Why an SEO Audit Matters
Even in an AI-first landscape, search engines still dominate the access to consumer searches. Even if AI search does take the majority of searches away, it still heavily relies on websites that search engines like.
But how do you know what needs to be done to make these engines like your site?
Luckily, the answer to this is extremely easy.
SEO Audits all the way!
A proper SEO audit will:
- Pinpoint hidden technical errors that will harm use experience, and in turn harm your rankings on search pages.
- Highlight new opportunities to improve your search traffic and get your ranking for better and more targeted keywords.
- Reveal strengths and weaknesses in your backlink profile.
- Compare your performance directly against local competitors.
However, here at Brand Blink Solutions, we take things a step further to ensure your local Pittsburgh business thrives!
We will audit everything that leads you to more local search visibility.
Whether you're a restaurant in a Pittsburgh neighborhood, a downtown law firm, or a contractor in the surrounding suburbs, your customers are ideally searching for services NEAR THEM.
We will show you all of the ways Google ranks authority within the local ecosystem.
Ultimately, an audit is more than just a report. It's a roadmap to better rankings, more qualified traffic and stronger leads.
Our Pittsburgh-Focused Audit Process
While general SEO principles apply everywhere, the Pittsburgh market has its unique competitive dynamics.
Large national chains compete alongside small local businesses. User behavior is shown to reflect the city's unique neighborhoods and culture.
Let's take a look how we break down Pittsburgh-specific insights into SEO and your business:
Step 1: Technical Crawl and Quick Fixes
Every website needs a structurally sound foundation for healthy web traffic.
Technical issues typically have super quick fixes that can drastically change how reliable Google views your site.
It only would make sense to start with the quickest fixes that ensure stable performance and a pleasant user experience — both strong SEO signals.
A technical crawl will uncover issues that may not be obvious but significantly harm your site health.
Common problems that we look for include:
- Broken links - These are links that your website has that lead to dead ends or infamous 404 not found pages. These are bad signals to search engines
- Slow page load speeds - If your page doesn't load in seconds, visitors will leave before you even get a chance to convert them. Average engagement time is another metric that search engines track.
- Mobile usability errors - Most search engines use a mobile first approach. In fact, google only crawls sites through a mobile lens. After all most website traffic is from users' smart phones.
- Indexing issues - This includes pages that search engines should see but don't, or pages that are redundant that search engines flag as duplicate content.
These may be quick issues to fix, but they can deliver measurable results within weeks.
Step 2: On-Page SEO Analysis
Once we establish a solid technical foundation, we turn to on-page SEO. This is everything your visitors (and the search engine crawlers) see when they visit your site.
In our audit we examine:
- Keyword strategy - Are you targeting the keywords that give you the greatest opportunities for targeted web traffic?
- Title tags and meta descriptions - Are your titles optimized for your target keywords? Do your meta descriptions compel users to click?
- Keyword Placement - Is there a natural usage of your keyword throughout each page's content
- Content depth and relevance - How well does your content express experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (Strong signals of good content)?
- Internal linking - Proper internal links guide users and search engines to your most important pages.
In order to add a Pittsburgh touch to our analysis, we strive to optimize for local intent as well. We mix in renowned neighborhood names, local landmarks, and city specific keywords where appropriate.
Step 3: Backlink Review
Backlinks are the backbone of the Google search algorithm. Backlinks being the number and quality of other sites linking to yours.
These remain to be one of the strongest indicators of authority in Google's eyes.
But not all links are created equal.
Our backlink review focuses on:
- Quality - We analyze links and find the ones from reputable, relevant sites that give your site more "link juice".
- Relevance - You want links from established websites in your specific niche. Ex: A Pittsburgh food blog linking to a local bakery carries more value than a sports news website linking to the same local bakery.
- Toxic links - Spammy, low-quality links hurt your authority and may need to be disavowed.
- Opportunities - We will identify potential candidates that we feel there is a chance to earn a link from that will also give great value to your domain's authority.
Local backlink building is especially powerful because it establishes your company as a trusted Pittsburgh area business.
Being featured in Pittsburgh related news sites, Chamber of Commerce pages, and city blogs will send strong signals of trust.
Step 4: Competitor Analysis
The hard part of SEO is that it isn't just you targeting the same keywords and audience... Your competitors are too!
Our audit helps you see where you stack up against your competitors.
Our competitor analysis includes:
- Keyword gap analysis - Finding keywords that you aren't targeting or ranking for that your competitors do.
- Content strategy comparison - Evaluating the topics and content that works for them.
- Backlink source review - This is one of the best ways to find link building opportunities. Odds are that if your competitor earned a link from a site, you can likely grab one from them yourself.
Studying competitors gives extremely valuable insight into what is working for them and what they may be missing.
Our SEO audit will help you capitalize on this.
Sample Audit Checklist
While we do tailor our audit to each particular business, here is an example of what our audit checklist may include:
- Page speed scores and Core Web Vitals metrics
- Mobile responsiveness and user experience datapoints
- Sitemap and robots.txt checks
- Proper use of title tags, meta descriptions, and heading structure
- Keyword targeting and density checks
- Structured data markup for enhanced search features such as AI Overviews
- Backlink quality checks
- Citation consistency for local SEO (NAP: Name, Address, Phone)
- Content gaps compared to competitors
- Google Business Profile optimization
This sample checklist ensures no critical area of your SEO is overlooked and empowers you to get actionable steps to increase your search traffic.
It also can help you understand value that our Pittsburgh-focused SEO services may provide.
Get Started with Your Free SEO Audit Today
The Pittsburgh business landscape is only growing more competitive. Over the last couple of years we have even seen a surge in national brands making a push into a Pittsburgh search presence.
In order to beat them out, you need a clear and data-backed strategy.
Let us help with that with our free, no-obligation audit to get you started.
You'll receive:
- A clear report highlighting strengths and weaknesses. - A list of action items in order to help you grow. - Insights targeting your industry in the Pittsburgh market.
Your competitors aren't waiting to improve SEO. Neither should you.
and start moving your business to the top of Pittsburgh’s search results.