Your SEO audit gives you a quick view of how your website is performing in four important areas:

• Keywords
• Onsite
• Speed
• Backlinks

It also gives you an overall score out of 100. That's an average of the four areas evaluated in the report.

That score is not a school report, and it is not a final judgement on your business. It is a guide to where attention may be needed first.

This page will help you understand what the audit is showing, why those areas matter, and what the next sensible steps usually look like.

An SEO audit is useful, but it is not the full story.

It gives a bird’s-eye view of key SEO areas. It is not meant to uncover every possible challenge, opportunity, or business-specific issue on your website.

Some problems may need a deeper look. Some warnings may matter more than others. Some may be tidy-up tasks rather than urgent fixes.

So the aim is not to panic, chase every score, or fix everything at once.

The aim is to understand what matters most.

Usually, that starts with two things:

1. Your keyword strategy
2. Your onsite optimisation

Those two are closely connected.

If your keyword strategy is wrong, your onsite SEO may be pointing your pages in the wrong direction.

If your onsite SEO is weak, even good keywords may not be properly supported.

That is why these two areas normally come first.

Once those foundations are clearer, the focus can shift towards building useful content, earning better backlinks, and improving page speed where needed.

Good question.

Search is changing. People are using Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and whatever new thing gets launched next week with a name that sounds like a kitchen appliance.

But the foundations have not disappeared.

AI search still needs clear, useful information to work with. Your website still needs to explain who you help, what you do, where you do it, and why your content deserves attention.

That starts with good onsite SEO.

If your website is unclear, poorly structured, weak on content, or not being found in Google and Bing today, it is unlikely to magically become visible in AI search tomorrow.

AI search does not remove the need for strong SEO basics.

It makes them more important.

So when we talk about keywords, onsite optimisation, content, backlinks, and speed, we are not just talking about old-school Google SEO.

We are talking about making your website easier to understand, easier to trust, and easier to recommend across search as it changes.

Some businesses choose keywords because they sound good.

Some use internal industry language that customers rarely type.

Others rank well for phrases that look impressive in a report, but have little or no search volume.

That last point matters.

A keyword only helps your business if it can bring the right kind of visitor.

Ranking highly for a phrase with almost no search volume may not do much for you.

It is a bit like having the best shop sign on a road nobody uses. Technically impressive. Commercially underwhelming.

Your audit helps highlight how visible your website appears to be for selected keywords.

If you provided a competitor, it may also show how your visibility compares with theirs.

Competitor analysis is useful, but not because you should copy another business.

Copying competitors is usually lazy, risky, and occasionally a bit embarrassing.

The value is in understanding where they may be outperforming you.

A competitor comparison can help show:

• which keywords they may be visible for
• where their service pages may be stronger
• what content gaps you may have
• whether their website is clearer than yours
• where you could create something more useful

The goal is not to copy their content.

The goal is to understand their strategy, then improve on it.

Keywords come first because they shape the rest of the SEO work.

Your page titles, headings, content, internal links, and future blog topics should all be guided by the right search terms.

If the keyword strategy is wrong, the rest of the work can head in the wrong direction.

That means you could spend time improving pages that are aimed at searches your customers are not making.

Neat work. Wrong target.

This is why keywords and onsite optimisation are closely connected.

Keywords help decide what a page should focus on.

Onsite optimisation helps make that focus clear.

H2 and H3 headings help structure the rest of the page.

They make content easier to scan and help explain how the page is organised.

That matters because people do not read websites from top to bottom like a Victorian novel.

They skim. They scan. They jump around. They look for the bit that answers their question.

Clear headings help them find it.

Alt text describes an image for accessibility tools and search engines.

Good alt text should explain what the image shows in plain English.

It should be accurate, useful, and natural.

It should not be a dumping ground for keywords.

Bad alt text:
SEO SEO audit website ranking Google business growth

Better alt text:
Michael reviewing an SEO audit on a laptop

Internal links are links from one page of your website to another.

