8 Recurring Processes in SEO Audit Which Can Be Automated or Simplified With Proper Software

Digital marketing is at the pinnacle of historical magnitude at this point in time, but it’s possible that we’re only seeing the beginning. Businesses and brands have benefitted massively from leveraging online channels to gain traffic, build a lead base, and win and retain customers. But it’s safe to say that not everyone is winning online. The key is learning what strategies work and avoiding those that don’t. In terms of what works, search engine optimization still remains an evergreen part of that list.

What Is an SEO Audit?

Today, over 93% of all online traffic starts with a search engine. So it’s natural that businesses want to be visible there. That’s what search engine optimization or SEO aims to do — to put a website or link on the first page of certain search queries that people use often.

Applying SEO to your business is a tedious process, but one that will bring more traffic to your website, landing page, blog article, social media channel, video, or any piece of content that you want people to see. All of this starts with an SEO audit — the process of planning, strategizing and determining what course of action you need to take to effectively apply search engine optimization elements to your site. Generally, that involves:

• Planning out what keywords you want to rank for
• Checking your competition’s performance
• Determining how and where you want to get more website backlinks
• Checking your website’s performance, such as speed
• And so on

Why Perform SEO Audits?

Most companies and marketing teams today just jump straight into SEO activities without first performing an audit. And while that’s not illegal, it’s not the best strategy. It’s highly possible to generate sales through SEO, but only when you’re getting the right kind of traffic. Hitting that goal involves maximizing your search intent — meaning you have to be sure that people who do visit your website have an intention of checking your brand and actually interacting or opting in.

For instance, if a person searches for ‘best coffee in Alabama’, there’s a better chance that people who visit the sites that pop up in the search will visit coffee shops in that search than in a keyword like ‘why coffee in Alabama is the best.’ There are many other factors that play into your SEO implementation, like keyword difficulty and so on. All of these things a business or marketer can take into consideration when performing SEO audits.

SEO Audits You Can Automate

Thankfully, there are now many SEO audit tools available such as Netpeak Spider to help automate the audit and strategizing process. Here are some of the processes you can automate for better results and faster turnover times.

Site scraping

Site scraping is the process of going through a website to pick up data that’s relevant to you — team members, emails, dates, blog content, and so on. In the context of SEO, this is helpful because site scraping helps you take a snapshot of the pieces within other high-ranking websites that make them so special in the eyes of Google. Automating this process helps you go through more competing websites and make strategies based on larger sample sizes. Netpeak Spider has a built-in website scraper that allows users to scrape markups, hreflangs, phone numbers, and more.

We have prepared a detailed scraping guide with real examples so you can start gleaning more right now. Scraping is a useful feature for solving a variety of tasks and saving your time, don't underrate it 😉

Data segmentation

Data segmentation is taking large pieces or groups of data and then arranging them in a way where you can make more sense of the content. The process involves taking chosen parameters and then allowing a system to crunch the data automatically. This automation process can help SEO agents and consultants save several hours of manual data crunching time.

One process where data segmentation comes in handy is when determining what long-tail keywords to use. Through automated data segmentation, you can scrape the entire web for websites that rank for a certain keyword and tell you how easy it will be to rank for that keyword.

With Netpeak Spider, you can choose certain data segment in the program, so you can prioritize insights and take a deep dive into the data in segments.

Benchmark your rankings

There are SEO tools today that can help optimize benchmarking. These tools integrate with your website or websites and then regularly bump them off with Google’s searches to determine what rank your page holds for a certain keyword, how much traffic comes in, and so on.

These ranking dashboards help you determine whether you should make changes to your content to optimize it more. For instance, you can try changing your headlines, given that 36% of SEO experts believe that the headline or title is the most important part of your SEO strategy.

Competitor Analysis

Over the short to midterm, SEO is really a competition. After all, you have thousands to millions of other websites trying to rank on certain keywords that you intend to rank for as well. So with automated competitor analysis, you now have a better screenshot of what your competition is doing and applying that into your strategy.

One way that you can do this is by using an SEO analyzer to determine what headlines, keywords, and links your competitors have and trying to insert those into your blog, landing page, or content too. With automated competitor analysis, your system can go through thousands of your competitor websites and give you a summary of these data, so you can adjust your strategy accordingly when performing an SEO audit. You can save time in doing competitor analysis with a tool like Netpeak Spider.

Duplicate Content or Site

In the same way, competitor analysis tools can scan through your competitor’s content and present a summary to you, it can duplicate their content too if you want to study them a little more. The same can be done for your other websites or pages if you want to pattern new or under revision pages to those sites that perform best.

Indexed URLs

An indexed URL is a link to a page that a search engine’s crawlers have deemed to be a good candidate as a rankable site. For a blog or website with hundreds of pages, automating this process can help as you can now determine which pages you should put the most time, energy, and attention on.

You can also check what other URLs by other sites get indexed and build backlinks with those sites by reaching out to them and asking them to add a link back to your site.

Site Speed Analysis

Site speed plays a crucial role in search engine optimization. Search engines and people generally like websites that load faster. Many things could affect your site’s speed, such as the codes, plugins, images, or other content you use on it. By automating your site speed analysis, you’ll be able to find out what’s slowing down your website and address it accordingly by optimizing images, fixing up the code, and so on.

Indexation Issues

The last SEO audit activity you can automate is indexation issue checking and reporting. Normally, an SEO team or agent would embed SEO audit tools that will take care of this for you. That process looks something like this: A tool will check your website regularly for indexing issues such as broken links, slow pages, and so on. It will then tell you those issues, so you can fix them.

Some tools perform indexation issues as often as once a week, so you can address those issues before search engines penalize your website.

What To Do After Site Audits?

Once you’ve finished your site audit, it’s time to start acting on those results and dates. Get your team together to build new content and optimize old content that will help your page or site rank better on search engines. You can also start adding sales tools and sections to high-performing pages, so you can turn leads into customers. Some sales tools you can use include pop-ups, lead magnets, CRM tools, chatbots, and so on. Here’s a list of some of the best sales tools for businesses you can use to turn your SEO traffic into leads and customers.

Google Rules the Marketing World

When it comes to choosing what search engine you should rank for, Google should definitely be a part of that list. Google accounts for 70% of search traffic. That said, Google still dominates the search world and will most likely continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

Conclusion

Traditionally, SEO audits are too technical and could take a long time to finish — sometimes it could take days or even weeks. With today’s tools, you can speed up the process to develop actionable plans to outperform your competitors, build great customer experiences and identify areas to improve.