When it comes to SEO, clients are all ears when we talk about traffic and conversions, their eyes are peeled when we show them website design modifications, and they smile when we pitch a new marketing strategy. However, the moment we start talking about SEO audits, their eyes start glazing over.
Clients don’t say it, but we know it: enterprise website SEO audit reports are boring. To some extent, we understand. Endlessly sifting through data, crunching numbers, and analyzing website elements aren’t the most glamorous tasks.
The impact of a thorough enterprise website SEO audit report, though, is nothing short of remarkable, and that’s what truly matters. This post is all about how to do enterprise SEO audits, so let’s get started with the basics!
What are enterprise SEO audits?
An enterprise SEO audit is a comprehensive review of a website’s search engine optimization performance conducted by an SEO professional. It’s aimed at identifying areas of improvement and providing recommendations for optimizing the website’s visibility and ranking in the SERPs.
Why enterprise grade SEO audits are important for businesses
Enterprise website SEO audit reports are important because they provide insights into a website’s performance, which helps businesses identify areas of improvement and develop strategies to optimize their website’s visibility and rankings.
SEO audits also help set tangible baselines for metrics against which future performance can be measured. After an audit, enterprises can project business needs and allocate resources accordingly.
For example, if an SEO audit reveals a dearth of website content, then you’ll know your business needs to invest in content creation, such as hiring writers and editors. Or maybe an audit uncovers that your website needs technical fixes, which means you need developers.
An SEO audit reveals what your website needs and you can plan accordingly.
How often should an enterprise SEO audit be conducted?
How often an enterprise SEO audit is conducted depends on whether you take a reactive or proactive approach.
If you’re more of a “why fix what isn’t broken” kind of person, you’ll be conducting an SEO audit when there’s a clear sign that something’s wrong: your traffic tanks, pages disappear from the SERPs, etc. This is a reactive approach.
We like the proactive approach, so we recommend an SEO audit anytime there is or will be a change, ensuring you can adjust immediately without any lag. Ideally, you’ll want an audit:
- When you start SEO for a new website.
- When there’s been a Google update.
- If you’ve made technical changes or redesigned your website.
- When implementing a new strategy.
What are the best enterprise website SEO audit tools?
There are many great enterprise website SEO audit tools out there you can use. Personally, we use the Ahrefs site audit tool and Screaming Frog in conjunction with Google Search Console (GSC) data. No matter the tool, remember that it’s not the arrow, it’s the archer.
At RANQ, we believe that the efficacy of SEO audits lies in the skills and expertise of those conducting them. We trust the data we get from our tools, but we ultimately rely on our SEO experts’ discerning eye for detail and their ability to parse meaningful, relevant insights from complex data. That’s what sets our enterprise SEO audits apart!
How to do enterprise SEO audits
An enterprise SEO audit involves a lot of moving parts, so how do you decide what to look at first? We’ll pull an analogy our technical SEO lead uses in his process of beginning SEO on a new website.
A website is like a house. We build the foundation first with technical SEO, then comes the content, and then the off-page SEO elements (like backlinks). We recommend auditing them in the same order.
Let’s start going step-by-step!
Technical SEO
There are several SEO audit factors to consider when auditing for technical problems for an enterprise grade website. Everything we check for at this stage is to ensure proper website indexing, improve user experience, and boost search engine visibility.
Here are some technical SEO considerations to look at:
XML Sitemap and Page Inclusion:
Because enterprise websites have many pages, you’ll want to prevent indexing issues by submitting an accurate XML sitemap. A sitemap informs Google of your website’s hierarchy, prioritizes the crawling and indexing of the most important pages, and notifies Google of new content or product pages.
- When building a sitemap, follow Google’s sitemap best practices. Check for any deliberate page exclusions or intentional removal of specific pages from the XML sitemap; confirm that the exclusions align with your SEO strategy and intentions.
- When building a sitemap, follow Google’s sitemap best practices. Check for any deliberate page exclusions or intentional removal of specific pages from the XML sitemap; confirm that the exclusions align with your SEO strategy and intentions.
Maximizing Crawl Budget:
Google’s bots have limited bandwidth. You want to ensure that they crawl the maximum number of pages on your website within the allocated time, so consider optimizing your crawl budget.
Proper Setup of Schema Markup:
Leveraging schema markup can be a powerful optimization strategy for enterprise websites. Confirm that any existing schema on your pages is validated and eligible for rich results. Google’s rich result testing tool can help a lot with this.
Broken Links and Redirects:
Over time, links will break or become outdated, negatively impacting your website’s perceived maintenance level by search engines. It’s essential to regularly check and update both internal and external links to ensure they lead to live pages.
- Learn more about broken links and redirects in our guide on common technical SEO issues.
