What is the goal of an SEO audit?

We at FirmCatalyst usually pursue two goals with an SEO audit:

  1. A current assessment of the website
  2. Planning an SEO strategy for further cooperation

Every new client of our SEO agency goes through this process. This is the only way we are able to analyse the errors and weaknesses of a website in order to work out solutions that fit perfectly. In addition, annual SEO audits are carried out for our existing customers to ensure that the website is always up to date. Thus, an SEO audit is the prerequisite for the cooperation in the coming months.

We use these tools at FirmCatalyst

Make sure that access to all Google products (“Google Analytics”, “Search Console”, “Google My Business”) is available. These tools form the basic framework of our SEO analysis, as only these provide real data on visitors or the crawlability of your website.

Google Analytics: Evaluation of your visitors & visitor numbers

Google Search Console: Technical evaluation of the crawlability of your website

Google My Business: Integrates your business into local search results

Even though all products are powerful tools, we unfortunately do not get full access to the success of our keywords or direct recommendations on what to do about them, which is in the way of ranking a website.

This is where professional SEO tools come into play, which accompany us in the evaluation & analysis of your website. Most SEO tools grant a test period, which you can easily use to subject your site to a one-time test.

Semrush: Our most important companion in our SEO agency is the marketing tool “Semrush”. Semrush as an “all-in-one tool” combines several functions within one user interface. Semrush impresses especially with the largest keyword database of all SEO tools. To name some more functions:

…Site Audit to evaluate the technical health of a website
…competitive analysis with top keywords
…easier evaluation of Analytics visitor numbers
…tools for identifying link building opportunities or analysis of existing backlinks
…Social Media Calendar & Tracking
…Brand Tracking (mentions)

Semrush’s greatest strength lies in the many possibilities of keyword research.

Costs: Free trial version / Prices start from 99,99 €/ month

ahrefs: ahrefs combines three functions as a professional SEO tool in the premium segment. With the world’s largest database of backlinks (references+links from other websites), this tool is suitable for opening up new backlink sources or analysing existing backlinks. In addition, ahrefs can be used for keyword research, but is much less powerful than its competitor Semrush. The last function is the keyword research, which is also very detailed.

Costs: Trial version 7$ for 7 days / Prices start from 99,99 €/ month

Majestic: Like ahrefs, Majestic is a tool that helps to analyse the backlink profile. Majestic helps us to decide whether a backlink of a domain could be qualitative and which domains we could do without in the course of a backlink audit.

Costs: 46,99 € / month

Whitespark: Whitespark is a tool that focuses on local search engine optimization. With Whitespark you can find new business directories as well as company directories and analyze in which you are already listed.

Costs: From 17$/ month

Screaming Frog Spider: Screaming Frog Spider turns your PC into a crawler and visits every URL of your website like a search engine. The data and collected errors are analyzed and clearly displayed to show you optimization needs, such as “too long meta descriptions, internal links, etc.”.

Costs: Free of charge up to 500 crawled URL’s, Pro: 149£ per year

Copyscape: Copyscape is there to find stolen content and text duplicates on the Internet. This is also relevant for SEO, as copied texts are “Duplicate Content” and can therefore reduce the relevance of the content of your website. Although Google has become better at avoiding negative consequences for your website in recent years, being careful does not do any harm.

Costs: 3ct per search (200 words) + 1ct for each additional 100 words
Perform an SEO audit yourself

We, at FirmCatalyst, understand that not every company or website operator is able to employ an SEO agency. Nevertheless, we would like to share our years of knowledge of the industry with the public and have therefore decided to write a guide to conducting an SEO audit.

Depending on the size of your website, an SEO audit can take hours. However, an SEO audit only takes place once. We therefore recommend that you work conscientiously and with concentration during the SEO audit.