Week 6 Tutorial: SEO Mini-Audit
Tutorial SEO Mini-Audit Build
Acquisition
1 Orientation
⏱ 10 min
Brief; exemplar audit; filename rule.
Investigation
2 Keyword Capture
⏱ 35 min
Use Google, People Also Ask, AlsoAsked, and AnswerThePublic to gather queries.
Production
3 Cluster & Brief
⏱ 40 min
Group by intent; pick one primary and two support clusters; draft H1-H3 and snippet.
Production
4 Internal + Local Links
⏱ 25 min
Read a real audit report in rooms and prioritise two fixes; map three internal links; list NAP consistency and local page actions.
Assessment
5 Share & Upload
⏱ 10 min
Room presentations of the audit priorities; upload single PDF to Moodle.
Your tutorial session runs for two hours. You will conduct a structured SEO audit of your campaign’s primary landing page or content hub, identifying keyword cluster opportunities, on-page and local signal gaps, and internal-linking requirements aligned to your Week 2 canvas. Your week has nine hours of structured learning time in total: one hour of lecture, two hours of tutorial shown above, and six hours of self-directed study covered in the independent study chapter.
AI-Assisted SEO Protocol
AI can support the Week 6 SEO task in two ways. First, AI can generate lists of related keywords and related questions for a target topic, which you then validate against a public keyword tool. Second, AI can audit on-page content against a target keyword, identifying where the keyword and related terms are present and where the content has gaps relative to similar pages.
Restrictions apply: search volume data must always come from a public tool with a date cited, since AI training data lags behind current search figures and any volume number it produces is a guess dressed as a fact. Treat AI-generated keyword suggestions as a starting point for research, one you still verify against a real tool.
Tutorial Task
In your two-hour tutorial, you will conduct a first-draft SEO mini-audit. Choose a real or hypothetical URL for your campaign’s primary content page. If no page exists, describe the page you would create.
Work through these steps in sequence.
- From your Week 2 canvas, identify the hierarchy stage and target segment. Use Table 2 from the lecture to determine which intent type your primary content should target.
- Use Google, Google’s “People Also Ask” panel, AlsoAsked, and AnswerThePublic to gather seven or more queries related to your campaign topic. Record the search volume or relative interest and the intent type for each.
- Group the captured queries by shared intent into clusters, following the method in the lecture’s Keyword Clustering section. Select one primary cluster and two support clusters for your target page.
- Draft an H1 and H2/H3 structure for the target page, built around the primary cluster term with the two support terms worked into genuine subtopics, plus a title tag and meta description snippet.
- Map three internal links from the target page to other pages on the same domain. If your campaign serves a geographically bounded audience, check NAP consistency across the website, Google Business Profile, and any directory listing, and note any local page actions needed.
- As a secondary check, search the domain in a public tool such as Ubersuggest or Moz Link Explorer and record the number of referring domains and the estimated domain authority score.
Activities 1 to 4 each carry their own table, and every one shows how the Reef Edge Guesthouse example filled in the same row, directly alongside the blank cell where you fill in yours. Read Reef Edge’s entry, then write the equivalent for your own campaign in the same amount of detail. By Activity 5 those four sets of tables are your finished mini-audit, with no separate summary table to copy everything into again.
Mark any cell [ASSUMPTION] where the entry rests on belief rather than tool data, then state a testing method.
In-Class Activities
Activity 1: Orientation (10 minutes)
Format: Whole class | Output: Three-question concept check result and audit scope note
Complete the three-question Moodle concept check individually and without notes.
Open the Week 6 Concept Check quiz in Moodle under the Week 6 activities panel.
Question 1. Information foraging theory predicts that searchers will:
- Browse randomly until they encounter relevant content
- Optimise the cost of finding information against its expected value, selecting queries and sources strategically
- Always prefer the first result on the page regardless of relevance
- Prefer image-based content over text-based content in search results
Question 2. A campaign in a small market wants to rank for the query “guesthouse Maldives.” According to the long tail principle, what is the primary problem with targeting this keyword?
