SEO Audit Services Case Study: Fixing Technical Issues to Restore Organic Growth

• Mian Tajamul
• December 30, 2025
• 0 Comments

Project Overview

This case study outlines a comprehensive SEO audit conducted for a global SaaS platform operating in the vacation rental and property management space. The platform serves international users and relies heavily on organic search visibility to attract property owners and managers.

The objective of this engagement was not to execute SEO changes, but to analyze the website’s current SEO health, identify technical and structural limitations, and provide a clear, actionable roadmap to support long-term organic growth.

As an SEO audit Expert, my role was to evaluate the site from a technical, content, and structural perspective and deliver data-driven insights that could guide future optimization efforts.

Project Objective

The primary goal of this SEO audit was to:

• Identify technical and structural issues affecting crawlability and indexation

• Assess on-page and content-related SEO gaps

• Review international SEO setup and site architecture

• Highlight opportunities to improve visibility, performance, and scalability

• Deliver a clear, actionable SEO roadmap for implementation

This audit was designed to support informed decision-making and provide a foundation for long-term organic growth.

Technical SEO Audit, Identifying Roadblocks to Crawl & Indexation

In the technical phase of the audit, the focus was on uncovering infrastructure issues that prevented search engines from effectively crawling and indexing content.

Key Findings

• Indexability Issues: Out of 3,920 total pages, only 1,981 were indexable, meaning hundreds of pages were invisible to Google.
• Broken Links and Redirect Chains: Multiple 4xx errors and inefficient redirect paths were consuming crawl budget.
• Canonicalization Errors: Improper canonical tags caused duplicate content to flourish, undermining ranking potential.
• Crawl Budget Waste: Sitemap contained 2,765 URLs but only 912 were valid (responding with 200 OK), while the rest were redirects or errors. This was diluting the impact of important content.

Impact on SEO

Technical inefficiencies not only caused reduced visibility but also slowed down page discovery, which negatively affected keyword rankings across target regions.

Recommendations

• Ensure all important pages are indexable with clean canonical implementation
• Consolidate broken redirects and fix sitemap structure
• Optimize robots.txt and XML sitemap to prioritize high-value pages

By addressing these core technical elements, search engines can better understand and rank Smoobu’s content, a foundational step in my SEO audits services roadmap.

Content & Structural Enhancements, Improving Relevance & Authority

High-quality content is critical for visibility, user engagement, and conversion. The content audit revealed overlapping topics, missing optimization, and inconsistent metadata.

Content Audit Highlights

• Duplicate or thin content across multiple pages
• Lack of keyword focus in key landing pages
• Meta titles and descriptions under-optimized for search intent
• Missing internal linking between related topics

Strategic Improvements

• Developed keyword-rich content briefs based on user intent and competitor analysis
• Rewrote metadata to improve CTR (click-through rate)
• Enhanced topical clusters to strategically guide users deeper into the site

By refining the content structure and aligning it with search demand, the website gained stronger authority and relevance signals, essential components of long-term SEO success.

International SEO & Hreflang Optimization

Project serves a global audience with localized content for multiple countries and languages. However, misconfigured hreflang tags were causing search engines to rank the wrong regional versions of pages.

Issues Discovered

• Inconsistent language-region tag implementation
• Cross-region version conflicts causing ranking dilution
• Incorrect signal path for search engines to identify regional intent

Solutions Provided

• Standardized hreflang tags for targeted regions
• Removed conflicting implementations
• Set clear language and region priorities

This helped search engines serve the correct version of pages to users in different regions, a crucial enhancement for global brands like Smoobu.

Backlink & Authority Analysis

SEO is not just about on-page optimization, backlinks remain a core authority signal. The audit analyzed the backlink profile and revealed:

Backlink Issues

• A large number of low-quality referring domains
• Lost backlinks due to URL changes and obsolete link paths
• Over-reliance on internal redirects

Strategic Backlink Plan

• Reclaim lost backlinks using redirect mapping
• Target high-authority placements in SaaS and travel tech publications
• Improve internal linking to strengthen authority flow

By combining content optimization with high-quality backlinks and internal authority structure, the site’s overall SEO relevance increased significantly.

SEO Audit Deliverables

The client received a structured, actionable SEO audit report including:

• Technical issue breakdown with priority levels

• Content and on-page optimization recommendations

• International SEO improvement plan

• Backlink and authority analysis

• Clear roadmap for implementation

All insights were presented in a way that internal teams or external developers could easily act upon.

Value of the Audit

This audit provided the foundation for:

• Improved crawl efficiency and indexation

• Clear visibility into SEO weaknesses and opportunities

• A scalable framework for future optimization

• Reduced risk of technical SEO errors impacting growth

Why Hire Me as Your SEO Audit Expert?

If you need SEO audit services that uncover real issues with real business impact, I provide:

• Thorough technical evaluations
• Strategic content optimization
• Competitor benchmarking
• Clear step-by-step implementation plans

Whether you’re experiencing drops in traffic, ranking issues, or slow growth, my SEO audits services will identify exactly what’s wrong, why it’s happening, and how to fix it.

Want a professional audit of your website by an SEO audit expert?
Hire me today and get the insights your business needs to scale organic traffic and conversions.