Often, we’ll ask a prospective B2B client, “How long has it been since your last SEO audit?”
While some will answer that they’ve never commissioned a site audit, the ones that have previously had an organic search audit of their site, may say, “Yeah, we did that about five years ago.” That’s simply too long. Likely, too much has changed in those years, not only in terms of the site, but also in the people who care for and feed it.
So, how often should you commission an SEO audit?
Well, there is no universal answer to that question. And you shouldn’t rely solely on your analytics’ organic search performance metrics to signal that it’s time for a fresh site audit. Rather, circumstances should dictate timing, and the necessary frequency of audits may be more often than you think. Here are some of the key events that may warrant a fresh site audit:
- Mergers and Acquisitions
- Rebranding and Site Overhauls
- Site Migrations
- New Agencies have been Retained
- Technical Team Turnover
- Content Team Turnover
- Prolonged Decline in Organic Search Performance
- Two Years have Elapsed
In subsequent posts, we’ll address each of these events and why it’s important to commission a site audit at each juncture.