There are a LOT of resources available to help clients diagnose their sites. At the end of the day, the ultimate purpose of an audit should be to show a site what is working well and what needs improvement.
There are quite a few free options when it comes to an audit. The problem is Google looks at SO many different factors when trying to determine where to rank a site that its practically impossible to find any one resources that could/would look at all of them. For this reason, most audits tend to specialize in a niche area of rank factors.
Google has some fantastic free tools, e.g., this is a mobile friendly test –
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
And this link tests the speed of a page (both desktop and mobile) –
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Google offers even more insights via their Search Console which needs to be set up.
A few companies offer a “freemium” type audit in the hopes to upsell clients but still provide incredibly valuable insights –
While other companies focus on trying to best determine how Google looks at the backlinks to a website (not an easy task) like Moz and Ahref –
https://moz.com/free-seo-tools
There are a lot of options for whatever you want to audit free and paid.
To be honest, the real challenge isn’t running audits. The real challenge is understanding audits and finding ways to fix the issues that are diagnosed. For example, this is an audit from Google’s pageload speed test with opportunities to improve –
I consider myself fairly technically savvy but wouldn’t have the slightest idea on where to begin to fix/address the issues here. Most business owners would need to hire a developer to fix these issues and anytime cost is involved we then ask ourselves if the benefit justifies the expense.
Just because an audit says this is a problem it doesn’t always mean you should devote a ton of time/effort/resources to fixing it if it won’t actually generate a positive return on that investment.
I have found that the best audits provide lots of information but there are typically only a handful of items really matter. The audits we run can be 17 pages long but there are really only 2 pages that truly have a meaningful impact.
For an SEO audit I would specifically be looking at:
1). What keywords have solid search volume and intent, and where do I currently rank for those terms and
2). Who is at the top of the searches for those keywords and how realistic is it for me to catch them
Once I have a solid grasp on the opportunity then I can work my way down the more technical list and start addressing those.
We offer a complimentary audit that focuses on both the technical and the critical information you need to make informed decisions. Contact us for your audit.