Olga-Doug-SEO-Audit - Made with Clipchamp
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[00:00:00] Olga, how's it going today? Good to see you. Yeah, very nice to see you. I think long time no see. So it's, it's going perfect. I think this is like the busiest time in my entire SU career, but I'm very happy. It's fun. So, and tell me, how are you doing? How is your new show? Good, good. Yeah. Ranky Revolution is doing well.
[00:00:21] I basically get to talk to my friends and do a couple solo episodes out there. And yeah, it's super fun. I love podcasting and YouTube and the combo of the two. So I don't want to talk about myself too much today. And I want to hear from you. You have been busy. And I think you've, you spoke at a couple of conferences recently, you're, you're making the rounds, but this part one of the conversation is going to focus on SEO audits.
[00:00:49] And I, I feel like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like that's sort of been your bread and butter. Um, from, you know, growing your blog and getting started and spreading the word. You had a very thorough and technical SEO audit process. And then that's been sort of the core flagship product of, of the services you offer.
[00:01:11] So is that roughly accurate? It's very accurate because like it's, it started like at the agency kind of year. So I've been in SEO, SEO for like, I don't know, 12 years or so. I work at SEO agencies for like seven plus years. At some point after a couple of years, it became clear to me that I like auditing better because I am this type of person.
[00:01:37] I have this hyper focus. I like to analyze things. I like to spend a lot of time doing one thing, not jumping from one thing to the next. And my employer at the time, they were very kind of, um, I would say empathetic. They understood my needs and At some point, they, they told me that I, all I can do is auditing.
[00:01:59] And I think for three or five years at this agency, all I was doing was doing audits. And they had like a very nice process. They had all the tools. So I really learned that craft then, uh, there. And then of course I became an independent SEO consultant and I started sharing my knowledge on my blog. And I was talking about audits as well.
[00:02:25] And this is kind of how it all started. Fast forward to today. I still offer audits, of course, in depth SEO audits. And this is what now an SEO audit is usually the start of my cooperation with any client. Most of the clients I have now, they came here for an audit. I created the audit. And then they decided to stay with me because there are so many things I uncovered that they need me to supervise the audits.
[00:02:56] So that's why I have those monthly SEO clients as well. So monthly SEO and audits. Bread and butter as of now, mostly. So many follow up questions. So I don't want to harp too long on this, but you described it pretty well. Like you have a personality. That enjoys the auditing process, because some people would think about the very long spreadsheet or checklist or whatever you have to go through.
[00:03:26] And then all the steps and sub steps that you have to do to do an audit. Is there any other characteristic of your personality that helps you do an audit? Cause it's not a good fit for everyone. So anything else obvious to you, why you like auditing? So recently I learned that I have ADHD.
[00:03:52] One of the traits of that is that I like to get into this hyper focus and I can like spend hours, days, weeks doing one thing. And I guess this is one of the, one of the things why I liked SEO auditing. I am also like very introvert. I like to sit in my own room with my headset, my music, without people.
[00:04:17] And auditing allows me to do that perfectly. I can enjoy my music and just do audits like that the entire day. without switching focus from one thing to the next. Because like switching, switching tasks is something I have always had a lot of problems with. I was, it was also very problematic to me when I was at the SEO agency to, when, when I was doing one thing focusing and someone like called me on Teams, Olga, I need this, Olga help me with that.
[00:04:47] They kept kind of distracting me. And that's why at some point my employer said, Okay, I understand, Olga, you do not work this way, you should do audit. And then when I started working at home, without the distraction of other people talking, it kind of became a game changer. And it allowed me to, I think, really become well at that.
[00:05:10] Because, because this is part of my personality, doing audits. The good part is it sounds like the clients are coming to you because they know there's a problem and they know they need an audit. Yeah. Do you find you need to educate them on the value they're going to get from an audit? Or do they already know because they found your material, maybe your blog post about audits, for example?
[00:05:34] How does that look? Do you have to teach the client or potential client what they're going to get out of it? Um, Yeah, so at the agency part, very often I had to prepare a presentation. I had to like actually sell the idea of an audit to a client, convince them why it is, why it can help them so that they can sell it.
