What Is An SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is the process of evaluating the SEO performance of a website. The main goal of an SEO audit is to identify issues and find new opportunities to help you achieve higher rankings in search engine results. It usually covers indexing, technical SEO, keyword research, on-page SEO, and competitor analysis.
To perform an SEO audit, you'll need the help of Google Search Console and SEO audit tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, or others.
Why is SEO Audit Important?
A search engine optimization audit (SEO Audit) will help you identify problematic areas that need improvement with an action plan to correct them. It's also a great way to keep your website up-to-date with the latest developments in search marketing and on top of the competition.
I recommend doing regular SEO audits (at least twice a year) to ensure your website is up-to-date with the latest developments.
How To Do An SEO Audit (15 Steps)
Follow our SEO audit checklist to review your website:
- Check For Google Penalties
- Check Brand Name Reputation
- View Page Indexing Report For Errors
- Check For Duplicate Website Versions
- Check Your Organic Traffic
- Run A Website Crawl
- Analyze Your Website's Core Web Vitals
- Check Mobile Page Experience
- Improve Your Website Speed
- Check Your Internal Links
- Analyze And Identify Toxic Links
- Do A Competitor Analysis
- Identify New Keyword Opportunities
- Identify New Link Opportunities
- Update Your Top Performing Pages
1. Check For Google Penalties
The first step is to check whether your website is penalized by Google. Your rankings will be negatively affected if your website is under a manual or algorithmic penalty.
You should find out when the penalty was imposed and why your website was penalized. Then, you should create an action plan to correct the issues and remove the penalty.
There are two easy ways to check for Google penalties.
First, log in to the Google Search Console and select ‘Manual Actions’ from the left menu. If a manual action is imposed on your website, you can see the reason(s) here.
The second way is to compare your Google organic traffic for the dates Google released an algorithmic change.
A sudden drop (or increase) in organic traffic is a clear sign that your website was affected by the changes.
Login to Google Analytics and go to Life Cycle > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition.
Click the dropdown menu above the table and select "Session source/medium".
Type "google / organic" in the search box and click Enter. The report now shows your Google Organic Traffic only.
Use the date filters to view your traffic for the last few months.
Compare the dates on which you see significant changes in traffic with the dates Google released an algorithmic change.
What to do if you are under a Google penalty?
If the above tests indicate that you are in trouble, the best approach is to find as many details as possible about the Google updates and adjust your SEO audit accordingly.
For example, suppose a site is penalized by Google because of thin content. In that case, you should audit the quality of your content and either improve, redirect, or remove pages that don’t meet the quality standards.
2. Check Brand Name Reputation
The second step is to search for your brand name on Google and review the results.
Things to check:
- Does your homepage come up first in the results?
- Does Google show sitelinks along with your listing?
- Are the descriptions below your homepage and other pages accurate?
- Does Google show a knowledge graph entry (Google Business Profile Listing) on the right panel for your brand?
- Is the name and other information on your GBP page correct?
Scroll down to the bottom of the results, particularly the "related searches" section.
Things to check:
- Are the ‘related searches’ relevant to your brand?
- Do you see any related searches you can utilize by creating dedicated pages? Typical examples are ‘brand name reviews.’
What to do if you don’t get the expected results?
If you don’t get a nice listing, as explained above, then this means that there are several issues with your website.
The best approach is to fix these issues before proceeding any further by:
- Reviewing and optimizing your site structure
- Review your homepage SEO
- Claim your Google Business Profile page and ensure all information is accurate and correct.
3. View Page Indexing Report For Errors
The next step is to check for indexing errors. This crucial part involves checking if Google can crawl and index your pages.
Use Google Search Console's Page Index Coverage report to see which pages are not being indexed and why.
Look for common problems like Soft 404, Not Found (404), and Excluded by 'noindex' tag.
Remember that some errors, like (page with redirect) are expected. Also, it's normal that not all pages of your site are indexed by Google. Review all errors and follow Google's instructions to ensure your website has no serious problems.
4. Check For Duplicate Website Versions
Many webmasters don't realize that a website can be assessed in four different ways (with/out https and with/out www in the URL) :
- http://example.com
- https://example.com
- http://www.example.com
- https://www.example.com
While this is okay for users, search engines may consider them different websites. This means you may have problems with indexing, duplicate content issues, and loss of page rank.
