5 Essential Actions After Your SEO Audit

Fix Broken Links First (Impact: Immediate)

Why this matters most

Broken links are ‌equivalent to dead ends on your website. This significantly harms your website’s user experience and consequently signals to search engines that your website is poorly maintained and less valuable to the user. 

How to fix broken links

Depending on the SEO audit conducted, for example in SEMrush, it identifies any 404 broken links within the dashboard. To fix these links, there are a few options:

Internal Links:

• Implement a 301 redirect to a relevant existing page

• Replace the missing page if the content was valuable and up to date

External Links:

• Update these links to direct to similarly relevant resources

• Remove them entirely if there are no relevant substitutes

Results

Removing these broken links should result in a significantly noticeable improvement in page health, as well as engagement metrics. Furthermore, now search engines can crawl your website more effectively, potentially boosting your search rankings within 2-4 weeks. 

Optimise Page Load Speed (the factor you cannot ignore)

Why this is important

Page speed is a direct factor that impacts your search rankings. This is confirmed by Google! Not only do Google judge your site's value partly off page, but it also influences whether visitors stay or leave. 53% of mobile users leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load (Google AdSense)

The Speed metrics that matter

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): this should be under 2.5 seconds, indicating the main content of the page has loaded fast enough.

• First Input Delay (FID): this is ideal under 100 milliseconds. This indicates how responsive your site is to the user's first input.

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This should be under 0.1. This metric refers to the stability of a website’s layout during loading. This avoids significant shifting that often causes mis-clicks.

Tips to improve

• Optimise images

• Minimise CSS and JavaScript

• Regularly test your site speed using Google PageSpeed

Results

One study by Cosmoforge found a 26% increase in conversions for a retailer that reduced its load time from 3.5 to 1.8 seconds. By reducing load speed, bounce rates should improve, increasing the likelihood of conversion. This can improve rankings over several weeks as Google recognises the positive change in user experience.

Transform Thin Content into Comprehensive Resources

Why this has impact

If your content is regularly under 600 words and thin, you’re likely not providing enough evidence to search engines or your visitors that your website should be competitively ranking. Google heavily favours content that thoroughly answers the user’s questions.

How to expand content effectively

Step 1: Search Intent

• What questions do users have when they arrive on your page?

• What problems do your visitors need to resolve? 

• How would this content be superior compared to competitive pieces?

Step 2: Audit Your Competitors

• Find gaps in your content by investigating what information competitors have covered that you have not effectively

Step 3: Add real value

• Include facts and statistics to build trust and support your points

• Add case studies to increase relevance

• Guides & step-by-step instructions

• Visual elements such as videos, images, infographics

• Link to downloadable resources

Results

Comprehensive content should improve rankings within 4-8 weeks. This is because search engines will discover the improved value your content provides readers seen in increased time on page and reduced bounce rates. 

Rewrite Your Meta Descriptions for Maximum Clicks

Why this matters

Your meta description is often the first thing potential visitors read about before clicking on your website. It’s your 158 character sales pitch appearing directly in Google results. The importance of meta descriptions can be seen in a study by Ignite Visibility. This study revealed that over 60% of respondents said the description had the most significant impact on their decision to click a result.

The Meta description Formula that works

If the audit found meta descriptions that were outside of the 120-158 character count, you’re limiting your click-throughs. Here’s what happens:

• Too short (under 120 characters): You’re wasting valuable characters that could be used to persuade potential visitors. Fix this by expanding your meta descriptions. 
• Too long (over 158 characters): Google truncates descriptions over 158 characters, cutting off your text ‌mid-sentence, excluding your valuable call to action. 

How to optimise your meta descriptions

1. Include your target keywords/s at the beginning

2. Make it unique for each page

3. Include subtle calls to action throughout the text to generate curiosity

Results

A well-crafted meta description should significantly improve your click-through rate. This sends a powerful message to search engines, signalling that your site is worth engaging with. 

Restructure Heading Tags to Guide Readers (and Google)

Headings aren’t just for visual formatting. They create a logical format structure that guides users and search engines to scan your content more effectively. This helps to improve user engagement, as well as improving search engines' understanding of your content.

The heading hierarchy

If your audit identified a lack of H2-H6 tags, then your content may more resemble a wall of text rather than organised content.

• H1 Title tag - This is your main topic of conversation, unique to the page
• H2 - These are your chapter titles, indicating the next statement in your content. These should dominate your content visually to guide the reader from section to section.
• H3 - These are subsections of your content that dive deeper into each chapter’s topic of conversation. 
• H4-H6 - Use these sparingly as additional sub-context to the H2 tag. These sit underneath a H3 tag. 

Results

One analysis by Inetonline discovered that a website improved its visibility by over 30% after restructuring its content with clear, keyword-rich H1, H2, and H3 tags. This is because clear content structure increases time on pages and helps search engines identify valuable information. 
 

Your Action Plan: Prioritise by Impact

Step 1 Priorities: 

• Fixing broken links

• Fix page speed

Step 2 Priorities: 

• Rewrite meta descriptions and restructure heading tags

Step 3 Priorities: 

• Expand thin content

The Bottom Line: Audits Reveal, Action Delivers

A negative SEO audit is a great start in improving your user experience and search rankings. The websites currently dominating search results are the ones perfecting their websites prioritising the issues listed above. These changes, when implemented effectively, can have a significant and measurable impact on SEO.

Ready to discover what's holding your website back? Run our free SEO audit today to discover how your site performs based on technical performance and SEO.