[00:05:56] In the case of my own SEO consultancy, I don't have to do that, fortunately, because I am not a salesperson. Everyone that is coming to me, they came to me through either YouTube or my blog, my blog posts. Usually it is blog posts, YouTube or LinkedIn. And they have already like watched a bunch of videos.
[00:06:17] They, they read my like usually very, very long and detailed guides and they, they are sold already. They know that they need it and then, and they just want to like, talk about details, whether I am available, the pricing. Sometimes they want a discovery call to like make sure we are a good match, but fortunately I don't have to convince them because it already like the, the relationship, everything is like set up differently if it is the client coming to me knowing they need me instead of me being desperate trying to sell, sell to them, which I don't know how to do.
[00:06:57] Right. And I know you probably get a bunch of emails like I do because you have your podcast and your YouTube channel and people are. emailing you, telling you that you need to, your SEO is bad. Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. You say, hey, your SEO is bad, like, I can help you with your SEO. And it's the most misdirected kind of pitch because we obviously know SEO and they have no idea who they're pitching.
[00:07:25] Yeah, yeah. And, um, yeah. I think even, even. Yeah, I think even Google receives those messages that you should improve your SEO Very often they they find some random keyword and send an email saying you rank on position I don't know 25 for this keyword. There is a huge missed opportunity I am aware that my blog potentially I could rank better.
[00:07:49] I could have a lot more traffic I could work on some of those keywords some of those guides, but the reality is I don't have time I wish I could But I, the, with the amount of traffic I have now, which is, I think, around 1, 000 or so unique visits per day, it is enough to keep me very busy that I cannot really take on new clients.
[00:08:15] Usually there is a long wait list for an audit. Usually it is six, eight weeks. I cannot take someone, someone comes to me and I start working the next day. Unfortunately, this is, this is not possible at this moment. Right. So that means there's a big opportunity out there. So a couple things we're, we're actually going to talk about.
[00:08:35] The final design and the audience building that you did, because you covered something really special there where you said, you don't have to sell. You don't have to educate the client. You have your blog, you have your YouTube channel where people know that they want to work with you already, or maybe they saw you speak at a conference and then they checked out more of your stuff, so they're already fully engaged, so we're going to, we're going to come to that in the part.
[00:09:00] Two of the interview. We're not going to go deep into the step by step of the SEO audits because you have covered that elsewhere. So we'll link up to that. Um, but as far as the process goes, is there any little tips that you can give, assuming someone has already read your blog post and looked at a few of your videos and they're like, okay, I want to start doing some of these SEO audits, maybe on a smaller scale.
[00:09:28] Cause the thing is like. Like you said, there's so many people that need audits. You have a six to eight week wait list, so there's a, there's a big market out there. So any small tips about folks wanting to do these SEO audits? So I would say like, um, when I was starting out, I was like selling different types of audits.
[00:09:49] I had like a quick audit. I had I think technical audit, EEAT audits. I don't even remember a lot of types. Then, looking at who is coming to me, what people need, I changed my proposition a little bit. I think, I'm not sure if it is fully reflected on the site. If it isn't, I will, I will update it. I now basically only offer in depth SEO audits.
[00:10:17] That is kind of the audits of everything, all the aspects, technical, EEAT, speed. Content on page, it kind of reviews your site from all the SEO angles and gives you like the full picture of where you stand in terms of SEO, what your next steps should be, where you are lacking. Because those smaller audits, especially technical ones, unless there was like a fatal technical issue that was preventing the site from being indexed, couldn't really move the needle.
[00:10:50] Because. Rarely, technical things really are that impactful. And with that holistic approach, I can always find a ton of things to improve, a ton of opportunities, a ton of even kind of quick fixes. And those audits usually lay the grounds of a, of a solid SEO strategy for a year or half a year. So now basically it is only in depth SEO audit and traffic drop analysis.
[00:11:20] Basically these two sometimes they are combined together depending on the client. Are there any specific tools or apps that you use that are critical to do these audits? So a bunch of tools. I always start any audit with, with a like kind of a manual review, simply browsing the site as if I wasn't an SEO, checking it on my phone.
