To navigate Google’s several hundred ranking factors and signals, SEOs often create staggeringly vast audit recommendations without taking a client’s industry, available resources and current circumstances into account. This can have a serious negative effect on revenue streams and ROI. Bastian Grimm's SearchLeeds talk explained how to intelligently prioritise these measures according to impact. He shared his tips, tricks and best practices based on over 200 audits that his team implemented over the past 3 years, broken down by industry/vertical. No more trial and error – here’s how to apply an SEO strategy that’s effective, efficient and truly tailored to your needs.

1. Bastian Grimm, Peak Ace AG | @basgr
An actionable framework to prevent
yours from being shit too.
Why most SEO audits are SHIT!

2. Who had a freelance consultant or agency
deliver an SEO audit in the last 12 months?
A quick show of hands please:

3. … you were 100% happy with what was delivered?
Everything was feasible, well-documented and tailored to
your specific needs?
Keep your hands up if…

4. … you implemented everything that was recommended?
Keep your hands up if…

5. pa.ag@peakaceag5
Only 12% of clients are completely satisfied!
34% cited the delivery to be “a total disaster” and 54% were “only partially happy”
Source: Peak Ace survey; 212 participants / May 2019
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
completely satisfied only partially happy total disaster

6. pa.ag@peakaceag6
Why should YOU care?
How will this help YOU?
If you are on the client-side and/or work in-house
Requesting an audit based on this framework will:
▪ Allow you to implement actions/changes that
genuinely cause the maximum impact
▪ Consequently save time, money and resources that
would otherwise be spent on actions that add little
or no value
If you are an agency and/or a consultant
Using this framework will:
▪ Allow you to recommend and prioritise actions
based on maximum business impact
▪ Which will lead to increased ROI for your clients
▪ And therefore, to happier clients

7. Follow this process to stop
wasting time and money on
ineffective, bullshit audits!

8. pa.ag@peakaceag8
Speaking of bullshit audits:
Please stop selling exports from SEO tools as (your) audits, because they are not!
Sending a ScreamingFrog redirects
export to your client and advising
them to change those links so as
to pass on more link juice is not
an SEO audit - and you’re most
certainly not an SEO specialist…!

9. The top 3 biggest problems with SEO audits
Basic issues/topics

10. What does your audience really need?
#1 Wrong format/output

11. pa.ag@peakaceag11
I am quite sure you’ve all seen something like this?
A massive 46-pager is not
always the right answer…
You need to understand
them, their needs and
expectations before
producing anything!

12. pa.ag@peakaceag12
Choose the right format based on your goal(s)
Also, depending on the recipient, the format might vary. Often, you’ll need more than
one (or perhaps even all of them):
When you want to inform and persuade C-suite/management into
committing to an SEO budget or a specific SEO program, a short and
precise, high-quality slide deck is certainly the best format choice.
i
Goal? Task? Recipient? Format?
Inform Provide a brief overview All Excec. summary / e-mail summary
Persuade
Persuade recipient to utilise the
program
C-level,
management
High quality presentation (including most effective solutions for
maximum impact)
Guide Provide in-depth audit results SEO Manager/tam Full-scale audit doc (with background info, impact, code samples, etc.)
Realise Implement recommendations Dev team/agency Prioritised items list / ready-made tickets (Jira, etc.)

13. pa.ag@peakaceag13
Directly deliver audit findings e.g. using Jira tickets
Adapt Jira tickets to your clients’ IT/dev teams needs for faster implementation:

14. Executive summary, proper formatting & grammar,
named sources, a document index as well as priorities are
a must-have - make it easy to use!
When creating in-depth audits:

15. For technical changes, provide copy/paste-able code
examples/snippets whenever feasible
Provide code examples

16. Put some effort into your work, please!?
#2 Symptoms vs. causes

17. pa.ag@peakaceag17
Does this sound familiar?
Further, in our audit we discovered a significant
amount of duplicate page titles; overall the
crawl returned 55,000 duplicate title values.
We recommend using unique page titles
whenever possible to prevent duplication.

18. pa.ag@peakaceag18
Or even worse: you get a Excel/CSV spreadsheet
"Here is a list of all the broken URLs which we found during our audit”

19. Start thinking in patterns!

20. pa.ag@peakaceag20
Ensure that your audit items tackle the root problem!
Almost all modern sites utilise templates to generate output; identify the root causes
and provide actionable items and documentation:
The cause for 336,000 short meta descriptions
is template XYZ using a fallback when no
unique description has been specified.
Please find attached our suggestion for:
a) manual descriptions for the top-100 most
important URLs
b) a syntax template regarding how to
generate a unique fallback description
Find the largest number of URLs affected, understand the
patterns and turn them into a couple of root problems.