Canonical Tagging:
Implement canonical tags to prevent duplicate content issues.
HREFLANG Tagging:
Optimizing multilingual enterprise websites with hreflang tags ensures that the appropriate language content is presented to relevant searchers.
Content
Website content is a lot to tackle and performs many functions, so we’re not going to check everything in this step. In other words, we’re not trying to see whether website content can stack up against the best—that falls in the purview of content optimization.
The scope of this step in our SEO audit for enterprises is to ensure that the content meets Google’s quality content guidelines. The most common problems we see here are keyword-related issues and thin website content.
Here are things to check for in your website content:
Keyword Targeting:
The most effective keywords are those that attract qualified leads to your website. Confirm that your keywords align with your industry, company, or product search queries. Learn more about effective keyword research.
Keyword Usage:
Every piece of content has to strike the right balance in keyword integration. Keyword stuffing is a sin! Check whether the target keywords are integrated naturally within the page copy.
URL Structure:
Check if the URLs prioritize brevity, clarity, and relevance. Create URLs that reflect the page content without being too long. URLs should always incorporate the target keyword.
Title Tags:
Ensure that title tags are unique, concise, and summarize page content accurately. Limit title tags to fewer than 60 characters and incorporate target keywords within them.
Meta Description Tags:
Limit meta descriptions to no more than 160 characters and incorporate target keywords within them.
Headings:
Ensure each page includes an H1 tag describing the main topic and utilize additional header tags (H2, H3, etc.) for content hierarchy. Check to see that keyword inclusion is balanced for both optimization and readability.
These are only the minimum standards of content you want to meet, but these are the components to evaluate in your audit.
Backlinks
By auditing technical SEO elements and your website content, you’ve ensured that your on-page SEO elements are geared in the right direction. Your foundation is solid, and your walls are sturdy. It’s time to evaluate the off-page elements by checking your website’s backlink profile. Backlinks are a ranking factor in enterprise website SEO, too, so it’s crucial to be thorough.
Check for the following:
Backlink Comparison:
Check how your website compares against your competitors in terms of backlinks. You can use tools like Ahrefs to analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles. If there’s a significant gap in backlinks, dedicate effort to boosting your backlink profile. Here are the factors that make a good backlink.
Toxic Backlink Evaluation:
It’s essential to weed out any toxic backlinks: links from low-quality or spammy websites that can harm your site’s reputation and rankings. Disavow any toxic backlinks to your enterprise site, such as paid links, manipulative guest posts, or private blog network links.
Anchor Text Distribution:
Check the diversity of your anchor text distribution. Highly optimized anchor text may indicate questionable link-building practices, such as buying links or over-optimized guest posts. The key is to have a natural anchor text profile. Also, ensure that the anchor texts are relevant and make sense contextually.
Page experience
Page experience determines whether your enterprise website meets Google’s Core Web Vitals standards—you can access these metrics through your Google Search Console account. This’ll provide you with valuable insights into areas such as page loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
The above example is our website’s metrics from PageSpeed Insights. These figures can give you great insight into what you need to do better.
Other things to evaluate are:
Protocol Security:
HTTPS is a minor ranking factor, but prioritizing security will enhance user trust. Ensure all your web pages utilize HTTPS protocols for a secure browsing experience.
Mobile Responsiveness and Performance:
Most searches occur on mobile devices, and Google uses mobile-first indexing. Confirm that your enterprise website adheres to Google’s mobile’s-first indexing best practices.
Avoid common mobile mistakes:
Avoid unresponsive designs, intrusive pop-ups, poor UI/UX elements, and unplayable/missing content.
With that, you’ve wrapped the “core” SEO audit recommended for all websites, but we also recommend an additional sub-audit for larger, more elaborate websites competing in specific niches.
Industry standards
If you operate a YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) website, it has to adhere to higher standards. YMYL refers to a category of websites that provide information or services that can significantly impact a person’s health, finances, safety, or overall well-being.
YMYL websites are held to higher standards due to the potential impact their content can have on individuals’ lives. Ensure that your website meets the expectations of users and search engines by prioritizing Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (often referred to as E-E-A-T).
Ensure that the content is:
- Written or reviewed by subject matter experts with first-hand experience.
- Cites reliable sources and displays credentials/qualifications of authors.
- Implements robust security measures to protect user information.
Enterprise website SEO audits are best done by experts
With that, we’ve covered all the critical aspects of conducting an enterprise website SEO audit. If you think that’s a lot to cover, you can always leave it to the SEO experts at Ranq!
Our seasoned SEO professionals seamlessly blend cutting-edge tools with their wealth of experience to deliver exceptional, custom, industry-specific audits that elevate your digital presence. Get in touch with Ranq for tailored enterprise SEO audits today!