To test your website is configured correctly, open a browser window and check that all website variations redirect to the same version. If not, you should decide which domain format to use and add the necessary 301 redirections.
For more information, read our guide here.
5. Check Your Organic Traffic
The next step before doing a deeper analysis is to check your organic traffic. Login to Google Search Console and view the "Search Results" report.
This will give you an idea of how much traffic your website gets from Google. You can see the keywords, pages, devices, countries, and more information.
Another way is to use Google Analytics to view traffic from all search engines.
Login to Google Analytics and go to Traffic Acquisition under Acquisition. Look at the "Organic Search" data, which includes users, sessions, views, and more information.
6. Run A Website Crawl
The next step is to use a site audit tool like Semrush Site Audit, Ahrefs Website Audit, Screaming Frog, or others to identify potential issues with your SEO.
Running a comprehensive website crawl is like giving your site a thorough health check-up. It uncovers issues that might not be easily noticeable but are critical for SEO performance.
SEO audit tools simulate how search engines crawl your website and report on several issues like: broken links, page load issues, missing title and meta tags, sitemap problems, structured data issues, and much more.
Here is an example of what the SEO audit dashboard of Semrush looks like:
7. Analyze Your Website's Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is a set of specific metrics that Google considers essential in a webpage's overall user experience.
Start by using tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights to analyze these vitals.
For Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures loading performance, ensure that the largest content piece on your page loads within 2.5 seconds. If it takes longer, you might need to optimize your server, use a content delivery network, or optimize your images and file formats.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures interactivity; aim for an INP of less than 200 milliseconds. This can be achieved by reducing the impact of third-party code, minimizing JavaScript execution time, and more.
Lastly, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability; strive for a CLS score of less than 0.1. To improve this, ensure images and embedded videos have dimensions, and avoid inserting new content above existing content unless in response to a user's action.
8. Check Mobile Page Experience
One of the mistakes people make when doing SEO audits is to check the desktop version of a website, forgetting that Google is using the mobile version for crawling, indexing, and ranking.
As part of your review, you should check your website on mobile and ensure that the user experience is the best possible. This means:
Secure Pages: Ensure your pages are served securely over HTTPS.
Mobile Usability: Check how well your content displays on mobile devices. This includes evaluating layout, text size, and menus.
Lighthouse is an effective tool for identifying a range of improvements related to mobile usability, which is a critical aspect of the page experience.
Avoiding Intrusive Interstitials: Intrusive interstitials can make content less accessible to mobile users. Ensure your website does not use pop-ups or ads that interfere with the main content, as these can negatively impact the user experience and your site’s SEO performance.
9. Improve Your Website Speed
From my experience talking to clients, handling website page speed is one of the most challenging tasks, at least for non-technical users.
Unfortunately, it is also one of the most important SEO factors that must be addressed successfully. Study after study outlines the importance of page speed (especially for mobile) and how it can affect your rankings and conversion rates.
Your website should load within the core web vitals score outlined above. Here are some actionable tips to follow:
- Compress all your website images using tools like Optimizilla or Squoosh (by Google). These tools can dramatically reduce the size of an image without sacrificing quality.
- If you have a lot of images, consider using a CDN.
- Minimize HTTP calls by using sprites and browser caching.
- Minify your CSS and HTML to make their size smaller.
- Use a caching plugin or page speed service to serve cached pages to users.
- Remove unnecessary JavaScript from pages.
- Update to the latest version of PHP.
- Update your website and software to the latest versions.
If the above list does not make much sense to you, you better hire a developer or SEO expert to do the work for you. It will not cost you a lot, and you have to do it to improve your SEO rankings and conversions.
10. Check Your Internal Links
Linking your pages together is useful to both search engines and users.
Check and make sure that you are indeed linking related pages together by considering these 4 factors:
- You are not only using keyword anchor text for the internal links, but you use both the full page title and non-keyword anchor text.
- The pages you want to rank better in search have the greatest number of internal links.
- The pages you want to rank better in search are linked from your home page.
- You have between 2 – 10 internal links per page.
11. Analyze And Identify Toxic Links
As part of the SEO Audit, you should analyze your backlink profile and identify any toxic links that might impact your rankings.
You can check your incoming links using a backlink checker tool or the Google Search console's ‘Links to your site’ report.
While reviewing your backlinks, answer the following questions:
- How many unique domains are linking to you?
- Which of these domains are considered trusted domains?
- How many links are pointing to your home page, and how many links to your internal pages?
