What can I expect from one of your site audits?
When I perform a strategic site audit, I’m going to look at the full range of factors that I know to be an aspect of SEO. From there, I will determine which issues are most important and which are “shiny object” distractions.
At that point, I’ll provide you a document that describes those important issues, along with examples from your own site. Those will be accompanied by an explanation as to why they’re important, and then a step-by-step list of tasks necessary to correct those problems.
Read more about the audit process and what you can expect from it here.
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Do you examine every page we have and every link pointing to our site?
No – a strategic audit is not designed to be intensively granular. Instead, the way I do my work is to look at a large enough sampling of data, pages, content, links, linking domains and social posts to identify patterns. When enough of a sampling is examined, unnatural patterns readily emerge when you know what to look for.
This way, I can devote my time to the full range of possible issues you need to address. Besides. Do you really want to pay me hundreds of dollars an hour to examine every single page H1 headline tag on your site? No – you really don’t.
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Does an SEO audit include actually making the changes you think are needed?
My audits are designed to properly identify all of the most important issues your site faces that need to be addressed. They don’t actually include implementing the recommended tasks I believe are vital to correcting problems.
Instead, they become the road map to your one-time and ongoing work focus.
Without an audit, you, your team or an outside agency would be throwing darts at a wall, blindfolded and hoping something hits the target of being helpful / valuable to your success.
And in all honesty, you shouldn’t have to pay my hourly rate for the ongoing work. Many other very skilled SEO professionals are quite capable of doing that work at a fraction of what I charge for my time.
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How much is an audit going to cost us?
That depends on how much you have budgeted. No – actually that’s not true. I hate it when I go to a car dealer and ask “how much is that car? and they reply “How much can you afford?”
The way I’ve priced my services is based on a fixed flat rate fee depending almost exclusively on the size of your site. The only exception to my standard audit pricing is where your unique situation might require more extensive efforts due to unusual circumstances.
For example, if you have a main site, and you also maintain five, twenty or even fifty other subdomains or sites and they all link to each other, that will possibly require my needing to dig deep into those relationships because that can have a direct impact on how search engines score your main site’s quality, uniqueness and trust signals.
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Do we have to do all the work or can you recommend someone to do it for us?
It depends on whether you, your team or existing vendors have the proper foundational level of skill and experience to be able to read my site audit action plan and then implement those recommendations at a high enough level of quality and accuracy for your site and online brand to achieve sustainability in the market.
Quite often many clients are able to have their existing team to the lions share of the work, while having me provide occasional oversight and guidance. This is why I offer ongoing SEO consulting services on a limited basis to a select few clients who need such services.
Alternately, if you do need an outside consultant or agency to take on all or part of the implementation tasking, I suggest you check out any of the highly skilled vendors I have previously referred clients to. They offer a wide range of SEO and related support services including social media management, brand building PR, technical speed improvement services and beyond.
Vendor Recommendation Note:
If you DO choose to want to work with an outside vendor – whether that might be someone on my preferred vendors list or otherwise, I absolutely recommend you read my “vendor guidelines” page and then incorporate any or all of those guidelines appropriate to that work into any contract they might want you to sign.
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How much will it cost to do the work the audit says we need to have done?
Without first performing an audit its impossible to know what work needs to be done, in what sequence and at what pace. Every site is unique, and every situation is different.
If technical issues are preventing your site from being optimized for SEO, there will likely be anywhere from a few to many hours of programming, design, and possibly even server administrative tasking necessary.
If topical focus issues exist and described in one of my site audits, sustainable SEO would require a vast range of possible tasks required.
These can range from one-time content reorganization or reduction of diluting signals, to ongoing efforts involving new content creation on-site or likely even off-site.
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Once we have done the work you recommend, are we done?
In all but a very few scenarios, once you’ve taken action on all of the recommendations I provide in a strategic site audit, you will almost assuredly need to perform ongoing tasks. It’s about consistently communicating value, uniqueness, relevance, and authority in your specific market.
If you stop working at any point, your competitors aren’t going to. They’re going to continue to get the message out regarding their products or services. So if you don’t remain “in the mix”, any gains you may achieve would eventually erode.