21. ...or bad prioritisation,
as well as a lack of potential impact estimations
#3 No prioritisation

22. Show the most valuable impact items first
Every item in the audit
should be prioritised!

23. Experience, SEO & A/B testing, log files & revenue/traffic
figures can provide necessary guidance
Create a table/list with every
action, sorted by impact & effort

24. pa.ag@peakaceag24
SEO audits often ask for way too many things
Massive audit documents can be quite overwhelming, but there are various reasons why:
▪ Due to SEO being quite niche, we often work in very close proximity to
our particular craft, preventing us from seeing the overall picture
▪ SEO problems can be difficult to quantify, however, measuring the
impact of individual audit items correctly is essential – but also very hard
▪ Often, audits highlight a vast range of potential issues as an insurance
policy for when the next Google update is rolled out
▪ Adding more items to a list creates a sense that more work has been
done, but these added measures may not actually be very effective
▪ As good SEO takes time to fully come into fruition, there can be a focus
on getting quick wins which doesn‘t always prove beneficial in the long run

25. Use the appendix wisely. Nothing says “this is not
really that important” more effectively.
Do NOT include everything

26. This really depends on your brief;
discuss this with the other party first
OK, to be fair…

27. There will always be compromises – try to anticipate
where it’s unlikely that your preferred recommendation
will be accepted
Have a plan B in place

28. Begin by assessing the business type, their
business objectives as well as the scope
Specific issues/topics

29. pa.ag@peakaceag29
What type of audit/audit items should you expect?
Different types of domains and their scopes require audit customisation:
* Brand = e.g. Uber (not a priority to sell on the site) vs. eComm = e.g. Nike (online shop) or Emirates (ticket shop)
Type of domain Number of URLs (scope)
eCommerce
Publishing
Classifieds
Lead-gen
Brand
Other
<1,000 <10,000 <100,000 <1,000,000 1,000,000+
Which quadrant are you in?

30. pa.ag@peakaceag30
Segmenting these further:
A publication such as WebMD has different challenges compared to Daily Mail Online –
even though they’re both operating in the publishing sector:
* Brand = e.g. Uber (not a priority to sell on the site) vs. eComm = e.g. Nike (online shop) or Emirates (ticket shop)
Type of domain Number of URLs (scope)
eCommerce
Single retailer
Multi retailer
…
Publishing
Special interest (e.g. health)
Daily newspaper
…
Classifieds
Lead-gen
Brand
Other
<1,000 <10,000 <100,000 <1,000,000 1,000,000+
Which quadrant are you in?

31. pa.ag@peakaceag31
What type of audit/audit items should you expect?
Different types of domains and their scopes require audit customisation:
* Brand = e.g. Uber (not a priority to sell on the site) vs. eComm = e.g. Nike (online shop) or Emirates (ticket shop)
Type of domain Number of URLs (scope)
eCommerce
Publishing
Classifieds
Lead-gen
Brand
Other
<1,000 <10,000 <100,000 <1,000,000 1,000,000+
Which quadrant are you in?

32. Align the audit to what the site is trying to achieve for
the overall business’ goals/objectives/KPIs
Top 5 most important
specific audit items

33. Scope: 10k-100k URLs
eCommerce/online shopping

34. pa.ag@peakaceag34
#1
Handling multiple
versions of a
product
(colour/size)
Caused by/refers to:
Product detail pages
Issue brief:
Demand is too low for the PDPs being indexed (in all
their combinations). Link equity/ranking potential is lost.
Issue categories:
Duplicate content, crawl inefficiency, ranking issues
Suggested change/fix:
Consolidate to a default product whenever possible (e.g.
strongest selling colour/size)
Comment:
Client-side JS or, at a minimum, canonical tags are
needed

35. pa.ag@peakaceag35
The exact same Vaporfly 4 Flyknit, just a different colour
Nike uses individual URLs for each of their available colour/size variations
AJ3857-400
Not enough people search for “Nike Vaporfly 4 Flyknit Red” and “Blue” respectively. Demand is too low
for the PDPs being indexed (in all their combinations). Link equity/ranking potential is lost/split.i

36. pa.ag@peakaceag36
A solution could be to canonicalize to a root product:
A canonical tag is only a hint, not a directive. Google can choose to ignore it
entirely. When using canonical tags, please be extra careful:
▪ There may only be one rel-canonical annotation
per URL - only ONE!
▪ Use absolute URLs with protocols & subdomains
▪ Rel-canonical targets must actually work
(no 4XX targets) – they need to serve a HTTP 200
▪ No canonical tag chaining, Google will ignore this!
▪ Maintain consistency: only one protocol (HTTP vs.
HTTPS), either www or non-www and the consistent
use of trailing slashes
▪ etc.