- Which of your pages have the most incoming links?
- What percentage of the links are keyword-based?
- What is the ‘toxic score’ of each link?
Depending on the answers, you may have to take some corrective actions and adjust your action plan accordingly.
For example, if only a few domains link to you, you must get links from related domains. Your task is to create a list of possible websites for guest blogging or blogger outreach campaigns.
If you don’t have links from trusted domains, you need to get in touch with the leaders in your niche and let them know that you exist (it’s easier said than done, but if you get noticed by the big fish, you have more chances of surviving in the pot).
If all the links point to your homepage, you must ensure you get links to your internal pages.
If all the incoming links are keyword-based (and Google did not penalize you yet), you need to urgently change them by making them more natural by using your domain name only, your full post title, and things like ‘click here,’’ link,’ etc.
For step-by-step instructions, read: how to remove bad backlinks from Google.
12. Do A Competitor Analysis
The next item on the list is benchmarking your SEO performance against competitors. This is necessary because the performance of your competitors impacts your chances of achieving higher rankings for related keywords.
Here is how to perform an SEO competitor analysis:
Identify Your Competitors: Begin by figuring out who your competitors are. Go to Google, search for your primary keywords, and see which websites rank in the top positions of Google. Tools like Semrush or Ahrefs can also help you identify these competitors by showing who ranks for keywords similar to those on your site.
Analyze Their On-Page SEO: Examine your competitors’ on-page SEO strategies. Look at their title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and keyword usage. This can give you insights into how they are optimizing their pages and what you might be missing.
Review Their Content: Evaluate your competitors' content quality, depth, and type. See what content they use to engage their audience and how well it's performing.
Track Their Performance Over Time: Keep an eye on how your competitors' strategies evolve. This can help you stay ahead of the curve and adapt your strategies proactively.
13. Identify New Keyword Opportunities
SEO Auditing is not only for finding and fixing errors but also for spotting opportunities to grow your website. One of the ways to do this is to identify new keywords that can generate targeted traffic.
A key strategy is to analyze your competitors' keyword profiles. A keyword research tool can reveal what keywords your competitors are ranking for, but your site is not. This can uncover untapped niches or long-tail keywords that you might have overlooked.
Another effective method is to review your existing content's performance using Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Look for patterns in user queries and the performance of existing pages.
This analysis can help you identify topics that your website has a high Google trust and topical authority, making it easier to rank new content.
For example, you might find that a blog post about "beginner gardening tips" is unexpectedly attracting traffic for the keyword "easy plants to grow." This indicates that your audience is interested in this specific topic and that Google considers you a good resource for it.
You can use this information to create more content focused on easy-to-grow plants and drive more traffic to your site.
14. Identify New Link Opportunities
Identifying new link opportunities is critical in an SEO audit, as backlinks are a key ranking factor for search engines.
Begin by examining your competitors' backlink profiles using a backlink checker tool. Look for patterns in their backlinks, such as specific websites or types of content that frequently link back to them.
Next, consider what type of content could be valuable for others to link to. Typical examples include case studies, statistics, and original research.
Reach out to websites with relevant content and suggest where your content could add value to their users and what you can give them back in return.
15. Update Your Top Performing Pages
Another common SEO mistake an SEO audit can help you fix is losing rankings for your top-performing pages. It's normal for webmasters to concentrate on publishing new content, but you should take action to protect your existing rankings from dropping.
Use Google Search Console to find your high-ranking pages and create a plan to update them regularly by:
- Improving your on-page SEO - Enhance elements like title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags to ensure they are keyword-rich and relevant to the content.
- Adding new high-quality visuals - Incorporate relevant images or custom-made visuals to make the content more engaging and shareable.
- Optimizing for Google featured snippets - Structure your content with clear, concise answers to common questions, targeting the 'position zero' snippet spot in search results.
- Optimizing content to match changing user intent - Update the content to align with the latest trends and user queries, ensuring it remains relevant and useful.
- Updating statistics - Refresh any data or statistics in your content to reflect current information, enhancing credibility and relevance.
- Checking for broken links - Regularly audit and fix any broken links (external and internal) to improve user experience and maintain the integrity of your site's structure.
Next Steps
The above SEO audit checklist covers the technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO checks you need to make to improve your SEO. You can go deeper by enrolling in a technical SEO course and visiting the resources below.
clotilde says
Well done, thanks for this very USEFUL checklist!
