7 tips for delivering high-impact technical SEO audits

2024-09-11 22:00:06

Many SEO professionals struggle to create technical audits that lead to meaningful improvements for their clients’ websites.

Ineffective audits waste time and resources, leave critical issues unaddressed and can damage client relationships. This results in missed opportunities for better search rankings and increased organic traffic.

Drawing from five years of experience conducting audits for prominent U.S. brands, I’ve developed seven essential tips for creating impactful technical SEO audits.

These guidelines will help you prioritize high-impact changes, provide actionable advice and leverage AI tools to enhance your audits.

Learn how to craft recommendations that clients eagerly implement, leading to tangible improvements in search performance and bottom-line results.

1. Less is usually more: Focus on impact over quantity

Through years of observing audits produced by various SEO agencies, I’ve noticed a common oversight: many fail to consider the limited resources – time and energy – available to companies.

Our team has also made the mistake of including every best practice and minor detail, not realizing that this detracts from focus and impedes the implementation of truly impactful changes.

There’s a natural tendency to believe that more is better, assuming clients will appreciate a 40-page audit more than a five-page audit.

However, while length can sometimes indicate low effort, a truly great audit focuses on the highest-impact items without getting distracted by minor changes.

Applying the theory of constraints

In systems engineering, a few key constraints often create the biggest bottlenecks. Solving one or two major issues usually drives the most significant results.

This idea, known as the Pareto Principle or 80-20 rule, suggests that 80% of outcomes come from just 20% of the causes.

In SEO, this often manifests as a few issues causing the majority of problems.

For example, in a large ecommerce site, 80% of organic traffic might be driven by just 20% of the product pages.

Optimizing these high-performing pages could yield much greater results than improving every page on the site.

This theory can be effectively applied to SEO audits. You can achieve significant improvements by focusing on identifying and addressing key constraints.

To ensure you’re considering the Pareto Principle:

Understand the distribution of traffic on the site and the nature of keywords in the client’s space. Are there a few pivotal keywords driving most of the traffic or only a few pages currently getting significant traffic?
Analyze the potential impact of different changes. Some changes may affect specific high-value keywords, while others might have a broader but less intense effect across the site.

Correctly identifying core impactful issues is a skill that requires a mental model of what types of changes create the largest impact and why.

At our company, we categorize audit items by their type of impact. This allows us to weigh the impact against all suggested changes and create a prioritized table for clients.

Impactful audit items can have the following types of impact:

Large impact changes: Often site-wide issues or changes affecting crucial pages or keywords.
Changes that impact specific keywords: Highly valuable if targeting important, high-traffic keywords.
Pattern-based changes: While individual instances might be minor, when summed up across the site, they can have a large impact. This includes template-based changes affecting multiple pages.
Correcting overall site quality issues: Important, but be careful not to go overboard. Focus on critical quality issues that could be holding the site back.

Consider prioritizing recommendations using the ICE framework

To ensure your team considers factors like impact and effort level, implement the ICE framework within the audit.

This simple methodology forces consideration of key characteristics that make a good audit item:

Impact: How much difference will this change make? Consider the type of impact from the list above.
Confidence: How certain are you that this change will have the predicted effect?
Ease of execution: How difficult or time-consuming will it be to implement this change?

By scoring each recommendation on these three factors, you can create a prioritized list that balances potential gains with practical considerations.

At our agency, we typically weigh these factors accordingly.

Score = 2 (Impact) + Confidence + Execution

It’s worth noting that SEO professionals may sometimes struggle to accurately assess the ease of execution, especially when a client’s website is on a less common platform.

In such cases, we recommend that the auditor meets with a web developer to align execution scores before presenting to the client.

Dig deeper: How to prioritize technical SEO tasks

2. Prescriptions over descriptions

Imagine you went to the doctor and they simply told you, “Your blood pressure is 140/90.” Without context or guidance, this information is essentially useless.

You’d be left wondering: Is this good or bad? What does it mean for my health? What should I do about it?

Similarly, in SEO, presenting raw data without interpretation or actionable advice is a disservice to clients.

How many times have you encountered audits that are merely lists of issues? “20 broken backlinks, 5 missing headers,” and so on.

While this information is helpful, it lacks the crucial layer of analysis needed to determine which items truly warrant attention.

This overlooks a fundamental truth: not all pages on a website serve SEO purposes.

The danger here, as discussed earlier, is forgetting that each item on this list requires time and resources to address.

In SEO audits, it’s insufficient to simply describe the current state of a website.

Clients need clear, actionable advice on addressing issues and improving their site’s performance.

Instead of just pointing out problems, provide specific solutions and steps to implement them.

A good rule of thumb is never to identify an issue without proposing a solution.

For example, when an audit notes 20 broken backlinks, go the extra mile:

Rank-order the links by value.
Highlight the recommended redirect path for each.
Prioritize which links should be addressed first based on their potential impact.