They help visitors move through your site and help search engines understand which pages are connected.

Good internal links use natural wording.

For example, linking the words “SEO support options” to a page about SEO services is useful.

Linking “click here” is less helpful because it gives no context.

Your page content should clearly explain what the page is about, who it helps, and what someone should do next.

Good content answers real customer questions.

Weak content often talks around the subject, uses vague claims, or says very little that helps someone make a decision.

Search engines need clear content.

So do humans.

Funny how often that gets forgotten.

Your audit may show a list of onsite actions.

Do not just look at the action title and assume you know what it means.

Click the arrow on the right-hand side of each action.

That opens more detail, including:

• what the action means
• why it matters
• how to fix it

This is where the report becomes more useful.

Instead of staring at a list of warnings, you can see the reasoning behind each action and what improvement is being suggested.

The audit may only show a selection of actions, not every possible issue across the whole website. Again, bird’s-eye view, not a full engineering report with biscuits.

Keyword strategy and onsite optimisation are usually SEO-led.

Speed improvements often sit closer to web design or web development.

A simple quick win is image compression.

Large images are one of the most common causes of slow pages, and this is often something a website owner can improve without touching code. If your website lets you replace oversized images with properly compressed versions, that is usually worth doing.

Other speed fixes may be better left to your website designer or developer, unless you are comfortable working with web development.

That includes:

• reducing unnecessary scripts
• improving hosting
• changing plugins
• adjusting templates
• improving caching
• fixing platform or theme issues

Those changes can help, but they can also break things if handled badly.

And fixing one problem by creating three new ones is not progress. It is just DIY with consequences.

Do not chase a perfect speed score just because a tool waves a number at you.

Start with the basics.

Ask:

• do important pages feel slow when you open them?
• do large images take too long to load?
• does the site work properly on mobile?
• do pages jump around as they load?
• are visitors likely to give up before the page finishes loading?

If users are waiting, bouncing, or getting frustrated, speed needs attention.

If the score is imperfect but the website loads well for real people, it may not be the first priority.

The aim is not to win a speed test.

The aim is to remove anything that is clearly hurting the user experience or holding the website back.

A backlink is a link from another website to yours.

Search engines can use backlinks as trust signals.

In simple terms, when a relevant and credible website links to you, it can help support your authority.

That does not mean backlinks are just a numbers game.

More is not always better.

Better is better.

Backlinks matter, but they usually work best after your keyword strategy and onsite optimisation are in better shape.

If your website pages are unclear, weak, or focused on the wrong searches, backlinks may point attention towards pages that are not doing their job properly.

That is not ideal.

It is like sending guests to a shop before anyone has put the lights on, labelled the shelves, or worked out what is actually for sale.

So the usual order is:

1. Make sure your keyword strategy is sensible
2. Improve the onsite optimisation
3. Strengthen the content
4. Earn relevant backlinks that support trust

Backlinks can help build authority, but they are not a substitute for clear, useful pages.

Be careful with backlink offers that promise quick results.

Especially anything that sounds like:

• 500 backlinks this week
• instant authority
• guaranteed rankings
• cheap guest posts at scale
• links from “high DA” websites with no real relevance
• packages where nobody can explain where the links come from

If a backlink exists only to manipulate search rankings, it may carry risk.

A good link should have a reason to exist beyond SEO.

That reason might be business relevance, local connection, professional credibility, useful content, or genuine referral value.

The goal is to earn trust from backlinks that add value to your SEO, not collect random links for the sake of a bigger number.

That is normal.

An audit can show there is work to do, but it cannot know your time, budget, confidence, or business priorities.

That is where a conversation helps.

We can help you understand what matters most, what can wait, and which SEO programme fits your situation best.

No pressure to choose the biggest programme.

No jargon.

No scare tactics.

Just a clear conversation about how to solve the problem your audit has highlighted.

The audit has shown where attention may be needed.

Now we can help you decide what action makes sense.