SEO Audits | What We Offer

GRO.TEAM offers a professional, actionable set of SEO audits for businesses looking to identify WHY their website isn’t ranking well enough for target keywords/queries. We provide bespoke SEO audits that are tailored to each businesses specific needs – whether you need an actionable SEO audit that highlights issues that can be fixed by developers / internal resource, or whether you need an SEO audit that provides clear and concise insights into ranking issues along with opportunities to fix.

We understand that not everyone understands the inside outs of SEO and we also understand that it’s easy to baffle people with terms like canonical tags or cannibalisation of pages – so, here at GRO.TEAM, we provide you with an SEO audit that’s at the level you require.

Our audits also include insights and explanations to the data you are looking at – making them far more usable and digestible.

Why SEO audits are so useful

• Save time
• Save money
• Find a clear path for your SEO strategy

• Have a defined list of things to fix

SEO audits are useful because they can provide a full insight to as why a website ranks for a limited number of keywords or why there is little to no visibility at all. SEO is a lot more complex than most will understand – so, getting under the hood of your website, content, links and brand is key to assessing why Google might be holding back rankings or not returning the website whatsoever.

Pages on your website will primarily be driven by content – that content will be an offering and that offering will be connected to a series of target keywords.

SEO is typically broken down into 2 very high level areas being:

On Site SEO Audits

On Site SEO involves the analysis of things that are on the website, the things that are part of the websites build and construction, this includes content, URLS, internal links, meta data, canonical tags and other technical elements.

Off Site SEO Audits

Off Site SEO involves the analysis of off site factors (Things away from the website) such as links or “backlinks”, brand references, citations and third-party platforms such as Google My Business, Trust Signals and more.

How could an SEO audit help our business?

An SEO audit could help either boost already dwindling traffic levels or it could provide insights into traffic losses, allowing the creation of an action plan / digital marketing strategy to u-turn declining traffic levels into strong traffic growth.

An SEO audit can

> Provide insights into existing visibility and how your website compares to competitors

> Give a top-level synopsis of everything that’s wrong with your website

> A list of technical recommendations to action with a useful traffic light system (priority)

> Provide website owners / webmasters / developers a list of actionable instructions to address on site / page SEO issues

> Give insights into the best approach for ongoing digital marketing

> Assess how Google and other search engines crawl your website

> How useful landing pages on your website are and if they’re being used properly

In short, an SEO Audit is a great way to identify everything that needs resolving for the purpose of onward ranking and traffic growth in Google.

Do I need a technical audit?

If your website exhibits any of the following:

> A lack of organic traffic growth or a “stagnant” level of clicks

> A lack of ranking progression, new keyword growth or user interaction

> Ranking / visibility losses either gradual or sudden

> Sustained ranking decline

> Sudden ranking decline after a Google update

Or if you are about to:

> Migrate to another domain

> Change website content management system (CMS)

Then a technical SEO audit is worth its weight in gold.

How long does an SEO audit take to complete?

An SEO audit is bespoke and shaped around the size & scope of the website – so times to complete a site audit can vary from 1 day to 7 days. Small business owner websites (less than 100 pages) will typically take anywhere from 1-3 days, whereas medium to large business websites (1000+ pages) could take up to 7 days.

When requesting an SEO audit with GRO.TEAM we’ll give you an estimated timeframe for audit completion.

What things are covered in the audit?

SEO audits are generally quite complex, mainly because there are so many elements to assess and protocols of evaluation – from technical on-site analysis which looks at the website as well as the construction of a website through to a content audit which looks at landing page content on the website – how well it is written, how relevant it is & suitability for ranking.

Below are some of the key things included during the audit process.

– Existing Visibility Audit & Domain History Scope

This looks at the websites traffic over time, history, previous work conducted including link building, content exercises and more. Our history check looks at the pages on your website to see how they have / haven’t ranked over time.

History scopes are important – we need to assess how trusted the domain is, was there any historic Google algorithmic penalty etc.