37. pa.ag@peakaceag37
Salomon does a great job minimising URL overhead
Crawl-budget & link equity advantages due to consolidation on "supercross.html" – one
URL gets all the link love! Salmon PDPs with strong rankings
#848=15694#848=15692

38. pa.ag@peakaceag38
#2
One product, but
reachable via
multiple categories
Caused by/refers to:
Product detail pages
Issue brief:
Product detail pages should be reachable via multiple
URLs (due to the category name being part of the PDP
URL)
Issue categories:
Duplicate content, crawl inefficiencies, ranking issues
Suggested change/fix:
Category-independent product URLs
Comment:
Alternatively, define a default category to be used in the
URL slug

39. pa.ag@peakaceag39
I like Monkey 47, but it seems like GIN KIOSK doesn't!?
Two different URLs serving the exact same product minimises the chances of it ranking
well; also from a crawling perspective, this isn‘t a good solution:
most-popularinternational-gins

40. pa.ag@peakaceag40
#3
Brand filter vs.
branded category:
/watches/breitling
vs. /breitling/all
Caused by/refers to:
Category pages and their filters
Issue brief:
A brand category that targets the exact same keyword
set vs. a category that allows filtering for a brand name
Issue categories:
Keyword cannibalisation, crawl inefficiency
Suggested change/fix:
Canonicalize, prevent indexation of one URL variant
Comment:
PRG pattern for large-scale scenarios (e.g. preventing an
entire block of filtering from being crawled/indexed)

41. pa.ag@peakaceag41
Another classic: brand filter vs. brand (category) page
If you index both, which one is supposed to rank for the generic branded term?
One keyword, one URL: try to minimise internal competition as much as you can. Two (or more)
pages targeting "Breitling watches" make it unnecessarily hard for Google to select the best result!i

42. pa.ag@peakaceag42
#4
Facetted navigation,
sorting & filtering
(e.g. in categories)
Caused by/refers to:
Category pages that allow for filtering and/or sorting
Issue brief:
Various sorting/filtering/facets time categories and sub-
categories can lead to millions of (worthless) URLs
Issue categories:
Keyword cannibalisation, crawl inefficiency, thin content
Suggested change/fix:
Individual indexing strategy (based on demand) per filter
and facet, prevent crawling/indexing for sorting
Comment:
Very difficult to get right, usually requires individual
solutions

43. pa.ag@peakaceag43
Facetted navigation can cause SEO headaches!
“A facetted search is a restriction of the selection according to different properties,
characteristics and / or values.”
If zalando would
allow for all these
options to become
crawl-able URLs, this
would lead to
millions and millions
of useless URLs.
Only allow crawling and indexing of URLs that target keywords and keyword combinations
with actual search demand. Pay special attention to internal keyword cannibalisation.i

44. pa.ag@peakaceag44
Champagne – or champagne? Alllllllll… the sorting!
If you need sorting options, ensure they're being used (analytics is your friend) –
otherwise remove them & prevent them from being crawled

45. pa.ag@peakaceag45
Boots handles this excellently using client-side JS
From a user's perspective, using JavaScript for features such as filtering feels much faster
since the perceived load time decreases
#facet:-100271105108108101116116101,-1046543&product

46. pa.ag@peakaceag46
#5
Expired/(temp.) out
of stock product
management
Caused by/refers to:
Product detail pages
Issue brief:
PDPs for products that are (temporarily) out of stock can
cause bad engagement metrics (e.g. high bounce rates,
etc.)
Issue categories:
Engagement metrics, website quality, inefficient URLs
Suggested change/fix:
Implement OOS strategy (redirects, info layer, disable
(410) entirely, etc.)
Comment:
Hughley complex topic depending on the size, the
volatility of the inventory, and much more

47. pa.ag@peakaceag47
Deal with your out of stock items - but not like M&S does!
Are they just temporarily unavailable (and for how long) or will they never come back?
Also, what type of alternative versions are available?
M&S keeps all of their out of stock pages indexed:
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<link rel="canonical“ href="[…]/chef-hard-anodised-28cm-saute-pan/p/p22467321">
i
About 233.000 results (0,23 seconds)

48. A mix of product redirects (e.g. same but diff.
colour/related/successor), redirects to internal search
and 410s, combined with a text layer to keep customers
properly informed
How to handle OOS properly?

