What will I get if I order an SEO audit?

There are things we regret...

What are you talking about?

And I mean that I don’t sell air or pills to enlarge body parts...

It would probably be easier, but that's not certain.

The most difficult question I get most often is:

And every time I try to explain as tactfully as possible that a site audit does not set itself the task of increasing demand, sales, or profits. Because he simply cannot do it.

Physically he can't.

I understand the doubts of customers, because they will first have to pay for the audit services themselves, and then spend an even larger amount on implementing the recommendations.

As a result, sometimes very substantial investments are obtained, which the customer wants not only to protect, but also to quickly “recapture”.

But who should bat? Who will receive the money?

Of course, a high-quality audit and subsequent site optimization can significantly affect the quantitative level of sales, but this is an indirect effect that cannot be guaranteed in specific monetary terms per unit of time.

An SEO website audit is very similar to diagnosing a car or any other complex device.

The task of the specialist performing this procedure is to identify the problem. Answer the question why the “machine” does not work as it should.

Guarantees are usually given not by a diagnostic specialist, but by a specialist who will actually fix the car, but he is also ready to vouch only for the quality of his work.

And that’s not how things work in life. It’s not the website that makes sales, it’s the people!

If the manager handling calls/applications is taken from the street “without a week” and has not undergone special training (a young fighter’s course):

• does not have active sales and negotiation skills;
• does not know how to work with objections and does not know how to listen to clients;
• does not know the assortment sold by the company and cannot present the product, which means he does not understand what, to whom and when to offer.

In this case, sales will not improve even after three dozen of the best audits.

What is the main problem with most website audits?

The root of all problems is that the client does not understand the issue. On the one hand, he shouldn’t, but on the other hand... Well, how can you set a task and pay money for it without understanding the issue at all?

I can’t imagine a situation where a customer comes, for example, to a hairdresser and says: “Well, you yourself know how to cut my hair. Come on, cut your hair."

So it turns out that almost 100% of website audits are carried out according to a primitive scheme:

• We take a list of standard recommendations on usability, design, content, and website engines.
• We check the site’s compliance with each parameter. Let's put everything in a table.
• We add to all this beautiful graphs + expert phrases like: we recommend... To increase efficiency it is necessary... and so on and so forth.

I am not saying that such control checks are not necessary. Not at all, they are needed. But let's be honest with ourselves! This is something that must be done - the “minimum necessary” program!

And now the bitter truth

Selling website audit services (no matter SEO, marketing or usability design) is nothing more than a gimmick today. Which catches inexperienced clients who choose primarily based on budget.

The company with which the customer decides to cooperate in terms of audit must not just do an audit, it must help customers solve problems.

Otherwise, everything happens as in that old joke about a gynecologist:

What do clients who order an audit from me get, and what happens next?

As a rule, the output is a Word file of 3-50 pages, which contains a list of those things that do not work as they should, with clear examples and explanations of what exactly is crooked and how exactly it should work.

Now there is only one problem left - to understand what to do with all this. Very often site owners do nothing about this.

Before ordering a site audit, customers should understand that it is not enough to have a document with a list of errors. These errors need to be fixed. A site audit is not a goal, but only a starting point in long-term work to improve your site.

It’s sad to admit, but according to my observations, only 30% of those who ordered an audit implement all the recommendations, another 70% begin to carry out the work, but do not do everything.

An important point is the quality of implementation of the recommendations contained in the audit.

Very often, customers, in order to save on error correction, hire contractors to fix the site themselves. And, trusting “their” programmers, they expect that everything will be better after bugs are corrected. But here again two factors appear:

• professionalism;
• responsibility.

Of course, if you are lucky and the selected performers turn out to be experienced and skillful, then the effect of eliminating the problems identified during the audit will be guaranteed. But if the correction (improvement) of the site based on the audit results is carried out by people with insufficient experience and low qualifications, then no matter how high-quality the audit is, no sense will come of it, and the money will be wasted.

The secret about audits that everyone is silent about.

Any site audit is aimed at identifying existing hidden or obvious problems, which, for example:

• make it difficult for visitors to navigate the site;
• prevent the site from ranking in search engines.

I’ll tell you a secret that no sane website or audit sales manager will ever tell:

• If your site has problems with indexing or does not rise above the 30th position in search engines, then the problem is certainly not that its “description” or “Title” are poorly written. The problem typically lies well beyond “standard SEO or usability guidelines.” There are millions of websites on the RuNet, and most of them are made on the most modern engines, have excellent design and comply with all conceivable and inconceivable SEO recommendations. But only a few of them occupy good positions.
• the reasons for this, as a rule, are so unobvious that you will never find them by simply going through the “check list” from the search engine help.

So it turns out that, by and large, many customers do not need an SEO audit of the site. And the examination. And it is expertise that requires practical knowledge and experience.

In general, I don’t understand how to live with this anymore...

If you have questions or need more information, you can write to the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" with any question at email info@seo.computer.

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