[00:11:48] Checking it, uh, using like different Chrome extensions, SEO extensions that quickly let me check some SEO elements like Chrome Web Developer. So this is always like the first part. And very often it already gives me a lot of ideas. I can also give a lot of tips to a person who, who just wants like a quick review.
[00:12:10] Sometimes it happens during the discovery call, call. But then the time, uh, the next logical step is to obviously go through Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Google Search Console is probably the most important because like all the technical crawling issues, indexing issues, performance ranking, all the stuff that Google is seeing and reporting on is there.
[00:12:33] So Google Search Console is like essential tool. And of course, crawlers. So depending on the size of the site, if it is a small site, I can use a desktop based crawler. So it is usually, uh, Screaming Frog or SideBolt or both. Sometimes I crawl the site with multiple crawlers to get more data, get a better picture.
[00:12:55] But of course, you have to be wary of not killing the site, depending on, on the server, its settings, but different, like, kind of nuances here. In the case of a bigger site, a cloud based crawler usually is better, so JetOctopus. If the site has any JavaScript functionality, and most of them do, you have to do JavaScript rendering as well.
[00:13:22] And then, of course, all those basic SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs to kind of see the visibility. You can also like plug those tools. Including Google Search Console into the crawler, like Screaming Frog, so that you can just combine all this data into one. You can also connect PageSpeed Insights API to Screaming Frog.
[00:13:43] So you can have the totally full picture with, with one crawl. So that would be, I would say, like the, the basis. But, of course, there are a ton of other tools. There is also like Quora, I am talking about a lot. which is probably better for on page SEO than for auditing per se, but it can also help with, with an audit because very often during the audit, I have the on page SEO section and I check if the site is even optimized for any keywords, if any keyword mapping has been done.
[00:14:16] Very often it hasn't. So this is where I also use Quora to kind of show the potential. the opportunities that there are for, for the client in terms of on page. So this is sort of a two part question. The, what, what's sort of the ideal client that you're looking for? And you could just make up an average of like, you know, the size of the business, the number of pages, just a couple of characteristics.
[00:14:46] So we have an idea. The real question is like, how long does it take you to do the average audit? So who's like Uhhuh, your ideal, most average client and then who, how long does it take you to do that sort of an audit? Okay. So the ideal client is usually like small or average size website, uh, e-commerce.
[00:15:06] Huge websites with millions of pages usually are harder to audit you, uh, to crawl. You sometimes cannot even crawl them. So I would say. A couple of hundred pages or up to a thousand would be ideal. The site on WordPress or some CMS I know. And the client who is willing to actually implement the changes or is willing to trust me enough to give me access to the site to maybe implement some of the changes.
[00:15:36] It all depends on the client. Sometimes in the case of clients with WordPress, I also do some changes on the site. So. The client that trusts me and does not question my ideas, uh, there is of course, of course a risk always with making any changes, but they have to trust me. So, so I would say those things and the client who isn't like looking for cheap Fiverr type of SEO, they will pay me 500 bucks and they will send me 100 emails per day, uh, requiring like 100 percent of my attention every day.
[00:16:14] The client that understands that it is my time and it costs and my experience also costs and that an SEO audit is a long process, so, uh, the second question, depending again on the size of the site, it may be 20 hours, but I also did audits that took me 80 hours. I think the, the biggest one was around, I think, uh, 100 hours.
[00:16:42] So if I'm going to spend like two weeks. I have to be paid for that, right? So unfortunately, those things come at a price because the level of debts, the level of recommendations I provide is very, very deep. These are usually very long Google documents with screenshots, recommendations, links to like spreadsheets with specific examples.
[00:17:08] And the client has to have time and willingness. willingness to go through that and actually work on those, as I suggested in the order I suggested. So that would be my answer. All right. And do you, so are you able to talk about pricing and the packages and stuff? Okay, great. Yeah, sure. Sure. So we, we have a big range here, so it sounds like around 20 hours for like an average, maybe a little bit more.
[00:17:37] I mean, I could imagine it could creep up a little bit. So talk about the package. Or packages that you offer, is this like a flat rate project based situation, or is it blended where it's partially hourly? Is it fully hourly? Because I could see a situation where you get started and then you're like, Oh shit, this is going to take four times as long as the average one.