49. pa.ag@peakaceag49
Tip: establish an exit-strategy for paginated categories
Categories with high churn need to deal with paginated pages coming and going (e.g.
what happens when there's not enough products to display a 2nd page?):
About 3,065 results (0,28 seconds)

50. Scope: 100k+ URLs
News sites & content portals

51. pa.ag@peakaceag51
#1
Indexing strategy:
tags, archives,
categories, etc.
Caused by/refers to:
All types of overview/listing pages
Issue brief:
Tag pages competing with categories, or super deep
archives causing crawl & indexing problems
Issue categories:
Crawling inefficiencies, website quality
Suggested change/fix:
Crawl/indexing strategy dependent on size/page types

52. pa.ag@peakaceag52
Establish both a crawling and indexing strategy
Depending on the age, scope and volume of a publication, there can be a lot of URLs
to deal with; carefully consider what you want to serve to Googlebot:
Source: https://spiderbites.nytimes.com

53. pa.ag@peakaceag53
Tip: for date-based archives, ensure URL parameter order
For Google these are two different URLs, so ensure that your GET parameters are kept
in proper order and use the same sorting method for them at all times!
https://www.peakace.de/?year=2019&month=06
vs.
https://www.peakace.de/?month=06&year=2019
▪ The same applies to URLs that can be called up with and without a slash (“/”) at the end.
▪ The same applies to parameters and their values which can be upper / lower case.i

54. pa.ag@peakaceag54
#2
Content quality:
syndicated, thin &
outdated content
Caused by/refers to:
Article/content pages
Issue brief:
3rd party content, short news releases as well as
old/outdated content which causes quality issues
Issue categories:
Website quality, duplicate content, thin content
Suggested change/fix:
Content quality to be monitored carefully, e.g.
establish noindex rules accordingly

55. pa.ag@peakaceag55
Prevent indexing of low-quality content
Make sure to prevent crawling/indexing of your search results. Google considers e.g.
SERP in SERP to be a poor user experience!
Other types of low/thin content:
▪ Feeded content (e.g. through white label solutions,
affiliate feeds, press distribution services (DPA, …)
▪ Different “no result pages” (no comments for product A,
no ratings for product B, no comments for article C, etc.)
▪ Poorly written content (e.g. grammatical errors)
▪ Generally speaking: the same content across different
domains
About 86.900 results (0,40 seconds)

56. pa.ag@peakaceag56
#3
Discovery: (XML)
sitemaps, internal
crawl hubs, etc.
Caused by/refers to:
Better/faster article indexing
Issue brief:
Sitemaps and crawl hubs for better internal linking,
discovery and additional canonicalisation signals
Issue categories:
Crawl efficiency, internal linking
Suggested change/fix:
Establish a proper XML sitemap (creation) process, find
the URLs that Google hits heavily & use them to link
internally

57. pa.ag@peakaceag57
Understanding the most/least crawled URLs and folders
Frequently crawled pages/folders could be used for additional internal linking
(add link hubs), infrequently crawled areas need to be linked more prominently
Can be used for additional, internal linking
(improve discovery of other content)
Clearly weak, either irrelevant (remove) or
requires more attention

58. pa.ag@peakaceag58
Only include indexable URLs that serve a 200 response!
No redirects, no URLs that are blocked via robots.txt or meta robots, no URLs with a
different canonical tag!
▪ ScreamingFrog
▪ Mode > List
▪ List from a file

59. pa.ag@peakaceag59
#4
Accessibility:
ad integration,
interstitials, content
locker
Caused by/refers to:
Article/content pages
Issue brief:
Overlays preventing access/heavy ad integration slowing
down sites - both resulting in poor engagement
Issue categories:
Website quality, engagement
Suggested change/fix:
Reduce/remove – or at least make it less bothersome

60. pa.ag@peakaceag60

61. pa.ag@peakaceag61
With Googlebot rendering, this could be a problem…

62. pa.ag@peakaceag62
#5
Google News
specifics: sitemaps,
news bots, AMP, etc.
Caused by/refers to:
News articles
Issue brief:
Loads of Google's news-specific tasks/requirements
should be considered to engender strong news
performance
Issue categories:
Crawling, indexing, discovery
Suggested change/fix:
Dependent on setup

