How Does an SEO Audit Identify Hidden Problems Affecting Your Website Rankings?

The professional website you have designed, having useful content and attracting traffic might not necessarily be doing well on the web pages of search engines. In certain cases, some websites are seen performing poor, with reduced ranking and reduced traffic. There could be some invisible SEO mistakes which can only be diagnosed through a proper website audit.

SEO audit is conducted in order to check different factors of the website that need to be improved in order to get better rankings. It would prove to be very beneficial for the companies operating in competitive cities such as Mumbai. You can take help of professional SEO firm of Mumbai that would help you identify performance issues of your website and then come up with a plan of action.

What Is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is an in-depth analysis of your website to identify any issues that could be impacting your search engine optimisation. This will help you understand how well your website is performing in relation to search engines.

Rather than just a basic check, an SEO audit will look into many aspects of your website such as:

Technical SEO

1. Website speed and Core Web Vitals
2. Keyword targeting and content
3. Website structure and internal linking
4. Backlinks and authority
5. Mobile friendly
6. Duplicate content
7. On page optimisation

Local SEO

This will help you to understand the areas that are working well, areas that need improvement and what issues need prioritising.

How Will an SEO Audit Help You Find Hidden Issues?

1. Highlight Technical SEO Issues

Technical issues can stop search engines from being able to access key pages on your website. Even if you have quality content on your site, technical issues can impact how well your website appears in search results. An SEO audit will look at technical issues such as robots.txt files, XML sitemaps, canonical tags, redirects, broken links and crawl errors.

For example, you could have a key service page that contains a noindex tag by mistake which means Google will not display your page. Or you may have incorrect redirects that are sending people to irrelevant pages. A full technical audit will find these issues and will give recommendations for improvement.

2. Find Website Speed Issues

Website speed will impact how your audience interact with your website. Slow loading pages can cause frustration to your visitors and cause them to leave your website. An SEO audit will look at your site speed using tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights. It will also look at key Core Web Vitals.

This includes:

• Largest Contentful Paint – How quickly your main content loads.
• Interaction to Next Paint – How quickly your website responds to interactions.
• Cumulative Layout Shift – How much unexpected shifting there is on your page.

An audit will help you identify why your website is loading slowly such as large images, unnecessary scripts, poor coding or server issues. By fixing these issues you can improve your user experience.

3. Identify Keyword Targeting Issues

Sometimes a website will not rank due to the content not matching what people are searching for. An SEO audit will look at your keyword targeting, page relevance, search intent and content. This can help to identify if key keywords are missing, pages are targeting unrelated keywords or there are multiple pages targeting the same keyword.

For example, a digital marketing agency based in Mumbai may have different service pages for SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing. If these pages have similar content and are not targeting clear keywords then search engines may struggle to understand what they are relevant for. By completing an audit you can identify these issues and will give recommendations to improve your page content, headings, keywords and search intent.

4. Find Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate content and keyword cannibalism are common issues with websites that have multiple service pages, blogs and landing pages. Duplicate content is when the same or similar content appears on multiple URLs. Keyword cannibalism is when multiple pages are targeting the same or similar keywords. An SEO audit will look at your page content, URLs, title tags and keywords to identify these issues.

For example, you may have multiple blogs targeting different variations of the same keyword. This can cause confusion as to which page should rank. By completing an audit, you can identify if your pages need updating, consolidation or redirects to target different search intents.

5. Find Poor Internal Linking

Internal links help your audience to navigate your site and help search engines find related pages.

However, if your internal linking is not set up correctly then it can be difficult to find your key pages. Some service pages may have very few internal links and some less important pages may have too many. An SEO audit will look at your internal linking, identify orphant pages and see if your key pages have relevant internal links.

For example, a business offering website development and SEO should have meaningful internal links between relevant blogs, service pages and other resources. Improving your internal links can help your audience navigate your website, find pages and have a better website structure.

6. Identify Poor Quality or Negative Backlinks

Backlinks are still a key aspect of SEO, however not all backlinks will help your website. Links from irrelevant websites, shady link building and manipulative links can cause issues. An SEO audit will look at your backlink profile to understand the quality, relevance and pattern of backlinks. This can identify any odd increases in links, irrelevant referring domains and possible negative backlink patterns. This will help you to improve your link building strategy so you are targeting relevant publications, industry websites and quality content.