[00:17:59] And that could create a significant problem for your whole workflow and your sanity. So how do you, how do you design these packages? Yeah, actually I had. A situation like that not long ago where I heavily underestimated the, the project. And when I got to doing that, it turned out that's like five times more time and money is needed, but it doesn't have happened very often.
[00:18:28] I usually am okay at estimating. So I would say the standard in depth as you audit starts at around 5k. And it can go up to even 15, 20k if it is like a huge e commerce website that has a ton of problems, millions of URLs, because sometimes investing those even 20k into an audit and me fixing the things, the things that makes them lose millions of dollars is, is nothing.
[00:19:04] Like I had this, this situation a couple of months ago, a huge e commerce store came to me. And they said Google is non indexing them, they have a ban, and they are losing millions of dollars. And they said they did nothing to cause it, and in reality, it, at first sight, it looked that they are right. There was no noindex, there was no manual penalty, nothing of that sort.
[00:19:31] But when I checked the rendered source code, which is what Google sees after rendering JavaScript, actually in the rendered code, There was a, a, a redirect to old a MP version of the page, which had a no index. So basically Google was, um, given the information that the site should be no indexed, and, and Google kind of listened.
[00:19:56] And with that one fake, um, I saved them a ton of money. So sometimes the price is high, but the, the ROI of that price is even higher. Of course, in the case of smaller sites, like sometimes bloggers come to me with small sites, usually affiliate site that was like heavily penalized, I won't charge them that much because I understand they may not have that budget and sometimes, and I may not need that, that much time.
[00:20:27] Regarding as what's in the package, so I usually, when I, when I send them the pricing, I usually It will take me around that many hours, my hourly rate is that, but this is an estimate, so I may take longer or, uh, it may take me, uh, fewer hours, but the price, uh, for this project is that, and I usually have some buffer for unexpected costs.
[00:20:55] Things, and I inform the client about, about this and in the package, they get a very long Google document with, as I said, screenshots, recommendations, uh, like the priority, all those things. There is also a spreadsheet listing all those things from the audit with links to those specific headings in the audit.
[00:21:16] And in the spreadsheet, there is like priority, scale, uh, how easy it is to implement and potential SEO impact. And status. So when the client is working on those things, they can kind of update the spreadsheets so that I know where they are, if I can verify something. And of course, there is usually the entire folder with, uh, uh, with spreadsheets listing specific URL, specific, specific issues.
[00:21:45] And I also record, after finishing that, I record a loom video where I walk the client through the audit, through the entire Google Drive folder. I share with them, kind of tell them what they can find where, and like the general final thoughts, next steps for the audit. And after that, they can book a call with me, 90 minutes where, during which we discuss the audit, and next steps, and what they can do.
[00:22:14] Um, want to do next, who will be implementing, implementing, and at that point, very often they decide to hire me for, for the next month or for a year, depending on what I actually find on their site in the audit. Great answer. Couple quick follow ups as we wrap up this section, we could probably do a 10 part series on like doing this sort of thing.
[00:22:39] So you mentioned that you underestimated the work for a particular client by about, uh, five times. Yeah. So what did you do when you realized it? Do you go back to the client and say, Hey, I actually made a mistake. Here's why I made a mistake. Um, the previous estimate is not going to work. Like can we renegotiate this?
[00:23:04] How did you handle it? So I got stressed a lot and I actually went back to the client and I said that after spending 10 hours, I learned those things which I couldn't know before. when I was doing the proposal because I didn't have the data I had then. Maybe it was a little bit my bad, maybe I should spend more time doing the proposal.
[00:23:27] At first the client wasn't really happy but I think they understood that my intentions weren't bad and that I was very detailed in my explanations regarding what actually needs to be done, how many people other problems there are on the side, which I didn't anticipate. And, uh, I offered that, uh, for any extra work, uh, that goes beyond those hours, I will charge them hourly at a slightly discounted rate that normally, and they agreed to that.
