Hi Kalena,

wanted to ask you a question regarding ‘website auditing. 1.Is it good to audit the website using the tools or its good to audit the website manually. Can you please suggest some good auditing tools.

Tamali

Hi Tamali,

The best tools to use for an SEO Audit largely depend on the purpose of the Audit.

If you want a quick status update to see how an optimisation campaign is going, or the CEO has asked for SEO information on the corporate website (and doesn’t want the detail), than a single SEO tool that provides an overall score might be OK.

Usually however, when undertaking an SEO Audit, you will be looking for much more than an overall rating. The aufit process you use should highlight a range of issues, and identify a number of areas where optimisation can be applied. For a proper SEO Audit, I would recommend using a variety of different tools, and a number of manual processes as well - each focused on a particular aspect of the site and optimisation strategy.

As you are probably aware, there are many many SEO Tools available (try a Google search for “SEO Tool”). Like all things in life, some of these are better than others - depending on your specific needs.

When evaluating an SEO tool, I suggest that you try it out first against a site with which you are very familiar - and see how it goes - are the results what you would expect ? Are the recommendations reasonable ?. Also, try to dig into the detail to understand what a tool actually does and how it does it - Don’t blindly accept the data and recommendations made by any tool - or you could find yourself spending lots of time and effort “optimising” your site - with little real benefit.

SEOMOz has a range of very sexy SEO Tools (some are Free , others are only available to PRO Members).

You could also take a look on Search Marketing Standard at a recent series of articles on Conducting your own SEO Audit - by Rebecca Appleton. This series of 3 articles provides a good outline on the types of areas that you should be examining as a part of an SEO Audit.

Andy Henderson
Ireckon Web Marketing

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