Here guest author Szymon Slowik, SEO expert, consultant, lecturer talks about his experience and SEO consulting services on szymonslowik.com.
So there’s a problem with the great majority of SEO audits… Sure, they look professional. There’s always a list of issues, a few exported graphs, maybe even a heatmap or two (rarely, to be honest). But when you ask the critical question—“What do I do with this?”—you’re usually met with silence, or worse, a vague recommendation to “improve technical SEO.”
Let’s be real. A meta tag audit won’t save a poorly targeted landing page. A clean sitemap won’t help if your content doesn’t address user intent. And checking Core Web Vitals is pointless if the entire site is misaligned with your business goals. From my experience, SEO audits that deliver real results are not about tools or checklists. They’re about understanding people—and building bridges between what users want and what your business offers. Of course technical SEO is important, but it’s just a starting point. Not a product valuable for business itself.
When I run an audit, I always start with the brand. Not the title tags. Not the robots.txt file. The brand. Because no matter how good your on-page SEO is, if people don’t recognize or trust your brand, you’ve already lost the click. In my opinion, your visibility in branded search is one of the clearest indicators of long-term success. Are you appearing in AI summaries? Do you control the narrative in knowledge panels? Do users see sitelinks, reviews, and consistent messaging across SERP features?
In fact, I recently conducted a full SEO audit for a UK-based finance broker, and our main focus was exactly that—how the brand appeared in the Zero Moment of Truth. We paid close attention to what users saw before they even landed on the site: snippets, reviews, mentions in AI tools, and how clearly the brand promise came through. That became the foundation for everything else!
We then zeroed in on UX and user engagement—because from my experience, that’s where real performance gaps tend to hide. We reworked page layouts, improved clarity around CTAs, and streamlined internal links so users could navigate effortlessly. We also enhanced the messaging: clearer benefits, more conversational tone, and stronger social proof to build trust. These may sound like basic things, but they made the difference.
The result? The site returned to growth.
That’s the kind of outcome you don’t get from just fixing broken canonical tags. Yes, we checked technical issues—indexing, redirects, structured data—but the improvements in trust, navigation, and communication are what really moved the needle. Make it easier for users, and you’ll usually make it better for SEO.
From my audits, I’ve learned that the most valuable insights often come not from crawling errors or HTML validation, but from watching real users interact with the site. Session recordings. Rage clicks. Drop-off points. These aren’t just UX metrics—they’re SEO signals. And they often explain why bounce rates are high, conversions are low, or why ranking pages still underperform.
Communication is another layer most audits gloss over. Too many focus on whether titles and meta descriptions are “correct.” But correct isn’t compelling. From my perspective, every snippet in Google is a sales pitch. You’re not just optimizing metadata—you’re competing for attention. You need titles that make people curious, descriptions that spark action, and above all, content that delivers on its promise.
Here’s another lesson I’ve learned over the years: if your content doesn’t match the user’s intent right now, you lose. SEO is about meeting users where they are—not where you wish they were. If someone is searching for a comparison, don’t give them a product page. If they’re problem-aware but not solution-ready, don’t hit them with a hard-sell CTA.
More and more people are searching via tools like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Copilot. They’re not clicking ten blue links—they’re reading generated answers. From my audits, I’m seeing how LLMs are shaping the top-of-funnel experience. If your site isn’t structured in a way that feeds those answers—clear headings, concise sections, schema markup—you’re invisible in that space. Worse, if your chatbot gives answers that contradict your landing pages, you lose trust instantly.
In my opinion, this is where SEO is headed: a convergence of organic visibility, brand coherence, UX clarity, and AI adaptability. A modern audit must evaluate all of that.
But here’s the critical part most consultants miss: prioritization. I never deliver an audit without clear, actionable priorities. What’s a quick win you can tackle in the next two weeks? What needs developer involvement? What can wait until Q4 but will move the needle long-term?
Some things—like fixing inconsistent CTAs or adding schema to FAQs—can drive measurable impact fast. Others—like rebuilding your topical authority or mapping content to customer journey stages—require time and strategy. But both are necessary. One gets you momentum. The other builds dominance.
I also advise clients to connect SEO outcomes to business metrics. Focus on task completions, satisfaction surveys, lead quality. Don’t stop at rankings or traffic. From my experience, the most convincing SEO reports are the ones that show how changes affected real behavior: did more users fill out the form, complete the funnel, or engage deeper?
At the end of the day, a great SEO audit is a business document—not just a technical report. It should help you decide where to invest, what to improve, and how to grow. It should reflect not just your website’s health, but your company’s priorities and constraints. And it should make your marketing team feel smarter, not more confused.
So next time someone hands you an SEO audit, ask yourself: does this reflect how real users engage with my brand? Does it offer clarity on what matters to the business? And most importantly—does it help you act?
If the answer is no, what you’ve got isn’t an audit. It’s a distraction. If you like that approach sign up for the SEO consulting session and audit that will match your business goals and your users’ needs.
Read more:
SEO audits that actually work: beyond checklists and into business results