– Website Crawl & Structural Analysis

Using our proprietary seo audit tool, we crawl your website looking for duplicate content, broken links, orphaned pages, inaccessible content, crawl errors, malformed URLS, canonical tag issues, mis-configured HREFLANG tags, issues with internal and external links, broken links, navigation configuration, NON HTTPS vs HTTPS, NON WWW vs WWW and more.

Basically – we’ll find EVERYTHING there is to find in relation to the build / construction and architecture of your web pages & site collectively.

– Keyword and Landing Page Content Audit

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the audit is to assess your sites landing pages & content. Our audit process looks at how specific pages on your website perform and content relevance scores for those pages.

We look for thin content, irrelevant content, badly written content, duplicate content as well as stagnated content & last but not least, cannibalised content.

Pages on your site will be scored based on target keywords & content relevance – a vital factor for SEO in 2021 to 2022.

If your site is overly large, we may recommend a dedicated content audit.

Using our tried and tested in house process, we use Google search console to benchmark page performance by impression, click, and CTR, we then assess content performance from top to bottom (impression led).

– User Experience

Modern SEO is heavily weighted on user experience, in fact, the very foundations of organic search hinge on “good user experience” – we make sure your website goes through a thorough user experience stress test, looking at everything from page speed insights and Google’s core web vitals, through to Google analytics analysis of landing page performance, session duration, bounce and exit rates.

We’ll even go as far as pulling apart key “core web vitals factors” from first contentful paint to last contentful paint, cumulative layout shift and more!

Good user experience is paramount for good organic search performance and search traffic growth.

– Domain Authority, Backlinks and Brand

Google still places a lot of SEO emphasis on links or “backlinks” as well as other brand trust metrics. Our audits look at how authoritative the brand and domain are, the composition of the website’s link profile, the quality of backlinks and more.

Our site audit tool has been customised to fully get under the bonnet of link quality, looking at not just vanity metrics (DR – domain rating, TF – Trust Flow, DA – Domain Authority, but also evaluating true website traffic projections.

I don’t understand SEO – how can I use an SEO audit?

That’s fine – we understand not everyone is an SEO guru, in fact, most businesses / heads of marketing / website owners who reach out to us for digital marketing help have extremely limited knowledge of SEO – only what it offers in terms of traffic.

Our SEO audit process takes into account HOW you intend to use the audit. If however, you are looking for an audit and implementation – look no further. GRO.TEAM can audit your website, give you a layman’s version of the audit & can provide a solution by implementing all required fixes as well as coming up with an SEO strategy to help boost your positions up search engine results page.

Depending on your current situation – GRO.TEAM will provide guidance on having an SEO site audit and the type of audit you need – we can even provide audits with accompanying video to explain the issues without using complex terminology.

How much will an audit cost?

An SEO audit can start from just £500 and can range up to £2500 + depending on the size and complexity of your website. Small websites with more localised keyword targets will be looking at the lower end of the cost spectrum, whilst larger websites in more competitive niches are likely to require a lot more time.

Prior to conducting an SEO audit, we’ll give you a price beforehand, so you can make a decision on whether it fits within your budget.

Why can’t I just use online SEO tools to do an audit?

There’s nothing stopping you, but, nearly all automated auditing tools & SEO tools barely scratch the surface when it comes to doing a true, bespoke analysis. Most platform based SEO auditing services offer cheap, mass production audits that skip over the most critical elements – no automated tool can understand your traffic, content, scope of search and landing page – so it’s like any cheap SEO tool or online audit tool will give you very limited insights.

I had an SEO company before who did and got no results?

Every case is different, and as with anything to do with search engine optimisation – there’s generally a lot of reasons why some websites do not rank. The quality of the SEO audit and the implementation of resolution will be key factors in ranking progression (or lack thereof).

Should you engage GRO.TEAM to undertake an SEO audit on your website, we’ll assess any previous work that you’ve had as well as reviewing any audits or documentation you may have been given.