- The keyword has too few monthly searches to generate useful traffic
- The keyword’s intent is too specific for an Awareness-stage campaign
- The keyword faces competition from established travel platforms and price-comparison sites with greater authority than the campaign can realistically build
- The keyword is too long to fit in a title tag
Question 3. A search query with transactional intent is most likely to include which of the following terms?
- “What is” or “how does”
- “Best” or “compare”
- “Apply”, “enrol”, or “buy”
- A brand name or website name
After the concept check, your tutor walks through one exemplar SEO mini-audit so you can see a finished decision record before starting your own. Confirm the upload filename rule now, before you build anything: W06_[YourName]_SEOAudit.pdf.
Then open your Week 2 canvas and scope the audit. These three entries fix what everything else this week traces back to.
| Scope element | Reef Edge Guesthouse’s example | Your entry |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign topic and target segment | Guesthouse direct bookings; international travellers comparing named Maldives accommodation, weighing a guesthouse against a pricier resort | |
| Hierarchy stage and the intent type it implies | Preference, which implies commercial intent: comparison queries over definitional ones | |
| Target URL, or a description of the page you would create | The rooms-and-rates comparison page, since a Preference-stage searcher wants to compare before booking |
Activity 2: Keyword Capture (35 minutes)
Format: Individual | Output: Keyword table with 7+ terms, intent classification, and hierarchy stage match
For your campaign topic, gather queries from four sources: Google’s own results page, its “People Also Ask” panel, AlsoAsked, and AnswerThePublic. Record at least seven terms, each with the relative search interest or volume indicator (from the tool, with date), the intent type, and the hierarchy stage it implies.
The first row shows how Reef Edge recorded one term. Your rows start below it.
| Keyword | Source tool | Relative interest / volume | Intent type | Hierarchy stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| “guesthouse vs resort Maldives price” | AlsoAsked, 29 July 2026 | Low volume, steady interest | Commercial | Preference |
| Head term: (e.g. “guesthouse Maldives”) | ||||
| Term 2 | ||||
| Term 3 | ||||
| Term 4 | ||||
| Term 5 | ||||
| Term 6 | ||||
| Term 7 |
Circle the terms that share intent with each other. These groups are your raw material for Activity 3.
Activity 3: Cluster & Brief (40 minutes)
Format: Individual | Output: A keyword cluster, and a draft H1/H2/H3 structure with a title tag and snippet, entered in your decision record
Using Figure 4 and Table 2 from the lecture, group your Activity 2 terms by shared intent, following the clustering method in the lecture. Select one primary cluster term and two support cluster terms for your target page.
Then draft the page’s H1 (built around the primary term) and an H2/H3 structure that works the two support terms into genuine subtopics rather than repeating the primary term. Draft a title tag (50-60 characters, primary term included, differentiated from competitors in the same results page) and a meta description snippet.
Count the characters of your title tag and meta description, and write the counts down. A title that runs long truncates in the results page, and the differentiator is usually what gets cut.
| Element | Reef Edge Guesthouse’s example | Your entry |
|---|---|---|
| Primary cluster term | best guesthouse Maldives house reef access | |
| Support term 1 | affordable guesthouse Maldives snorkelling | |
| Support term 2 | guesthouse vs resort Maldives price | |
| Search volume or relative interest (tool and date) | Low volume, high commercial intent; Ubersuggest, 29 July 2026 | |
| Title tag, with character count | “Reef Edge Guesthouse Maldives: Reef Access, Low Rates” (53, inside the 50-60 standard) | |
| H1 heading | “House-Reef Snorkelling at a Fraction of Resort Prices” | |
| H2/H3 structure, showing where each support term lands | H2 “Reef access and snorkelling” carries support term 1; H2 “How our rates compare with nearby resorts” carries support term 2 | |
| Meta description, with character count | “Private house-reef snorkelling access, priced at a third of nearby resorts. Compare our rooms and rates today.” (110) |
Before finalising your H2/H3 structure, ask: does each subheading answer a genuinely different question, or does it just restate the primary term in different words? A structure that repeats the same claim three times under three headings has padded one keyword three times, over clustering it.