Similarly, for missing headers:

Propose new, search-optimized headers.
Explain why these headers are important and how they can improve the page’s performance.

With the advent of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, this additional step of providing solutions can be streamlined, saving time and reducing headaches.

All audits that uncover an issue should include a “Key takeaways” section that is prescriptive about next steps.

This ensures clients understand the problems and have a clear path to resolve them. For instance:

Key takeaways:

Prioritize fixing the top 5 broken backlinks, which account for 80% of lost link equity.
Implement proposed headers on the homepage and top 3 product category pages to improve keyword targeting.
Schedule a follow-up meeting to discuss the implementation strategy and timeline.

Everyone involved will have clear, actionable takeaways by taking this extra step.

This transforms the audit from a mere list of problems into a strategic roadmap for improvement.

It demonstrates your expertise in identifying issues and solving them, providing greater value to your clients.

Dig deeper: Top 5 SEO data pitfalls to avoid for accurate analysis and reporting

3. Start with keyword changes before automated technical audits

While automated tools can be valuable for gathering initial data, relying solely on a list of issues generated by these tools comes with significant drawbacks.

Automated audits lack the nuanced understanding of a website’s specific context and end goals; they simply run through a set of predefined checks.

The audit process should be exploratory in nature. Many start with automated tools, but I find it’s more effective to begin by analyzing keywords and traffic patterns over time.

Focusing on keyword rankings reveals deeper insights and bigger issues.

Take website speed as an example. Automated tools might provide a laundry list of issues, suggesting you offload certain scripts or improve the largest contentful paint.

However, start by examining the client’s most important keywords and comparing your site’s performance to outranking competitors.

You might find that your website’s speed is already within the range of top-ranking sites. This insight suggests that while speed improvements could enhance overall user experience, they may only marginally improve traffic.

Conversely, if you find a significant disparity, it could indicate a need to prioritize speed optimization efforts.

The severity of each issue needs to be interpreted in the context of the website and the keyword ranking goals.

For instance, if an automated report flags 10 pages with missing H1 headers, it’s crucial to determine whether these are actually important SEO pages.

When you start with the keywords that matter, you’ll often notice disparities and technical issues. These organically discovered technical issues will likely be far more impactful than blindly following automated tool recommendations.

Automated tools are useful, but they should support – not replace – human insight in SEO audits.

An effective audit combines automated data with expert analysis, focusing on key keywords and user experience to drive real improvements in SEO performance.

Dig deeper: Keyword difficulty in SEO guide: Everything you need to know

4. Educate the client

A good consulting relationship goes beyond simply providing recommendations; it helps the client better understand the underlying principles of SEO.

Use the auditing process as an opportunity to educate the client, turning it into a valuable learning experience that will pay dividends long after the audit is complete.

When presenting your findings and recommendations, always provide the “why” behind each change.

Explain the underlying SEO principles, the potential impact of implementing the changes and how these align with the client’s business goals.

This offers several benefits:

Increased buy-in: Clients who understand the reasoning behind recommendations are far more likely to be bought into the effort required to implement changes. They’ll see the value in the work, not just a list of tasks to complete.
Long-term understanding: By explaining the principles, you’re giving clients the tools to make informed decisions about their SEO strategy in the future. This knowledge empowers them to maintain and build upon your recommended improvements.
Trust building: Sharing your knowledge demonstrates your expertise and commitment to the client’s success. This transparency builds trust, which is crucial for a long-term, productive relationship.
Improved implementation: When clients understand the importance of each change, they’re more likely to implement recommendations correctly and prioritize them appropriately.
Better collaboration: An educated client can provide more meaningful input and ask more insightful questions, leading to a more collaborative and effective working relationship.
Justification for resources: When clients understand the potential impact of changes, they’re more likely to allocate the necessary resources (time, budget, personnel) to implement them.

Here’s how you can incorporate this approach into your audit presentation:

Start with the big picture: Before making specific recommendations, explain how search engines work and what users are looking for. This will provide context for your more detailed suggestions.
Use analogies: Complex SEO concepts can often be explained using relatable analogies. For example, you might compare a website’s structure to a library’s organization system.
Provide real-world examples: When possible, show examples of how similar changes have impacted other websites. This could include case studies or before-and-after scenarios.
Explain the metrics: Don’t just tell clients to track certain metrics; explain what these metrics mean and why they’re important indicators of SEO success.
Connect to business goals: Always tie your explanations back to the client’s specific business objectives. This helps them see SEO not as a technical exercise, but as a crucial part of their overall business strategy.
Encourage questions: Create an environment where clients feel comfortable asking questions. This not only helps them understand better but also gives you insight into their level of comprehension.
Provide additional resources: Offer supplementary materials (articles, videos, guides) for clients wanting to deepen their understanding of specific topics.