What are the best SEO audit tools to boost rankings?

There are hundreds of SEO tools out there – SEO experts and agencies alike will have their own preference for auditing tools. Here at GRO.TEAM most of our site audits are done manually using data from some key platforms including Google Search Console.

Whilst we do not actively use some of these tools – here are some known tools in the SEO industry which are a starting point for some:

> SEMRUSH

> AHREFS

> Screaming Frog SEO Spider

> WooRank

> MOZ

> SERPSTAT

> Cognitive SEO

> DeepCrawl

> Sitebulb

> Site Analyser Pro

> Advanced Web Ranking

> Raven Tools

> Surfer SEO

> SPYFU

> Page Optimizer Pro

Above is just a handful of the tools people use to conduct an SEO audit – although each SEO audit is likely to be formed from the data from multiple platforms.

What’s the benefit of an SEO audit over a Free Website Checker?

If it’s FREE it’s almost certain to be of lower value than a manual site audit. Free website checkers will often crawl your website looking for the most basic of issues. Whilst free website checkers may offer some useful quick wins to target from broken links to missing content, in reality, they’ll never provide as much insight and actionable recommendations as a professional SEO audit.

Free website checkers will often look at the basics such as :

> Broken Pages on your website (HTTP 404)

> Excessively long title tags (Truncated)

> Missing meta descriptions

> Missing alt tags

> Not putting your keyword in a title, description, URL or heading tag

> Some duplicate content checks

Are SEO Audit Checklists & Templates Any Good?

SEO audit checklists can be very useful – but, most of the time they;ll be useful for SEO experts, SEO Consultants or SEO specialists working in an agency. Most people without a good solid knowledge of search engine optimisation may struggle to use audit resources such as checklists or templates.

Resources like this can

> Save an SEO specialist time

> Help ensure greater coverage of website analysis by ensuring things aren’t missed out

> Help to produce a better quality of site audit

SEO is important – here’s why

Digital is booming – as the high street dies out and Google search booms there has never been a more important time to rank prominently in Google for your target keywords. Ultimately, the content on your site shapes how your website is likely to perform.

However, the complexities of SEO arrise when there are sometimes hundreds if not thousands of other businesses offering the same product, service or information as your website may – so, the wins are in making sure not only is your website GOOD and meets the demands of the end user, but also that Google will see how well your website facilitates your target audience.

This means a good, clean, fast website, a mobile-friendly website, low bounce rates and high engagement, and of course conversions, sales, enquiries!

If your not actively engaged in a search engine optimisation campaign then there’s a significant chance that your not getting a fair share of google search & website traffic.

Your site needs to be fast, clean, easy to use, engaging and it needs to make sure it satisfies the needs of the end-user. Good user experience is paramount – so, time to clean up those broken links, polish off that blog post, improve website content, clean up your blog and maximise SEO efforts

SEO is always changing – how will my SEO audit remain relevant?

The answer to this, it won’t always be relevant. SEO is about the here and now, adopting best practices at the time and maintaining them with a proper SEO strategy.

With Google forever rolling out subtle updates and periodically rolling out “core updates” or “algorithm updates” – it’s an uphill battle for SEO specialists to keep clients website “current” and healthy.

So what are the most important factors based on longevity?

SEO Audit Priority #1 User Experience – Your Target Audience

The principle of SEO 10 years ago is still the same to date – so keeping current with the latest SEO trends is as simple as keeping your target audience in mind – listen to your audience, understand what they want, give them a better experience.

It might sound cliche but search engines like Google want you to make sure you give your target audience the best experience possible.

What does a good experience translate to?

> Give your audience what they came for – if you offer a product give them the price, description review and prominent CTA – If it’s a service get to the point, explain, engage, provide the right information above the fold.

Get into the mind of your target audience.

> A fast loading website that is easy to use, mobile-friendly, smooth and accessible.