Activity 4: Internal + Local Links (25 minutes)
Format: Breakout rooms of 3-4, then individual | Output: A prioritised recommendation pair from a real audit report, plus your own internal link map and local signals check
Part A: Reading a real audit report (15 minutes, in rooms)
Your tutor shares a real SEO audit report for a live website. It runs to 173 checks across 16 categories, and the site scores 86 out of 100. Your task is to decide what you would fix first, and defend the choice.
Work only from the nine findings below. The other 164 checks stay out of scope for this activity.
| Status | Check | What the crawler found |
|---|---|---|
| FAIL | Favicon Present | No favicon found |
| FAIL | Keyword Stuffing | 3 words above 2% density |
| FAIL | Meta Description Pixel Width | ~1165px against a 920px maximum |
| FAIL | Render-Blocking Resources | 10 scripts in <head> |
| WARN | Title Tag Length | 80 characters, recommended 30-60 |
| WARN | Meta Description Length | 188 characters, recommended 120-160 |
| WARN | Single H1 Tag | Page has 2 H1 tags |
| WARN | Descriptive Anchor Text | 30 links with empty or weak anchor text |
| WARN | Content Reading Level | Grade 15.1 |
Agree three roles before you start:
- Driver has the report open, scrolls, and reads findings aloud
- Sceptic asks of every item: does this actually matter for this site’s audience?
- Recorder fills the table below, and presents your room’s answer in Activity 5
Open seo-demo-before.html and seo-demo-after.html from the Week 6 Moodle page, and view the source of each (Ctrl+U, or Cmd+Option+U on a Mac). Eight of the faults in the table above appear there in a page you can read end to end, with each fix explained in the comments.
Complete this, then prepare a 90-second spoken answer for Activity 5:
| Finding | Why this one before the other eight | Expected impact | Metric that would confirm it worked | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fix first | ||||
| Fix second | ||||
| Leave alone | Why this one earns no developer time |
Two questions to settle inside the room before you present:
- The report gives four hard failures and five warnings. Does that ordering match your ordering? If it differs, what does the tool rank by, and what do you rank by?
- Which of the nine findings covers something this week never taught you? What does that tell you about the difference between an SEO audit and an SEO strategy?
Part B: Your own page (10 minutes, individual)
Map three internal links from your target page to other pages on the same domain, and record the link count and relevance in your decision record. Use the anchor text standard you have just applied to someone else’s site: every anchor should name its destination.
If your campaign serves a geographically bounded audience (a Malé-based programme, a guesthouse, a local service), check NAP consistency: does the business name, address, and phone number match exactly across the website, the Google Business Profile listing, and any directory listing? Note any local page action needed (claiming an unclaimed profile, correcting a mismatched address) in your decision record. If your campaign has no geographic dimension, mark this row [NOT APPLICABLE] and state why in one sentence.
As a secondary check, search your target domain in a free tool (Ubersuggest, Moz Free Link Explorer, or Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker) and record the number of referring domains and the estimated domain authority score. Run your page through PageSpeed Insights as well, and record the mobile score.
| Signal | Reef Edge Guesthouse’s example | Your entry |
|---|---|---|
| Internal links: number present and relevance | 3 links out, to rooms, rates, and the reef guide; each anchor names its destination | |
| PageSpeed Insights mobile score (0-100) | 62, below the 70 threshold, so speed becomes a recommendation [ASSUMPTION until re-tested after the fix] | |
| Local NAP consistency, and any local page action | Name matches across the website and Google Business Profile; the TripAdvisor listing uses a different phone number, so correct it there | |
| Authority signals: referring domains, domain authority, tool and date | 4 referring domains, estimated DA 11; Moz Free Link Explorer, 29 July 2026 | |
| On-page recommendation with the highest expected impact | Rewrite the title tag to 53 characters so the price differentiator survives truncation. Confirm with Search Console click-through rate over four weeks. | |
| Off-page or local recommendation with the highest expected impact | Publish a house-reef snorkelling guide for the atoll as a linkable asset. Confirm with referring domain count re-checked in eight weeks. |
The two recommendation rows are the ones your submission is really assessed on. You have just spent fifteen minutes prioritising someone else’s audit findings in Part A: apply the same reasoning to your own page, and state what evidence would prove you chose correctly.