7. Identify Mobile Issues

Many customers will view your website on their smartphone. This is especially true if they are looking for local businesses and services. If your website is not mobile friendly then this can create a poor user experience. Customers will struggle to navigate your products, read your content and get in contact.

An SEO audit will look at your mobile friendly design. This includes navigation, text, buttons and page speed. This can identify issues such as overlapping content, large images, confusing navigation and unfunctional forms. By improving these issues you can give your customers a consistent experience.

8. Find On Page SEO Issues

On page SEO will help search engines to understand what your page is about and what it is relevant for. An SEO audit will look at whether your key pages have optimised title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, image alt text, URLs and relevant content This can identify if your pages do not have title tags, duplicate meta descriptions, poor heading tags or are not including relevant keywords. This will help you improve your page relevance and make your search results more informative.

9. Identify Local SEO Issues

Local SEO can be a key factor for businesses targeting customers in Mumbai. An SEO audit can look at your landing pages, local business information, structured data and business information across relevant platforms. This can identify if you are not including local keywords, incomplete Google Business Profile information or areas for improvement in your local content.

For example, if you are targeting customers in Andheri, Powai, Bandra and Thane then having well structured local pages with valuable and unique information can be beneficial. This can help improve the foundations of your local SEO strategy.

What Happens After an SEO Audit?

Identifying problems is only the first step. Businesses must also prioritise and resolve the issues uncovered during the audit.

A practical SEO action plan generally includes:

1. Prioritising critical errors: Resolve indexing problems, broken redirects, website accessibility issues, and major technical errors first.
2. Improving website performance: Optimise page speed, images, scripts, and mobile usability.
3. Updating website content: Improve outdated pages, address keyword gaps, and align content with search intent.
4. Strengthening internal links: Connect important pages and improve website navigation.
5. Reviewing backlinks: Evaluate link quality and develop a relevant link-building strategy.
6. Monitoring performance: Track organic traffic, keyword rankings, indexing status, and conversions through tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

Regular monitoring helps businesses understand whether the implemented changes are producing positive results.

Why Choose Bloom Agency for SEO Audits?

Finding underlying SEO problems requires taking a systematic approach, using appropriate SEO tools, and having an understanding of the way website components impact SEO performance. The SEO audit service offered by Bloom Agency involves checking the existing problems related to technical, content and other SEO factors of a website. Our SEO audit includes a detailed 150-point technical SEO check, site performance check, keyword analysis, on-page optimization, backlinks analysis, and recommendation development.

As a skilled SEO firm, Bloom Agency knows well about the challenges that companies have to overcome while trying to be competitive online. That’s why we pay much attention to the things that really need to be improved first. An SEO audit conducted by Bloom Agency will give you insights into the reasons of poor SEO performance of your website.

Conclusion

Sometimes, the most crucial factors that can impact website rankings in terms of SEO performance cannot be easily detected. The website loading speed, incorrect setting of the indexing process, insufficient internal linking strategy, and the lack of properly created and optimized content can negatively influence the overall SEO performance of your site. The analysis of the website SEO performance allows to find out these problems and determine the way they should be solved. By analyzing your site’s SEO performance, you will understand which aspects need to be changed to achieve better results.

Contact Bloom Agency and get a thorough analysis of your website SEO performance now!

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How does an SEO Audit help improve rankings?

An SEO audit will show any technical, content, indexing or backlink issues to help improve your website. This can improve your website by making it easier to access, more relevant and improve your overall SEO.

2. How regularly should I do an SEO Audit?

We would recommend doing a full SEO audit every 3-6 months. If you are frequently updating the site or have a large e-commerce site or have seen a large change in traffic then you may want to do this more frequently.

3. What tools are used to do an SEO Audit?

Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google PageSpeed Insights, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs and Semrush are commonly used tools to help analyse your technical issues, keywords, backlinks and traffic.

4. Can an SEO Audit help identify why traffic is declining?

Yes. An SEO Audit can help identify issues such as indexing errors, technical issues, loss of backlinks, poor content and changes in keyword performance. Further analysis may be required to identify the exact issue.

5. How long until I see results after fixing issues from the SEO Audit?

This will depend on how severe the issues are, how many pages are affected and how quickly the search engines will re-crawl and re-evaluate your site. Technical issues can show improvements quickly but improvements to rankings can take several weeks / months.

6. Should a new website have an SEO Audit?

Yes. Having an initial SEO Audit will help ensure your website has a good technical set up, is search engine friendly, responsive on mobile and has correct indexing setup before investing heavily into SEO campaigns.