Your target audience will want your website to load quickly and they’ll want it to do so without it being clunky, jerky or shifting as the page loads (Cumulative Layout Shift or CLS). They’ll want to be able to access the menu easily, get to content easily, interact with your website swiftly and to find the information important to them.

Build Trust, Engage, Retain

> It’s not just your end users that tell a story – it’s their behaviour too. Google RankBrain is one part of their core algorithm that looks at user interaction.

Your website visitors behaviour WILL impact on how your website ranks. If Google can see visitors consistently bouncing off your website and transacting elsewhere – that’s not a good sign.

Building trust, engaging your website visitors and retaining them tells Google indirectly that your website and offering are of value – this is critical for organic search both now and for the future.

Search traffic tells a story about your site, pages on your site, your content and how valuable your offering genuinely is.

SEO Audit Priority #2 Website Performance & Architecture

Nearly every seo site audit will include the classic snapshot of Google Page Speed Insights – and the logic is there, slow websites aren’t great for anyone! Not only will it increase your website bounce rate, it’ll also reduce returning visitors.

Our proprietary seo audit tool will look at aggregated site speed and page speed performance.

Key performance factors to consider during any SEO audit:

> How fast do pages on your site load on desktop and mobile devices?

> How big are media files on your website and are they in the right format? JPG / PNG / WEBP?

> Does your website load sequentially in such a way that it allows the user to interact with your website almost instantaneously?

> Is your website speeding up or slowing down over time?

Mobile First Indexing (Common in any SEO audit)

From an architecture point of view – here is where a site audit can get more complex. Architecture typically refers to a websites build. This is important because of “Mobile First Indexing” or just Mobile Indexing.

Google introduced Mobile First Indexing for searches / niches where a majority of users are on mobile devices – this places an emphasis on website performance, mobile-friendliness, tap targets, responsive rendering FIRST instead of Desktop.!

The best SEO audits will typically include snapshots of mobile friendly test results – you can test this now by checking out Google’s Mobile Friendly Testing Tool.

GRO.TEAM goes one step further – we use Think With Google Test My Site to add performance data to your site audit – this is an aggregated view of mobile performance (across all pages in the domain).

This is important for any site audit as ignoring it will likely have a negative impact on your search traffic once Google fully adopts core web vitals (speed & performance) into its core algorithm.

Key considerations for a mobile speed audit

> Is your website mobile friendly?

> Can Googlebot fetch all the required resources to render your page / load your site?

> Is mobile first indexing enabled for your site?

> How does your website perform on 3G Connections / 4G Connections?

> How does your site load and do users have to wait before they can interact with a page (time to interactive)

> Is there an alternate version of your site for mobile from desktop?

SEO Audit Priority #3 Content

Content – as the old adage goes, content is king. At GRO.TEAM we’re avid content produces & we employ in-house talent to produce content that ranks & quickly acquires keyword rankings in the search results.

So from an SEO audit process point of view – content is in the top 3 when it comes to SEO priorities.

With over 10 billion sites in Google’s index – issues such as duplicate content, thin content, poorly written content and stagnant content are rife, in fact, nearly EVERY single website will have pages internally that are weak and generate 0 clicks and low impressions, there will undoubtedly be old blog posts jammed full of old outdated content – this is where content audits come in.

Most site audit tools are unable to fully audit content to the point of intent, readability and current value.

Most professional SEO audits will incorporate some manual content audits – but, that’s very much dependent on where you get your SEO audit from.

At GRO.TEAM, we conduct thorough site audits that address thin content, duplicate content, blog post content + more – because quite simply, websites with large portions of old, stale, redundant, non performing content will suffer from a lack of SEO results even with more SEO efforts.

– Index Bloat

Index bloat content by definition is content that forms part of a website but contributes no real value. Index bloat refers to a large portion of a site index in Google where pages generate 0 clicks from organic traffic and have very few impressions – indicating poor keyword coverage, low to zero traffic, supplemental or “omitted results” in Google.

Index bloat can be incredibly damaging for any website suffering from it. Google doesn’t like large content driven websites where large portions of pages in the site contain content that is of no use, is not relevant, is outdated or stale.

