Signs it is time to revisit SEO audits
This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. A few signals that SEO audits is due some attention.
Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.
The signals
- Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
- The answer depends on who you ask
- An audit is only useful if it ends in a prioritised list
- Fix crawlability before chasing keywords
What good looks like
Most sites have a handful of issues doing most of the damage. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.
What this looks like day to day
Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Three things worth confirming about SEO audits before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Fix crawlability before chasing keywords — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.