An enterprise SEO audit checks keyword rankings, content quality, sitemaps, and various metrics to keep organic traffic flowing and conversions climbing. Learn how an award-winning SEO agency does it in this guide.

Think of search engine optimization (SEO) as a strategic chess game. You make moves and countermoves to secure the ultimate checkmate over your competitors: consistent traffic, high search engine rankings, and impressive conversions.

But first, you need to carefully analyze the board. In the world of SEO, this in-depth assessment is your enterprise SEO audit.

SEO has countless moving parts. Smaller technical components like sitemaps and load speed might seem like pawns, while keyword research and content play the role of queens and rooks.

Want the grandmaster playbook for enterprise website audits?

To bring you the latest insights, we talked with Stephanie Long, founder of Mrs. SEO and a 10-year digital marketing veteran, who never makes a play without an enterprise SEO audit.

(Image: Adobe Stock)

Let’s walk through the steps of an enterprise audit.

11 steps to include in your SEO audit

Your enterprise SEO audit covers all aspects of SEO, including technical SEO, content optimization, and user experience:

Content

  1. Assess keyword rankings and competition
  2. Review content topics and ensure quality content
  3. Steer clear of duplicate content
  4. Ensure URLs are still accurate to page content

Technical SEO

  1. Check that title tags, meta descriptions, and headings are logical
  2. Update your sitemap
  3. Review page indexing
  4. Organize your internal links, external links, and backlinks

User experience

  1. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
  2. Check page load speed
  3. Update images

1. Assess keyword rankings and competition

Keywords are words and phrases your audience types into search engines. You want to have high rankings for keywords related to your industry, company, products, and services.

On top of that, these keywords should have sufficient search volume that proves your audience actively seeks your content.

Long begins her SEO audit with a quick skim of keyword rankings. She looks at which keywords a website currently ranks for, and compares performance over time, and then does the same with competitor keyword rankings.

This helps her assess which content needs more TLC to outrank competitors. But Long’s keyword analysis goes beyond rankings:

“I use Semrush and Google Search Console to see which keywords my clients are ranking for and which keywords are actually driving traffic to the site,” says Long.

From that traffic, your SEO audit should also assess how many web visitors are qualified leads.

As an enterprise site, you’ll typically target a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords with informational, commercial, transactional, and navigational intent. However, it’s important to know which keywords bring the most qualified traffic to your site.

While most search queries are long-tail keywords, enterprise brands also need to capture significant website traffic for top-funnel, educational content to build your brand rep, too. This means you should include short-tail keywords with enough search volume to justify the resources used to rank for them.

But as you dig into the data, be careful to avoid any black-hat tactics like keyword stuffing.

Pro tip: If you have a site search, you can mine it for the most popular search queries. This will give you long-tail keywords to research. You can then use them to create content that addresses people’s questions and boosts your authority.

2. Review content topics and ensure quality content

Your blog might be packed with rich insights, expert opinions, and solid keyword rankings. But if you haven’t updated an article in over two years? You may see a drop on the search engine results page (SERP), as Google could assume the information is outdated.

In fact, Google requires content to be helpful, which means it’s written primarily to help people (not search engines) reach a specific goal.

If your audience navigates to an article about how to use a specific tool within your SaaS platform, they should finish the article with a clear idea about how to do it.

Dropbox’s article about using its multi-file organization tool is a great example with images, helpful steps, and regular updates.

Your content needs to be helpful, accurate, and relevant when it’s published, but also over time.

The solution? Breathe new life into old content by updating it with the latest stats and fresh perspectives. You can also use your keyword research for content ideation.

Long also looks at competitor content to see what performs well. While you never want to copy your competitors, you can draw inspiration for innovative ways to add your unique value propositions (UVPs) to your own content.

For example, let’s say you own a dynamic pricing tool for vacation rentals, like Lodgify or PriceLabs. You might have a high-traffic blog and social media channels. You notice competitor Hostaway features similar questions your blog answers, but in hour-long webinars on its YouTube channel:

You might take that inspiration to start a podcast or create more video content, perhaps with summarized takeaways in video form to stay a step ahead of Hostaway’s longer video time.

3. Steer clear of duplicate content

If you’re an enterprise brand with a long history of content creation, you might already have a library of blog articles, landing pages, and web pages.

The catch? Multiple web pages with the same or similar content get ignored by Google’s search algorithms. That’s why it’s so important to ensure all web pages have unique topics and keyword rankings to present duplicate content.

But what if you have the same content in multiple languages? Is that still considered duplicate content?

That’s perfectly fine as long as you use canonical tags on each of those web pages. This HTML code spotlights the main version of your similar content for Google’s crawlers.

4. Ensure URLs are still accurate to page content

URLs might seem like an afterthought since they’re only a single line of text. However, this short copy is a crucial space to help both search engines and site visitors understand what your webpage is all about.

Enterprise audits might present you with thousands of URLs, but each one should be as relevant to the content as possible.