63. ...but we only have 25 minutes; sorry!
This would be a deck of its own…

64. Scope: 500k+ URLs
Classifieds/market places

65. pa.ag@peakaceag65
#1
Indexing strategy:
3rd party, thin, bad
quality, UGC, etc.
Caused by/refers to:
Single listing pages
Issue brief:
3rd party content, UGC as well as old/outdated pages
causing quality issues
Issue categories:
Website quality, duplicate content, thin content
Suggested change/fix:
Content quality to be monitored carefully, e.g.
establish noindex rules accordingly

66. pa.ag@peakaceag66
#2
Handling multiple
listings with the
same attributes
Caused by/refers to:
Single listing pages
Issue brief:
Feeded content (or UG listings) are often identical (e.g.
100x Audi S3 with the same features) – thus causing
(near) duplicate content issues
Issue categories:
Domain quality, crawl inefficiencies, ranking issues
Suggested change/fix:
Establish a “root” listing page process & consolidate, or
differentiate, based on e.g. listing the number in title, etc.

67. pa.ag@peakaceag67
#3
Expired listing
management (e.g.
the item was sold)
Caused by/refers to:
Single listing pages
Issue brief:
Items which are gone (sold) cause bad engagement
metrics (e.g. high bounce rates, etc.)
Issue categories:
Engagement metrics, website quality, duplicate content
Suggested change/fix:
Implement an expired listings strategy (redirect, info
layer, disable (410) entirely, etc.)

68. pa.ag@peakaceag68
#4
Discovery: (XML)
sitemaps, internal
crawl hubs, etc.
Caused by/refers to:
Better/faster listing index
Issue brief:
Sitemaps and crawl hubs for better internal linking,
discovery and additional canonicalisation signals
Issue categories:
Crawl efficiency, internal linking
Suggested change/fix:
Establish a proper XML sitemap (creation) process, find
the URLs that Google hits heavily & use them to link
internally

69. pa.ag@peakaceag69
#5
Facetted navigation,
sorting & filtering
(e.g. in categories)
Caused by/refers to:
Category pages that allow for filtering and/or sorting
Issue brief:
Various sorting/filtering/facet time categories and sub-
categories can lead to millions of (worthless) URLs
Issue categories:
Keyword cannibalisation, crawl inefficiency, thin content
Suggested change/fix:
Individual indexing strategy (based on demand) per filter
and facet, prevent crawling/indexing for sorting

70. Some audit items are
universally applicable…

71. pa.ag@peakaceag71
Must-have topics for any audit
Some items are universally applicable and need to be included in any technical SEO
audit, no matter the industry and/or scope
robots.txt (and general accessibility testing), ensuring
that search engine crawlers can discover your content
JS status quo (e.g. use of infinite scroll, JS framework
implementation, rendering, etc.)
GSC audit (performance, index coverage, fetch &
render)
Web performance (paint timings, font/JS loading, ATF
performance, dependencies, etc.)
hreflang setup (<head> vs. XML sitemap) and its
performance
Broken URLs/crawl errors & orphan pages (in general,
everything concerning site hygiene)
Page title/description duplicates (primary focus on
minimising DC flags; de-dupe vs. uniqueness)
Internal linking (full audit based on goals, incl.
prioritisation, cannibalisation, etc.)
Mobile vs. desktop parity (and other mobile-specific
recommendations)
Tracking implementation10
9
8
7
6
4
3
2
1
5

72. pa.ag@peakaceag72
A quick summary: better SEO audits for everyone!
#searchleeds
01
The right format
Choose the right
format based on your
goal(s) as well as the
recipient; sometimes
multiple formats are
needed.
02
Tackle the root cause
Never provide a report
that just highlights the
symptoms. Make it
actionable and provide
guidance. Prioritise
ruthlessly!
03
For in-depth audits
Executive summary,
proper formatting &
grammar, named
sources, a document
index and priorities
are a must-have.
04
Type & scope matter
Individualise audit
focus-areas and
starting points for
each business/domain
type and their
respective scopes.
05
Tailored, always
Audits that come
straight out of the
box and 1:1 tool
exports etc. are not
SEO audits!
Don’t. Just don't!

73. pa.ag@peakaceag73
bg@pa.ag
Care for the slides?
e-mail us > hi@pa.ag
Bastian Grimm
twitter.com/peakaceag
facebook.com/peakaceag
www.pa.ag
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