SEO Audit Pricing Breakdown for 2024
In today’s fast-paced world of digital marketing, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the game. One of the most important things you can do is conduct a thorough SEO audit to evaluate your website’s performance by factoring in foundational aspects influencing organic search performance. This means taking a close look at how well your website is performing in terms of SEO to determine why it is not appearing in the top results. This procedure uses metrics to reveal issues limiting search engine rankings.
This article will walk you through SEO auditing in detail, including what it includes, the type of SEO audit you should conduct, pricing, and the various factors affecting SEO audit pricing.
If you’re interested in learning what Summit Scout has to offer when it comes to organic SEO services, learn more here!
What is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a website evaluation designed to improve overall SERP rankings and drive more traffic to your page. As a business owner, SEO audits help you understand why your content is not ranking well in Google search results. For instance, issues such as mobile friendliness may impact Google’s ranking factor since there are more searches on mobile than on personal computers.
An SEO audit will help you identify this, among other factors that may be holding your website back. To perform an SEO audit, you can use designated software tools or hire SEO consultants to do it for you and give you a report. The report guides you on the best SEO strategies you should use to achieve your desired business goals. It also prompts you to take unique measures depending on the niche you are in.
What Does an SEO Audit Include?
The process of an SEO audit is dependent on how the SEO expert decides to go about it, but here are some of the major actions involved in an SEO audit.
1. Google Database Indexing
Pages that are not indexed in Google’s database do not receive rankings. An SEO audit will help you identify these pages and other indexing issues that may be hindering your visibility. It is common to have some pages on your website that are not indexed. After the audit, you should fix these issues to optimize your website.
2. Site Crawl
A comprehensive SEO audit should run a site crawl on the website to simulate how Google sees your page. To do this, you need to use tools such as Site Audit, which have different configurations meant to aid you in reviewing your pages. These tools give you metrics and thematic reports on issues and tell you how to go about them.
3. Look for Manual Actions
Audits also help you check whether your site has received a manual action from Google Search Console. Google issues manual actions when it detects keyword stuffing, unnatural links, and various kinds of spam. Manual actions affect your site’s rankings negatively. To resolve these issues, you should address the indicated problem and submit a consideration request to Google.
4. Mobile Friendliness
We live in a world where everyone carries their mobile phone all day and relies on it for quick searches. Therefore, Google is keen to ensure ranking websites are well optimized for mobile users to give them a positive user experience. An SEO audit will help you see if your website has any issues with mobile usability, identify affected pages, and guide you on how you can resolve them.
5. Site Speed
Page speed is also a key user experience factor since if your page loads slowly, there is a high chance the user will leave the website. Your SEO audit should include assessing the list of factors affecting your site’s loading time.
6. Evaluating Internal Links
Internal links are a key part of your SEO since they help the search engine crawl through your website. They also influence the authoritativeness of the information you are providing. Audit reports will help you identify pages that you can direct more internal links to, as well as pages that will help you distribute link equity to other pages.
7. Benchmarking Competitors
SEO audits should help you see why your site is lagging and the actions you should take to compete favorably with your competitors. SEO audit tools will give you a detailed overview of the keywords they are using and their backlink data. With these, you will see opportunities you had not considered and have actionable recommendations on how you can improve your website.
Which Type of SEO Audit Should You Conduct
The specific type of audit required may vary from website to website. If you do SEO auditing often, your audit may require an evaluation of specific issues that you may have noticed, such as a drop in organic traffic. Other factors that influence the type of audit you should go for are:
- Size of the website (number of pages)
- Budget
- Level of expertise you require for your website
However, it is recommended that you perform comprehensive audits of your page. They will help identify issues that may be crippling your site’s ranking. Regardless of how often you do your audits, comprehensive SEO audits help you identify issues early on and ensure your site remains aligned with search engine best practices.
How Much Do Different Types of SEO Audits Cost
Here is a breakdown of the average cost of SEO audits based on the value provided.
1. Free SEO Audits
There are many automated tools that provide basic SEO audits. They help you identify issues that may be holding your website back. Their reports can be insightful, for starters, but for someone looking for in-depth and personalized insights, free tools are not the best option.
2. Budget SEO Audits
If you are working with a tight budget averaging from $0 to $500, freelance SEO specialists are your best option. They offer basic audit services that rely on premium automated tools. They also provide recommendations on what you should do to improve your website’s ranking.
3. Mid-Tier off-page SEO audits
In this group, you should expect to work with a budget of around $500 to $5,000. You should get an agency to cover technical SEO elements and off-page factors influencing your page’s visibility. They remove bad backlinks, find out if you have penalties, and assess the credibility of websites linking to you.
4. Premium on-page SEO Audits
This category requires a budget of about $5,000 to $30,000 and targets large sites and e-commerce platforms. Apart from the analysis, the agency provides comprehensive audits that should help you achieve your business goals. The agency employs unique strategies to align your website with your objectives, check for duplicate content, and find new content opportunities that will help you achieve the results you want.
What Factors Affect SEO Audit Pricing?
1. Reputation of the Agency
A smaller SEO agency that is getting started may have lower pricing compared to an agency with a reputable background and a huge list of successful projects they have completed. However, that does not necessarily mean that a smaller agency will not deliver since they are working on a smaller budget. They may have exceptional talent on their team and surprise you with excellent results.
2. Level of Service Required
When looking for an SEO audit, you have to ask yourself what you need from the audit. Small businesses may not need the same level of in-depth analysis as a big business running a giant website.
3. Additional Services
There are situations where the audit includes extra services, such as creating content strategies based on the recommendations. In such cases, the budget may be slightly higher to cater for the extra services.
4. Size of the Website
Website size is a key factor when determining the cost of an SEO audit. Big websites with thousands of pages will definitely need an extensive review; thus, their compensation will be slightly higher. Also, bigger websites have the potential to make more money and will be ready to part with a larger amount than smaller websites.
Build Your SEO with Summit Scout!
SEO audit reports are necessary for any website looking to continuously improve and implement search engine best practices. They are actionable, and if you prioritize the recommendations and go through with implementing them, they can have a great impact on your website’s visibility. Contact us with your business requirements for a consultation, and we’ll create a personalized and data-centric strategy for your website. Get started with our organic SEO services today!