For example, let’s say you update a blog post about “2023 industry trends in ecommerce” to cover 2024 trends. You should also update the URL to reflect these changes, so it better matches the page content.

Here are some more tips to ensure your URLs pass your SEO audit:

  • Avoid a random string of letters and numbers
  • Use the primary keyword you want to rank
  • Don’t make them longer than five words
  • Place hyphens between words
  • Only use lowercase letters

5. Check that title tags, meta descriptions, and headings are logical

Title tags are short HTML elements (between 50-60 characters long) that fulfill two functions. First, they tell search engines how to title your website result on the SERP, which displays as a blue line of link text. Second, they tell your internet browser how to display the title on your web page.

Meta descriptions are brief descriptions (between 150-160 characters long) of your page’s content.

While Google doesn’t always display your meta description in SERP results, it still considers them to determine the most relevant and highest-ranking search results for your audience.

Your H1 tags (and all page headings) help organize your web pages and make it easy for audiences to skim your content. The H1 is especially important because it tells search engines about the subject of your content.

Any updates to your content shouldn’t go live without corresponding updates to headings, titles, and meta descriptions, as well as primary target keywords.

Technical SEO

Keywords and content are some of SEO’s big umbrellas, but the devil’s also in the details. Technical SEO involves off-page and backend tasks that bump up your digital credibility with search engines.

6. Update your sitemap

An XML sitemap is a file containing a list of web pages within your site domain. It tells search engine crawlers about your site’s structure and content.

It includes details like the last date of a page update and whether there are any alternate versions of the page. Google’s crawlers index those web pages once you submit them to Google through the Search Console.

However, if you overload your site with new content and forget to update your sitemap, Google’s crawlers won’t index them. This common oversight for enterprise brands with high page volumes can cost you prime rankings.

Plus, it’s especially important for enterprise websites with abundant video and photo content.

7. Review page indexing

Step one to a top spot on the SERP? An indexed web page.

Search engine crawlers index web pages to understand and assess content relevance and rank them accordingly. To do so, they look for your website based on popular search queries, intuitive web navigation, internal links, and backlinks (more on those shortly).

And if your web pages don’t line up with these criteria? Google simply won’t index them, which means they won’t rank.

The Google Search Console is the best way to catch indexing errors before they hurt your pages on the SERP. You can use the Index Coverage report to quickly see what pages are indexed.

Simply paste the URL of the new page into the search bar in Google Search Console. It’ll tell you if the page is indexed yet, and if not, you can request indexing.

If the page isn’t new and still isn’t indexed, it may be due to a technical issue, such as robots.txt file blocking it or a noindex in the page’s metadata.

8. Organize your internal links, external links, and backlinks

Website links are crucial components of the SEO audit, specifically:

  • External links on your web page to external sources
  • Internal links on your web page to other relevant pages within your site
  • Backlinks: External web pages that link to your web pages for exposure and authority

All of these strengthen your SEO rankings, but websites change as time goes on.

For example, you could have removed an old blog post but forgotten to remove its link from another page, leading to a 404 error. Google will see this as a docked point for your SERP position. Even external links need a once-over with each audit to ensure you refer your audience to current resources.

Backlinks are especially important in your enterprise-level SEO audits because they signal to search engines that your site is reputable and authoritative, provided they’re quality backlinks.

Make sure your backlinks are on websites related to your industry. If you don’t have any, do some outreach to improve your backlink profile.

User experience

9. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

More than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, which calls for an extra bit of work to optimize your desktop-friendly web page for mobile devices.

However, when you’re dealing with a high volume of pages on large websites, it’s easy to leave mobile optimization unchecked.

Google itself states that mobile-friendly sites rank higher on the SERP, so why let it fall to the wayside? Here’s how you can optimize mobile user experiences:

  • Get rid of popups
  • Choose a mobile-friendly website template
  • Use a larger, readable font
  • Reduce image sizes for quicker load speed

Once you have your mobile layout, you’ll need to make sure your audience sticks around to see it. That’s where page speed can make all the difference.

10. Check page load speed

Site speed is a core web vital that measures how long it takes for a web page to load. A slow website creates a poor user experience, which in turn increases bounce rates and has a negative impact on SEO.

If your website doesn’t load fast enough, visitors will abandon it for a more efficient one. This is why Google considers page speed a crucial ranking factor.

Here are some quick ways to ramp up page speed:

  • Choose a more reliable web host with under 200ms response times
  • Use a Content Delivery Network to cache content
  • Invest in cybersecurity to prevent malware from slowing your page speed
  • Reduce image sizes

If any of these feel unfamiliar, your in-house web developer has the expertise to support you. And if you don’t have someone in-house?

Consider outsourcing all SEO tasks to a digital marketing agency like HawkSEM, where we have a staff of strategists, marketers, and web developers.

11. Update images

Images add a splash of color and aesthetic appeal to your website, but did you know they also enhance the user experience? After all, they elaborate on your content and engage your audience with visual appeal.

