SEOSEO audits can be described as quality management measures. The current state of the website is evaluated and compared with search engine standards. The desired state of an SEO audit depends on the website (size and target audience) and the standards of the various search engines (Google, Bing, or Yahoo).
An SEO audit is the process of evaluating and reviewing your website to see how well it performs in search engines. It includes checking rankings, backlink profile, existing content, and anything else that could negatively impact search performance.
Typically, an SEO audit is used to review websites against checklists, to formulate recommendations for improvement based on these lists, and to ensure that they are optimized for search engines.
The duration of the analysis also depends on these two factors. Depending on the scope of the project, it can take up to six weeks and cost between €300 and €3.000. SEO audits are usually conducted by external agencies, consultants, or internal SEO staff.
Most audits begin with a discussion between the auditors and the client. Questions such as the following are clarified:
A complete analysis of a website's search engine visibility. It should help you find errors, problems, and gaps in your content that you can use in your SEO strategy.
There are two types of audits you can conduct to gain insight into a website's SEO problems: a technical audit and a web audit. SEO audit , and a Content auditYou can do this using scraper programs like Screaming Frog, many online tools, or by manually creating detailed Excel spreadsheets.
To determine the state of the technical infrastructure, the website is either crawled or indirectly checked using the search engine's webmaster tools, such as Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Crawlers, for example, detect error messages for specific URLs.
Other important technical factors include:
Is the crawler allowed to read the websites? Are individual pages blocked by robots meta tags?
Do certain URLs return an error code (4xx, 5xx, and also Soft 404) when accessed? How is the redirection handled?
Is a sitemap available for the search engine? Is it a valid XML document? Do the pages listed in the sitemap match the results of the crawler?
How quickly does the website load when accessed? How much time does it take for the first byte of data to load from the server?
Are iframes, Flash, or JavaScript used to implement content and menus?
Are dynamically generated URLs rewritten using mod_rewrite? Is there a canonical URL that serves as the primary domain? Are the pages correctly paginated using rel="next" and rel="prev"?
Pages that are not indexed are not in Google's database and therefore cannot be categorized by the search engine. The process of adding a website to Google's database is called indexing.
To check if your pages have been indexed, you can look directly in Google Search Console. Here you'll see a graphical representation of all pages according to their indexing status, including email addresses and files. Review all listed reasons to see if they apply and monitor the current status of your pages.
It's important to note that not all pages need to be indexed, only those you want to rank in search results. Therefore, it's perfectly normal for some URLs to remain unindexed.
Here are some examples of URLs that do not need to be indexed:
If you find a page that should be indexed but isn't, fix the problem by... Google's guidelines Follow the instructions. Then click the "Validate correction" button.
The easiest way to index your website is to let others link to you and then wait for the SE bots to follow those links.
If you would like to speed up this process, you can:
URLs should be short, descriptive, and therefore user-friendly. They should also contain the relevant keywords for each page and, ideally, no special characters. Dynamic URLs often use parameters. If this is the case, these URLs should be rewritten or registered in Search Console.
Some URLs generate duplicate content. This must be avoided at all costs.
The content can be checked using a text-based browser such as SEO Browser or Browseo. Each page should offer users comprehensive information, be easy to read, and contain the most important keywords for that page.
A clear structure using H1-H6 headings and additional text formatting is recommended. Keyword stuffing and grammatical errors should be avoided.
One of the most important ranking factors. The title tag usually contains relevant keywords and describes the content of the page.
Good meta descriptions can attract users to the page and increase the click-through rate. Here, too, one or two keywords should describe the content of the page.
Image, logo, and graphic descriptions should be concise. The ALT tag provides an alternative description of the image when using text editing software or similar tools, so that users who cannot see the image can still get an idea of what it is. Keywords can also be used liberally here.
Hyperlinks serve as an indicator of a website's quality. Every outgoing link should be checked for the trustworthiness of the website, the relevance of the content, and the anchor text.
Error messages and unnecessary redirects must be avoided. Ideally, most links should be set to "do follow" so that link equity can spread.
How much traffic does the website receive? How popular is it compared to its competitors? Is the website linked to by other popular websites?
Does the website contain a high density of keywords? Is there hidden text that is invisible to crawlers? Is cloaking used?
An organic link profile is one of the most important criteria for an SEO audit. How many domains link to the website in question? How many different domains are there?
Does the link profile contain nofollow links (nofollow links look unnatural)? Are the backlinks thematically relevant and of high quality? Are there any pages that contain earned media?
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