How Often Should You Conduct an SEO Audit? A Business Guide

Regular SEO audits might sound like a hassle, but keeping your website ahead is essential.

Think of it as a routine health check-up for your site. Instead of setting things up once, constantly tweak, test, and optimize your website.

So, how often should you run your website health checks? It depends on factors like website size, algorithm updates, drops in traffic or rankings, and more.

To understand it better, let’s discuss how often you should perform an SEO audit to improve your rankings and traffic.

What is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is like an inspection of your website. It assists you in determining:

• What is effective
• What is not
• What needs to be fixed

Let’s say your website isn’t attracting enough traffic. An SEO audit can identify the real areas for improvement. It looks at things like:

• Is your website quick to load and easy for search engines to find?
• Does your content use the right keywords, and do other sites link to yours?

Also, make sure visitors can easily navigate and enjoy using your site.

Why You Need to Perform Regular SEO Audits?

Once you build or update a client’s website, you may think it will stay optimized, but that’s not always the case. The online world is unpredictable: images break, links stop working and small adjustments can unexpectedly affect SEO.

Plus, search algorithms constantly change, which means what worked yesterday may not work today. Websites need ongoing SEO audits to update them routinely. A good website has a good health score, particularly for home pages and product pages. Here’s how:

• Anything below 90% suggests concerns that need to be fixed
• A score under 70% signals major issues that can reduce rankings

A regular website SEO audit helps identify issues early, such as poor page speeds, missing Alt Tages, duplicate content, and broken links. A full SEO audit process covers over 40 common problems, guaranteeing that websites function properly and deliver a great user experience.

Slow websites frustrate visitors, causing them to leave quickly and costing you potential customers.

How Often Should You Conduct an SEO Audit?

Ideally, you should review your website’s SEO audit checklist every month. Regular checks keep your traffic and rankings on track and help you to identify and address issues early. Plus, it’s a good idea to use SEO audit services whenever you see a decline in your rankings or CTR.

Your monthly audits need not be comprehensive, a mix of manual and automated checks. These comprehensive audits are costly and time-consuming. Instead, you can use SEO audit tools like Ahrefs, Semrush and more for monthly audits.

This doesn’t mean you skip comprehensive SEO audits entirely. You still need them for your website. We advise doing a thorough website SEO audit at least once every quarter to find problems that automated tools can’t identify.

Here’s are some points for website audits:

• Monthly audits: Use automated tools to spot and fix SEO issues early.
• On-demand audits: If your rankings drop, run an audit ASAP to find the problem.
• Automated audits: Run every month to catch and fix issues early.
• Manual audits: Conduct a deep, detailed audit once every three months.

So, the best way is to do SEO audits regularly and quarterly. You can plan a manual, in-depth SEO audit process every 2–3 months and use automated tools for monthly audits.

Factors That Determine SEO Audit Frequency

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to understanding SEO audit frequency. It depends on the factors affecting how well your website performs searches. Here are some factors to consider:

1. Website Size and Complexity

The more pages, graphics and information your site has, the more things can go wrong. If you run a big eCommerce site or a blog with a lot of content, regular SEO audit frequency is essential to identify problems before they affect your rankings.

2. Industry Competitiveness

Everyone is competing for the top rank in sections like finance, healthcare or digital marketing. If your competitors are constantly improving their sites, you can’t afford to fall behind. Stay ahead in the game with regular SEO audits.

3. Search Trends

Google searches change depending on the customer’s interests. If your business is highly affected by seasonal trends and changes in what people are searching for, getting professional SEO services can guarantee that your content stays relevant and ranks well.

4. Content Updates

If you regularly:

• Add blogs
• Product descriptions
• Landing pages

Make sure these are properly optimized. SEO audits can assist you in checking content gaps and outdated keywords that may affect your rankings.

5. Frequency of Site Changes

Even minor changes to your website’s structure, style, and navigation can have a great impact on SEO. Conducting SEO audits guarantees that frequent site updates won’t harm user experience or search rankings.

6. Google Algorithm Updates

Google keeps changing its algorithm updates. Some are minor, while some can shake up rankings drastically. So, whenever any new update comes, conduct an SEO audit to adjust and maintain your site in Google’s top lists.

Top SEO Audit Tools

Conducting an SEO audit doesn’t need to be a heavy task. With the use of right tools, you can quickly analyze your website’s performance, and issues and upgrade it for better rankings.

1. Google Search Console

Use Google to understand how Google sees your site. Google Search Console helps you:

• Track performance
• Fix indexing issues
• Monitor search traffic

Key Features:

• Performance Monitoring
• Index Coverage Reports
• Search Analytics
• Sitemap Submission
• Mobile Usability Reports

Pricing: Free

2. SEMrush

SEMrush provides a complete website audit that scans for:

• Technical SEO issues
• Backlink gaps
• Keyword Opportunities

Plus, it provides easy-to-follow recommendations to boost rankings.

Key Features:

• Site Audit
• Keyword Research
• Backlink Analysis​
• Competitor Analysis
• On-Page SEO Checker

Pricing:

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a popular site audit tool known for its robust backlink analysis. It detects:

• Broken links
• Slow-loading pages
• Duplicate content

Key Features:

• Site Audit
• Site Explorer
• Keywords Explorer
• Content Explorer
• Rank Tracker

Pricing:

Final Words

We hope it’s clear now that regular SEO audits aren’t just for practice, but they’re crucial for maintaining your website’s visibility and performance. With regular audits, you can:

Identify and fix technical SEO issues before they impact rankings
Keep up with Google’s algorithm updates to stay competitive
Optimize content for better engagement and conversions

Consult with SEO experts if you’re unsure about what areas to concentrate on or how often to perform an SEO audit.