E-mail:
jsem@patrikpilous.cz
My vision
SEO Analysis
An SEO analysis usually produces a detailed document with a spreadsheet setting out the main findings and recommendations on a website’s performance in organic search. The document gives the client, online shop or brand an overview of the current state of its SEO and identifies errors and areas for potential improvement. Compared with an SEO audit, an SEO analysis should go into more detail: it should include a crawl, an in-depth review and an outline of solutions. At least, that is how I understand it and how I do it.
What does an SEO analysis involve?
Identifying errors
The analysis should identify factual errors found by SEO tools, but the SEO consultant should sort and interpret them. There are many obvious SEO errors that are easy to spot, yet fixing them brings the client nothing. These should only be touched on briefly in the analysis. Structural technical errors and content development in particular are hard to work out from tools alone, and this is where the SEO consultant's experience comes in.
Prioritisation and proposed solutions
Saying that something is wrong is not enough. The SEO consultant should offer ways to fix errors that are easy to implement and understand. Some problems are more a formality, and the SEO consultant should either leave them out of the document or point out that they are low priority and fixing them will not achieve much. On the other hand, the analysis should always state whether the website has landing pages for its main products and what to improve on them. That is how you recognise a good analysis.
Recommendations based on the analysis
This is where I see the biggest problem. Producing an analysis that identifies errors is not very difficult. In my view, however, good SEO consultants with long-term clients stand out because they can build a strategy and a plan from the analysis, and then implement the work or brief it clearly. At the same time, the analysis contains no nonsense such as "edit your meta descriptions" or "add ALT texts to every image on the website". These changes mostly achieve nothing at all.
Who have I done SEO analysis or SEO consulting for?
SEO analysis
If you want a relatively inexpensive deliverable, you can try an SEO audit. I am not very keen on this deliverable, because only about 1 in 6 clients can use it properly. That one in six is usually someone who knows very well what SEO is and is a junior SEO specialist or an enthusiast. In my view, a more thorough SEO analysis is better, and ongoing collaboration with set goals and milestones is best. An SEO analysis is often the first step in getting started with SEO.
With me, a website SEO analysis starts at 15 hours of SEO consultant work and can go up to 60 hours. The output is an analysis, priorities, proposed solutions and a plan of action. Everything is split between a text document and a spreadsheet based on a complete crawl of the website.
I always start by mapping the whole website from many angles. I run a complete crawl of the website in Screaming Frog and then look through the crawl (a complete list of pages with attributes, headings, titles and so on) for patterns, errors and opportunities. I map in detail whether you have good landing pages for your main keywords, how they are performing, and which pages you could create (or what you could change) to improve performance. I also cover your Google Business Profile, structured data and basic usability. In my view, this is the key area that will help your business.
All the raw data is included in the analysis in several spreadsheets. The second, more important document contains the interpretation of the data and the areas to focus on. Many agencies and consultants produce deliverables that describe every area with a short comment. I only stop at areas where I see a benefit for the website, and I try to provide a solution that can be implemented straight away. I also see this as the biggest advantage of my SEO analyses. How does it help you if someone ticks off individual items in a lengthy document?
Specialised SEO analyses
Apart from comprehensive SEO analyses, clients sometimes also request specialised SEO analyses.
I focus mainly on 3 types of these sub-analyses or audits:
Link building analysis: how the client’s current link building works, how the link builder operates and where the opportunities are. How to do link building, a description of techniques and an assessment of current links, anchor texts and brand associations.
Content analysis: why current articles and categories are not performing. How could the content be improved? How do the articles hold up in terms of SEO copywriting?
If this article caught your interest, get in touch by email or through the contact form, or take a look at my services.
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