Remember, your goal is not just to improve the client’s website but to improve their understanding of SEO.

By educating your clients, the audit becomes more than a one-time service.

It empowers them to make better decisions about their digital presence in the long run, building a foundation for ongoing success and a stronger consulting relationship.

Dig deeper: How research on learning can help you understand advanced SEO concepts

5. Consider technical feasibility and development priorities

As SEOs, it’s crucial to recognize that not all recommendations can be easily implemented across various website environments.

SEOs with limited web development experience would greatly benefit from consulting with a developer before presenting their audit items to clients.

This helps avoid suggesting changes that are technically infeasible or impractical given the client’s current setup.

There are several compelling reasons why this step is important:

Technical limitations

Some recommended changes may not be possible due to constraints of the client’s content management system, hosting environment or other technical factors.

By presenting your audit with these limitations in mind, you’ll win significant points and establish trust with both the client and their development team.

This demonstrates your understanding of the broader technical landscape and your commitment to providing realistic, implementable solutions.

Development priorities

Web development teams often have their own roadmap and priorities. Suggesting many minor SEO changes might conflict with more critical development objectives.

Avoiding tedious and low-impact recommendations can prevent creating a common rift between developers and SEO companies. This will lead to stronger partnerships and more synergy as you work through issues together.

Resource allocation

From a developer’s perspective, there’s nothing more frustrating than being asked to implement a series of theoretical changes without a strong rationale.

By consulting with developers beforehand, you can ensure that your recommendations are technically feasible and align with the available resources.

This helps in prioritizing changes that offer the best ROI of time and effort.

Realistic expectations

By considering technical feasibility upfront, you can set more realistic expectations with your clients about what can be achieved and in what timeframe.

This transparency helps build trust and credibility, as clients appreciate a pragmatic approach that considers their specific circumstances and limitations.

Dig deeper: How SEOs can successfully collaborate with web developers

6. Have a plan to measure improvements

Many companies deliver an audit and consider their job done, leaving the implementation burden entirely on the client.

However, this overlooks a crucial step: setting up measurement tools to validate that the changes have the desired impacts.

Though measurements can be complex and not always show the full picture, significant changes typically become noticeable.

Measurement serves a dual purpose.

It helps the client understand the value of the implemented changes.
It provides feedback to improve your team’s auditing abilities in the future.

Remember that just because something is an SEO best practice doesn’t mean it will have a demonstrable impact.

Over the years, Google has learned to serve many disjointed websites effectively, and while something could be technically wrong, it may not factor into rankings in any measurable way.

So, how do you measure the impact of an audit?

This is why changes, when possible, should be associated with specific keywords or pages.

As mentioned earlier, different items have different types of impacts.

As a rule of thumb, if you can’t measure either an SEO improvement or a UX improvement, you should seriously reconsider whether it’s worth including in your audit.

7. Leverage AI to enhance your audits

Artificial intelligence has transformed technical SEO audits with advanced data analysis and text manipulation.

One of the most powerful applications of AI in SEO audits is its ability to efficiently perform bulk changes.

For instance, when your audit identifies missing or suboptimal title tags or H1 headers across numerous pages, AI can be leveraged to generate these elements en masse.

Tools like ChatGPT or GPT-4 can be fed page content and target keywords to simultaneously produce optimized title tags and headers for hundreds or even thousands of pages. This saves time and ensures consistency and adherence to SEO best practices across the site.

Also, AI-powered tools like Google’s Gemini can be used to create custom formulas and scripts for spreadsheet analysis.

This allows for more sophisticated data evaluation, enabling you to:

Automatically assess keyword density and relevance across large volumes of content.
Identify patterns in internal linking structures.
Evaluate content quality and readability scores at scale.
Analyze competitor websites for benchmarking purposes.

AI models can forecast the potential impacts of recommended changes. This feature lets you provide clients with a clearer picture of expected outcomes, which can be particularly persuasive when prioritizing implementation efforts.

While AI has numerous benefits in SEO audits, it’s crucial to maintain a balance. AI should be viewed as a powerful tool to complement, not replace, professional judgment and experience.

Always review and validate AI-generated insights before including them in your audit and be transparent with your clients about how you’re leveraging AI to enhance the audit process.

Mastering technical SEO audits: 7 strategies for meaningful improvements

Technical SEO audits have evolved with technology and client needs. The seven tips presented here distill years of experience into actionable strategies:

Focus on impact over quantity.
Provide prescriptive solutions.
Start with keyword analysis.
Educate clients.
Consider technical feasibility.
Plan to measure improvements.
Leverage AI to enhance audits.

By implementing these practices, SEOs can create more effective audits that drive tangible business results for their clients.

The goal is better search performance and real value that clients can see and measure.