How to Tell if an SEO Audit is Legit
Have you recently received a free website audit in your email? It’s more than likely a scam or a sales scare tactic. More often than not, these free reports are designed to solicit your business and get you in the door for a sales meeting. A legit SEO audit is a great tool to improve your website’s rankings and functionality, but it can be hard to tell whether or not an audit that you’ve received is real or just a gimmick.
Here are 3 simple things to look for when determining whether or not an SEO audit is a sales gimmick.
1. The sender guarantees he/she will fix your website and get it to the “#1 ranking.” SEO isn’t static, rankings are constantly in motion. That’s why we make monthly or quarterly updates to keep sites ranking well and to grow keyword rankings over time. The truth is that you can make an obscure keyword that nobody actually looks for show up high in the search rankings. You want your business to rank for keywords with ACTUAL search traffic.
2. The sender makes vague references to SEO buzzwords without demonstrating any understanding of what they mean. Talking about bounce rate is a dead giveaway! Google has phased out bounce rate as a metric entirely – if someone is using this terminology to score your site, they’re likely using outdated software.
3. If you received an unsolicited report, then odds are that it’s a gimmick. A genuine SEO audit takes hours. You have to look into location targeting, keyword planning, audience research, and more. That’s on top of inspecting the technical details such as page load speeds and other metadata. Nobody is going to do that for free on the off chance that you might show interest in their service later. Frankly, the entire premise of this kind of solicitation is disingenuous.
If you’re a Rinard Media client and you receive an unsolicited SEO audit, we’d love to see it and talk through it with you! We know that these reports can look scary and ring a lot of alarm bells, but the truth is that the data they present is likely not accurate. We’re confident in the quality of our work, and we’re constantly making changes to our clients’ sites to keep them ranking well.
If you’re not a current client but want to up your SEO game, Rinard Media also offers professional SEO audits. One of our SEO specialists will do location analysis and keyword research for your industry, then comb through your website for technical issues. Finally we’ll present you with a report that highlights all of our findings, as well as including actionable steps you can take to improve your website.
Give us a call any time, we’d love to talk SEO with you!