Poorly optimized images, on the other hand, have the opposite effect.

For instance, larger images that take too long to load could drive your audience to competitor sites. To avoid this, we recommend you compress new images and convert them to JPEG format for faster load times.

Images also have accessibility considerations. Visually impaired audiences can’t benefit from any of your images unless you use descriptive filenames and alt tags to clearly convey their context.

You should also include a primary keyword in each tag for Google’s crawlers to assess relevance quickly.

For example, if you have an ecommerce store and the image shows a woman wearing a pair of red sneakers, and you want to rank for the term “red sneakers.” In this case, the filename “red-sneakers.jpeg” is much more accurate to the image than “IMG_00001.jpeg.”

A good alt tag for this hypothetical image of shoes would be “woman wearing a pair of red sneakers.”

Long reminds us why user experience matters so much in your audit:

“If Google sees any issues that give a user a bad experience, they won’t rank your site.”

That’s it for our enterprise audit! But is one pass enough? Not quite.

What is an enterprise SEO audit?

Enterprise SEO audits are in-depth evaluations of the many factors that influence your business’s search rankings. Enterprise companies have hundreds or even thousands of web pages and landing pages, extensive operations, multiple languages, and highly competitive keywords.

Even with a large marketing team handling technical and on-page SEO, when you’re deep in the trenches, it’s easy to lose sight of your goals. That’s when an enterprise SEO audit steps into the arena.

It helps you gather enough data and insights about your SEO strategy to refine your content, technical web elements, and search rankings. Here’s why Long uses them:

“SEO audits help me see where there are any issues that need to be fixed that could be affecting a website’s ranking potential,” Long explains.

“If there are many issues such as broken links, or slow desktop and mobile speed, this affects how Google ranks your website and these issues need to be fixed as quickly as possible.”

How often should you conduct enterprise SEO audits?

Some brands get away with quarterly audits, but Long prefers to do them more frequently:

“I conduct an SEO audit each month because of the constantly evolving landscape,” she explains. “And to make sure my client’s websites are still in good health and there aren’t any major keyword ranking issues.”

We also recommend an additional SEO audit when you make any major changes to your site, like a website migration or redesign.

Our client VIOS Fertility underwent a website redesign after Kindbody acquired them. New branding and keywords definitely called for an SEO audit.

We conducted one to inform a revamped SEO strategy that contributed to a 74% increase in keyword rankings and a 128% increase in new website visitors.

Regardless of the frequency you choose, it’s important to keep a watchful eye on your performance metrics and conversion tracking between audits.

So what are the best tools for the job?

(Image: Adobe Stock)

SEO audit tools

It’s almost impossible to find issues like broken links, redirects, and missing metadata without a little help from the right tech.

Here are some of the SEO tools that Long and our team employ for audits:

  • Screaming Frog: This SEO Spider Tool can crawl up to 500 website URLs for free, identify issues like redirects, and even generate new sitemaps.
  • Semrush: This keyword analysis tool helps Long identify how her clients’ keywords rank.
  • Google Search Console: This tool analyzes clicks and impressions on the SERP, and tells Long which keywords actually drive site traffic.
  • Ahrefs: This audit tool gives you a dashboard view of blocked or uncrawled URLs, content quality hiccups, and issues with title tags.
  • ConversionIQ: HawkSEM’s proprietary marketing platform that merges SEO performance data from all your web pages, social media channels, and PPC campaign data into accessible dashboard views and actionable insights.

Keep in mind that many of these tools have free versions. However, if you have a large website, you’ll likely benefit from the paid versions to properly survey every inch of your website (including subdomains).

With all of this crucial data from an audit, Long likes to document metrics and progress to guide her next steps:

“I take all of the above metrics into account and prioritize the ones I can fix and the ones that a developer needs to fix,” Long explains.

“I write a detailed report for my clients and explain my action on any items that need to be addressed immediately and what my strategy for the next month is.”

Enterprise SEO audit checklist

Audit Checklist

The takeaway

A solid enterprise SEO strategy thrives when it’s built on data-driven insights and dies with complacency.

With regular enterprise SEO audits, you keep your SEO rankings alive and strong with relevant keyword optimization, quick site speed, mobile friendliness, and all the other chess pieces that drive sales and revenue.

But even for enterprise businesses, in-house marketing teams might not have the bandwidth to check every web page, URL, keyword, and metric.

That’s why enlisting SEO audit services from a team of pros like HawkSEM is your surest way to maintain consistent audits and sky-high rankings.

You’ve worked too hard on your enterprise SEO strategy to slip off the SERP now. Let’s protect your position, together.

This article has been updated and was originally published in April 2023. 

Shire Lyon

Shire Lyon

Shire is a passionate writer and marketer with over eight years of experience as a writer and digital marketer. She's well-versed in SEO, PPC, and social media, helping businesses both big and small grow and scale. On her downtime, she enjoys hiking, cooking, gardening, reading, and sailing.