[00:24:02] So it was kind of a compromise, I would say. Great. This one worked well. Right. Yeah. And I think, like you said, you didn't have any ill intentions. So they were, they understood that you were very detail oriented. And the thing is, like from a, from my external perspective, obviously it would be more stressful if I was actually dealing with it.
[00:24:25] But if you have a wait list of clients and you're like, okay, I undercharge for this one client and I can cut my law, I can refund the money. Say, hey, this contract is null and void, whatever your escape clause is in your contract, you get out of it, you lose 10 hours, but you don't lose the other 40, right?
[00:24:45] Like, you could have just cut your losses, it's a sunk cost, and move on. The client may not work with you again, but in the long run, you have a wait list, and you can just keep going on, but luckily it worked out, so that's a great scenario. Yeah. Okay. As we are. Wrapping up here, are there any like differentiating factors for your SEO audits versus other companies, other agencies doing them out there?
[00:25:15] What makes yours a little bit different and better? I would say this, um, kind of obsessive focus on SEO, like I am, I have like extreme attention to details. I very often notice things that other people do not notice. This is kind of, I don't know, this is like some autistic tendency. I'm not sure, but this is like, I have that, uh, in many other areas of life as well.
[00:25:45] So I think this is, this is something, um, that, uh, makes them different. And this holistic approach, like very, very holistic, I look at the site from many different angles. Uh, like I also look at conversion rate optimization, even though it has nothing to do with SEO, But I look at those other elements as well, and I never blindly follow what the tool is telling me, because those tools often provide recommendations.
[00:26:15] And I have seen those cheap audits, automated types of audits that clients came to me with and they showed me what other agencies send them. And this was basically very long, 100, 100 pages audits, fully automated from, for example, And this audit is irrelevant because the tool does not have the context of the site.
[00:26:37] We have AI, but still it is not that advanced yet. So those automated audits, automated recommendations usually have nothing to do with reality. They always have to be like screened by real experience, human brain. So, and my recommendations, I always follow my own checklist, my own process, using the tools.
[00:27:02] Not vice versa. I always review at the end what the tool is suggesting in case maybe I missed something, but it is never the tool dictating me what to check. So I would say this and like the amount of time I spent and, and the dedication, because I become hyper focused and I become, I start obsessing and I want the client actually to succeed.
[00:27:29] And, uh, I allow them to reach out to me with any questions. My, my like monthly clients, they also have my WhatsApp, so I allow them to kind of get in touch with me when they really need it. I try to keep the balance between life and work, but I think this more personal, personalized approach is also something that the clients who come to me value, especially if they had bad experiences with SEO agencies.
[00:27:58] Perfect. Okay, I think that's a good, it's a good wrap up here. And I think, you know, people, people should obviously see the big opportunity here again with the wait list that you have. But you put a lot of time into, I guess, generating the, the wait list and creating, uh, SEO sly and the YouTube channel and all that stuff.
[00:28:22] So we'll get into that before we do move on. Is there any final thoughts about the audit, um, process or anything like that that you want to mention? And we'll link up to all your auditing resources. So people can kind of take a look at. what you have going on. But any final thoughts? So something I already said, never, never trust the tool, what it is telling you, always use your human brain when auditing.
[00:28:48] And I would recommend people to subscribe to my newsletter, because in my newsletter, I will be sending some coupon codes for my upcoming, uh, course, all about SEO auditing. I think now maybe this course is already Live. And in this course, I teach my entire process from start to finish. And if you finish that course, and you are willing to learn, experiment, you will be able to basically recreate what I have done and charge people like 5k per audit.
[00:29:24] This is the, the only way for me to kind of scale my time and my knowledge because I have just as much time in a, in a day. That's why I decided to, to go that route, creating SEO SciPro, where I teach people my techniques and the course, which also SEO Audit Mastery course, which teaches all things SEO audits.
[00:29:47] Perfect. Well, it's always a pleasure to catch up. We will link up to all the places that you're at, um, but is there like a home base that you know, people should just go to, to find all your stuff? I would say seosly. com and seosly. cloud, the tool, and you will find everything that you need there. All right.
[00:30:09] Perfect. Well, we will catch up again soon and thanks a lot for your time today. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Bye bye everyone.
