SEO Audit Services: What a Proper SEO Audit Covers

An SEO audit answers one question: what is stopping this site from ranking, and what should be fixed first? A good audit ends with a short list of problems ranked by how much they matter, not a 90-page export from a tool. These are the eight areas we check.

1. Can search engines crawl and index the site?

Nothing else matters if Google cannot see the pages. We check robots.txt, the XML sitemap, canonical tags, accidental "noindex" tags, redirect chains, broken links and 404 pages. On sites built with JavaScript we also check what Google receives before the scripts run. On one site we audited, the server sent an empty page body to search engines and robots.txt blocked the stylesheet, so Google saw neither the content nor the layout.

2. Speed and Core Web Vitals

Google measures real-user speed with Core Web Vitals. The targets are a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less. We test the key templates on mobile, where most searches happen, and trace slow scores to the cause: oversized images, render-blocking scripts or slow server response.

3. On-page basics

Titles, meta descriptions, headings, image alt text and internal links on every important page. We look for missing or duplicated titles, pages with no clear main heading, and thin pages with too little content to rank.

4. Keyword targeting

Each search you want to win should have one page aimed at it. When two of your own pages target the same keyword, Google often swaps between them and neither ranks well. We map keywords to pages and flag those conflicts.

5. Content gaps against competitors

We look at the pages ranking above you for your main searches: what topics they cover, how deep they go, and whether they show prices, FAQs or case studies that yours do not. The gaps become the content plan.

6. Links

How many websites link to you compared with the competitors above you, which of your pages hold those links, and whether old URLs with links now return errors. Recovering a link to a dead page with a single redirect is one of the cheapest wins an audit finds.

7. Local listings

For businesses that serve a city, the Google Business Profile often matters more than the website. We check its categories, services, reviews and posts, and whether your name, address and phone number match on the website and on directories.

8. Tracking

Google Search Console, Google Analytics and conversion tracking for calls and form enquiries. Without them there is no way to tell what the SEO work is achieving.

What you get at the end

• A list of problems, each with its impact, the effort to fix it and who should fix it.
• The keyword-to-page map.
• A content plan based on the gaps against competitors.
• A baseline of current positions and traffic to measure against.

How it fits into SEO work with ICore

Every SEO engagement with ICore starts with this audit, and the quote is based on what it finds, so you pay for the work your site needs. Local SEO for a Coimbatore business starts from ₹10,000 per month; see SEO packages and pricing. A client described the reporting that follows:

"We are very happy with the support and assistance given by the ICore Software Technologies The weekly review meetings with SEO TL thats gives us more ideas to promote our projects in different platform and also which help us to get maximum hits.The analysis and performance report well mapped and also the team in touch with us on weekly basis and update about the campaign status.We are closed few sales through this campaign and few more prospects are in pipeline. Once again thanks to the ICore Software Technologies."

— Yuvamanikandan M, Google review, July 2020

ICore has worked on more than 4,500 projects in 16+ years and is rated 4.7 out of 5 from 153 Google reviews. See our SEO services in Coimbatore, or contact us to request an audit.