which they don’t have a presence.
Competitive Link Analysis
I also perform a detailed analysis of your competition’s link equity, again noting the same things I did when I looked at your site’s link metrics. This will help us to identify link opportunities, and out-perform the competition in a strategic manner.
What You Get
Once I’ve completed my analysis I’ll be handing you quite a bit of information. This will be a set of documents containing the information I’ve gathered, various metric reports and my suggested website modification and promotion efforts.
List of Items that Require Urgent Attention
The first thing I’ll call your attention to is the list of urgent action items. Sometimes I only find a few things that could really be hurting your site’s performance, sometimes I find items that are literally stopping the search engines in their tracks; or worse, causing a website ranking penalty. either way, I’ll note the things that simply can’t be skipped and give you a good set of instructions on fixing them.
The Results of all my research
I pull a lot of different information from a lot of different sources to help in building an SEO campaign. You’ll be getting a set of documents that are the direct result of various metrics concerning your SEO efforts. For example, during the competitive link analysis phase, I’ll create long lists of the links that point to your competition. As a part of the SEO Audit service, you’ll get all of the documents that helped create the foundation for my suggestions.
SEO Spreadsheet with organized research results
Using all that information I found initially, I’ll provide you with the SEO Spreadsheet, a document that organizes the data into an easy-to-follow format. For example, the list of search terms that I suggest will be broken down in this document; separated by categories and prioritized based on the amount of competition and estimated search value. I also provide you with general expectations based on rank positioning, traffic and resulting conversion rates. Basically, the return on your investment.
Similarly, the list of competitors’ links I find will be broken into types, number and value. This way we can create an effective and efficient link-building strategy.
It also contains your list of targeted sites to acquire links, my list of free and paid quality directories and some other SEO suggestions.
Generally, the SEO Spreadsheet is your source for specific data information regarding your SEO efforts and will be referenced often during your SEO campaign.
Site Analysis Overview – Broad Suggestions
I’ll provide you with a general overview of your entire site’s analysis results, noting your strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. This analysis overview will also call your attention to larger action items as a part of the suggestions I make. For example, if you have a site but no blog, the overview analysis will contain my suggestion to start a blog, and help with the implementation.
Page by Page Analysis and Suggested Modifications
Depending on your type of audit, you’ll also receive an analysis on individual pages of your site, as well as specific modification suggestions. For example, you’ll get an exact list of the suggested titles for your site, as well as other on-page factors.
Master SEO Strategy Document with Checklist
Finally, you’ll get a master SEO strategy document and checklist. Depending on the needs of your audit, this may sometime be broken up into sections so as to easily be delegated to the appropriate departments.
Phone Consultation to Review the Audit
Once I’ve performed the SEO audit and gotten the results and suggestions to you, I’ll give you a while to look it over and then we’ll schedule a call to go over every part of the analysis and discuss my suggestions. This is also your time to ask specific questions and bounce ideas around, so it’s a real informative call.
Generally, I say “give it a month,” but every audit is different and every client has different needs. I’ve performed audits in under a week, and a few that took just over 2 months. It all depends on your particular business. Before we get started though, I’ll be able to tell you exactly how long it will take to receive your custom audit.
What’s with the pricing?
Due to the nature of SEO in general, I’ve listed my prices in a “starting at” format. The SEO audits I perform get pretty in depth sometimes, and continue to do so as more and more businesses implement online marketing efforts of their own (read: your competition). I have one aim, and that’s to provide you with the most efficient, effective strategy to provide real results.
Every client is unique, and so too are my provided services and fees.
No seriously, pricing and time info. Please?
I can tell that this is an important factor in any purchase, so I’ll give you a few examples so you can see the type of fees and turnaround time you’re looking at.
Starter
I recently provided an audit for a plumber (5 or so employees) in a smaller town in TX (few hundred thousand). I charged him $800, and had an audit/strategy to him in about a week and a half. He had someone implement all of the priority items I listed, and around 80% of the rest before our call, so that consisted mostly of ‘link-building’ talk.
In around 4 months he went from 0 Internet traffic to attributing 3 customers to the site (which resulted in around $500 in sales). After a year of working through his strategy and a few phone calls here and there (add a few hundred bucks to my fees), he now ranks on page one for the majority of his targeted search terms, and his website accounts for a large portion of his income.
Professional
I get a lot of these in a year’s time. Usually, this is the audit you would get if you provide a common service in a populated area (think lawyers in L.A.). These usually range from $1200 – $1700, and are done inside a month, every time. For some reason these are also my clients with the highest implementation rate. They usually see the first set of what I consider “results” in about 3 – 5 months. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what even one conversion for an injury attorney in Los Angeles means to the bottom line.
Small Business
This is the audit you would get if you were targeting the nation (think ecommerce sales, etc.) but with relatively light competition; though it may be apparent they are performing their own SEO efforts.
I provided this service to a client recently that sold a set of software products to the medical industry. They had a previous “SEO” that put them in some pretty sticky spots, but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be handled with a little elbow grease. I charged them just over $3500, and had the audit done in around 2 months. We also extended some of the consulting time for a few months while they fixed some of the more important errors.
This was one of those cases where a few changes meant a lot of results. They had a strong site, so we just had to remove a lot of the chains holding them back. 3 months into this, and they are really impeding/out-ranking their competition. The rest of their strategy will be pure profit.
Enterprise
I can’t say much here. These are clients whose needs vary so greatly that no 2 audits look even remotely similar. Some clients have vast websites with major development requirements, some need an audit on their internal processes/policies and even one on the SEO services they provided to their clients.
The very least I’ve ever charged was $5000, but they usually get to the $12000 – $15000 range. They can take anywhere from 2 to 3 months to complete, and usually involves regular consulting via phone/online meetings and a bit more training/education after the audit is complete and has been implemented.
More questions?
Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions at all. And thanks for checking out my SEO audit services. I appreciate it.