In fact, in many instances culling old non performing content as part of an actionable recommendation from a site audit is a great way to increase organic search performance & increase search traffic.

Before we propose any culling of content, we make sure your website and business is unlikely to be impacted.

Our technical seo audit process involves a full analysis of “LOW” or “NON PERFORMANCE PAGES” – during the on site audit process, we’ll highlight all NON performance pages (typically in a Google Sheet).

– Duplicate Content

This is exactly what it says on the tin – duplicate content is effectively the same “or very similar” content that exists on more than 1 page of your website. Duplicate content can be in the form of a service page, blog post or even blog tags.

Duplicate content is detrimental for SEO and organic search results – so it’s best for it to be avoided completely.

In instances where duplicate content cannot be helped, canonical tags can be a solution.

GRO.TEAM will make sure clear examples of duplicate content are shown as well as actionable points to follow during step 1 of implementation.

We use SEO tools such as

> Copyscape

> SiteLiner

– Badly Written Content

The term badly written content is extremely broad – most badly written content is usually defined as:

> Content that is stuffed full of keywords and doesn’t make sense

> Content that does not fit the criteria for the target keywords

> Content that is not formatted correctly, presented in one big slab or is full of grammatical issues

> Content that isn’t clear, has no flow and is not engaging

> Content that is spun, is thin, or is ripped off another persons website

Google and search engines alike can recognise and identify patterns when it comes to badly written content.

The Benefits of Using Our SEO Audit Service?

Let’s cut to the chase – no free SEO audit tool or “best SEO audit tool” is going to give you a bespoke, manually constructed audit that fits ALL the criteria for your target keywords. Every niche, every keyword has independent ranking factors when it comes to Google search – trying to apply a template to what is clearly a bespoke process will mean that automated audits just don’t cut the mustard.

The benefits of using GRO.TEAM for your site audit –

> You get a manually constructed site audit from SEO experts with more than 10 years experience EACH

> Unlike an SEO Tool, we construct an audit to prioritise analysis and fixes with a simple to use “traffic light” system highlighting urgency in issues and resolution using the green, yellow and red system.

> We’re fast – enquire about an audit and we’ll have one with you in a matter of days

> 95% of our audits generate search traffic growth once actioned within 3 months

> Unprecedented insights into your website, URL, links, page quality, bounce rate, search results features and competitor website traffic

> Issues and analysis with properly constructed guidance written in a way that YOU can understand

> Video annotations and evaluations of your site with realtime support

> Clear and concise recommendations on SEO issues that need fixing

> Supportive onward SEO consultancy if required

> Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 approach for your site

> Feedback calls

> Google compliant recommendations (white hat)

What GRO.TEAM does NOT offer

> We do not offer a cheap SEO audit – all of our audits are high quality and designed to generate an ROI

> SEO Audit Checklist 2021

> Free SEO Audits

> Site audits that promote underhanded techniques for search engines

If I Implement The Site Audit Will My Rankings Go Up?

As long as the audit is followed correctly and the implementation is done correctly your website WILL likely increase in ranking across search engines like Google and Bing. We’ve helped hundreds of businesses in London and across the UK to implement SEO recommendations to leverage better search results for their target keywords.

Better search performance = more traffic.

There are some recommendations however that may take longer than others and maybe more time-sensitive – links form a key part of most SEO strategies, so, if your website has a weak links profile and poor domain authority – then, you’ll need to work on that amongst other things i.e. bounce rate.

I’m interested in having my site analysed – how do I get started and what’s the process?

Step 1 – fill out our enquiry form or call us

Step 2 – We’ll take down some details

Step 3 – We’ll provide a cost estimate / price quote for a site audit

Step 4 – We request access to Google Analytics and Google Search Console

Step 5 – We begin the audit

Step 6 – We’ll send you a completed site audit

Step 7 – A call can be arranged to run through the site audit to discuss findings, facts and SEO analysis