In today’s digital landscape, search engine optimisation (SEO) is a critical component for any successful online business. As a business owner or marketing manager, you may already know that an SEO audit can help identify opportunities to improve your website’s organic performance. You’ve likely encountered offers for free SEO audits—after all, who wouldn’t be tempted by the prospect of a no-cost analysis? But before you make a decision, it’s important to understand the differences between free and paid, bespoke SEO audits.
What is a bespoke SEO audit?
A bespoke SEO audit is a customised audit that is specific to your business/website.
Bespoke SEO audits are individually tailored to each business and do not follow a template structure like most standard audits do.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to technical SEO. This is because it’s generally understood that Google has over 200 ranking factors as part of its many search algorithms.
What’s the main goal of an SEO audit?
The main goal of an SEO audit is to provide easy-to-understand, actionable recommendations that will improve your website’s crawlability, indexability, and rankability.
The secondary goal is that once those bespoke recommendations have been completed, your website will have improved in how bots like GoogleBot can find and crawl your website and pages, have an improved chance of pages you want visible in Google to be indexed, and the content that sits on pages to have an improved chance of ranking higher in Google.
What’s the difference between a free SEO audit and a bespoke SEO audit?
So what’s the difference between a free SEO audit, and a paid bespoke SEO audit? The main difference between a free SEO audit and a bespoke SEO audit is that free audits are generally put through an online tool that will crawl your website and give a list of generalised SEO ‘issues’.
It’s relatively common to come across marketing agencies and specialists offering a free SEO audit. A free audit sounds mightily tempting right? It’s free, what have you got to lose? Well, potentially a lot actually, and I’ll explain why.
They’re free because it takes little to no time to produce them. They’re the result of an SEO tool where you enter your domain and it quickly crawls the website and gives a list of ‘issues’ to fix, sometimes in a traffic light style priority. These are then white-labelled to look like the company has produced the audit themselves.
They often recommend things that don’t improve your rankings. You need an actual expert to interpret what these tools are telling you and to decipher what is actually going to improve your organic viability and what isn’t. Yes, these tools are great for spotting potential issues but without the human element to them, you could receive a list of actions where the majority of recommendations won’t make the difference you’re expecting.
They don’t provide any real actionable recommendations. Most of the time, these SEO audit tools only provide the issues and do not provide much, if any detail on why it’s an issue and how to resolve it. Businesses are then left with an audit document in which they do not know what to do next.
10 reasons why bespoke SEO audits are important
1. Individually Tailored SEO Analysis
Provide Custom Recommendations: When undertaking a bespoke SEO audit, an SEO expert, like a freelance SEO consultant, can provide personalised recommendations based on your specific business goals, industry, and target audience. This level of customisation is often missing in automated reports.
Contextual Understanding: SEO experts can understand the context behind your site’s data, such as seasonal trends, market conditions, and business cycles, which tools might overlook.
2. Deep Dive into Technical Issues
Comprehensive Technical Audit: SEO experts can conduct a more thorough technical SEO audit, identifying issues like site speed, mobile usability, crawl errors, and server issues that automated tools might not fully capture.
Advanced Diagnostics: SEO experts perform advanced diagnostics using a combination of tools and manual inspection to uncover issues that might be missed by automated audits.
3. Content Quality and Strategy
Content Analysis: An SEO expert can evaluate the quality and relevance of your content, suggesting improvements for readability, engagement, and SEO success.
Content Strategy: They can help develop a content strategy that aligns with your business objectives, ensuring that your content meets user intent and captures the right keywords.
4. Competitor Analysis
In-Depth Competitor Insights: SEO experts can provide a refined competitor analysis, identifying not just keyword gaps but also strategic opportunities based on competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
5. Link Building and Backlink Profile
Quality Over Quantity: An SEO expert can assess the quality of your backlinks, identifying potential the right number of opportunities for high-quality backlinks that automated tools might not prioritise or understand correctly.
6. User Experience (UX)
UX Evaluation: SEO experts can evaluate the overall user experience, suggesting improvements in site navigation, design, and usability that contribute to better search rankings.
7. Local SEO Optimisation
Local Market Focus: If your business targets local customers, an SEO expert can offer specialised local SEO strategies, including optimising for Google My Business, local NAP citations, and reviews.
Geo-Specific Insights: They can provide insights tailored to your specific geographic market, which is often beyond the scope of generic automated tools.
8. Ongoing Support and Adaptation
Continuous Monitoring: SEO experts can offer ongoing support and monitoring, adapting strategies based on real-time data and changes in search engine algorithms.
Proactive Adjustments: They can make proactive adjustments to your SEO strategy to keep up with industry trends and algorithm updates.
9. Detailed Reporting and Actionable Insights
Actionable Insights: SEO experts provide detailed reports with actionable insights, helping you understand what steps to take next and why.
Clear KPIs: They can help you establish clear KPIs and measure the success of your SEO efforts beyond what standard tools offer.
10. Human Insight and Creativity
Human Touch: Finally, the human insight and creativity that an SEO expert brings cannot be replicated by automated tools. They can think outside the box, offering innovative solutions tailored to your unique challenges.
What should be included in a bespoke SEO audit?
There’s no common denominator of what should and should not be included within a bespoke SEO audit, after all, there are around 200 individual ranking factors at play.
Bespoke audits should not be too heavy, and be easily digestible and easy to understand. As a baseline, they should generally include:
- A written report in the form of a document or presentation.
- Include actionable recommendations that explain why it’s an issue, and what needs to be done to rectify the issue.
- Recommendations be prioritised, and a clear methodology of how they are prioritised from highest to lowest.
- Include supporting information so website owners and developers have absolutely everything they need to complete the recommendation. E.g. If you are telling them they should improve their site speed, you should expect to give them precise information on how to do so.
To conclude: Are bespoke SEO audits worth it?
Bespoke SEO audits are absolutely worth the investment. As tempting as it might seem to take a free audit, unless you are already well perverse in the arts that are SEO it’s highly likely that you either won’t be able to complete the recommendations as they’ll be missing important context, or you wont see any benefit as you’ll be working on recommendations that wont make a difference.
Free audits are also often used to then ‘sell’ an SEO retainer, even if an SEO retainer might not be what’s needed for your business, as you’ll have a list of issues with no idea of how to rectify them.
I’d always recommend speaking with an SEO expert about your current performance and needs before accepting a free audit, as any good SEO expert will assess your performance and competitors and recommend the best course of action, even this means an audit is not needed.
If your website has seen a reduction in performance, or performance has stalled in recent months or years, please do not hesitate to contact me where we can discuss whether an SEO audit might benefit your website.