Now, i have a good base for SEO audit.
Thanks!
Clotilde
Alex says
Clotilde Hi
Glad that you found the list useful. Good luck with your SEO Audit.
Thanks
Alex
Chris says
I love it when someone takes the time to compile and organize information into a very useful resource like this. I am still in school for Internet marketing and just getting into this business. I will bookmark this for future reference.
Alex says
Chris Hi
Thank you for your comment and welcome to the exciting World of Internet marketing!
Alex.
Kered Pople says
I have read your article and think it is amazing. I just wanted to point out a grammar mistake I picked up on. If you look at the following sentence I have put in brackets the mistake.
I (game) up with a list of 60 items that covers everything you need to check.
I hope you do not mind me pointing this out.
Kered Pople
Alex says
Kered hi
Thanks a lot for pointing this out
Alex
David says
Thank you for the great checklist. It is really useful and gave us a couple of new hints on optimization process. We’ve been using WebSite Auditor and found it exremely helpful in site’s structure and content analysis, bringing all the statistical information on the validation errors, social mentions, duplicate stuff, etc. under one roof. Still there is so many different SEO information you sometimes cannot understand what to start with. Fortunately you answered this question. Thank you again!
Alex says
Thank you as well for your feedback
Alex
nino says
Hi Alex, Glad to see someone actually ‘write specifics’ than make generic statements.
well written. simplified. crisp compliation. awesome job. thanx.
nino
Alex says
Nino Hi
Thank you for your nice comment
Alex
John Romaine says
Great checklist Alex, thanks for putting this together mate.
Alex says
John Hi
Thanks for the feedback
Alex
rithwik says
Alex, you saved my day and my career. Thank you so much.
James says
Hi Alex,
Should an audit be done for every single page or can the checklist be used to sum up all of the client’s pages?
What if you have a client with over 500 pages to audit?
Many thanks.
Alex says
James hi
The audit is for all pages and not only one. What happens in the majority of the cases is that pages / posts have similarities so you can group them together. For example the pages of a website may be ok but the blog post pages may be missing titles. It’s a lot of work especially for a 500 pages website but you can start from the most important pages first and work your way to the rest
Hope this helps,
Alex
James says
Thanks Alex, much appreciated. I found my groove once I started on it. The first section is the tricky part, thereafter it becomes easier. It helped to create a bullet list of all the pages and then just copy and paste them into each cell to use as a reference for section I needed to check.
Guy Tomlinson says
Great Alex, that’s a nice checklist and saved me some time. Now following you on Twitter and G+.
Keep up the good work
Guy
Alex says
Hi Guy
Thanks, glad I could help you with your SEO Audits.
Thanks
Alex
Mahi hirani says
Thanks for this great consolidation of tips on SEO. I know for beginners this topic might be a little vague and obscure, but once you get the hang of a couple of useful tips you’re set.
Relevant keywords along the page and on the meta section is pivotal, though I would also extend emphasis to the code as well as the content.
For example, using text as headers instead of images (though if it greatly compromises your design, you shouldn’t) would help spider through your blog/website and figure the important knacks to pay attention to.
So make sure to wrap headings, titles and subtitles in their appropriate tags.
Just one extra quick tip.
Naeem Malik says
Great. This checklist can be handy checking tool; just before the schedule or publish button press.
Wayne Thomas says
Thanks Alex, this is a clear and thorough post, very useful for designers like myself looking to promote client sites through means of SEO. I suppose not much has changed since you first wrote this post and principles are pretty much the same.
Alex says
Wayne Hi
Glad you liked it! Yes the post is up-to-date and valid so there are no risks at all.
Thanks
noe gonzalez says
Thank you for sharing your audit list. I had been using one that I created but, you had few items that I felt were important and were missing on my list.
I have pitched the typical Facebook and Twitter social media accounts to provide additional traffic but, what is the best way to convince a client about using RSS? Is it a good idea for them to try manage it or even implement it?
Any feedback is welcome.
Thanks
GOazweb
Alex says
Noe Hi
Regarding email and RSS I believe these 2 articles will help:
https://www.reliablesoft.net/why-every-business-needs-a-blog/
https://www.reliablesoft.net/25-email-marketing-tips-for-small-businesses/
Thanks
Alex
dragos says
Thank you for a great list. It helps a lot especially for a begginer like myself. I am trying to understand better the link building process. I would like to do a little bit of that but of good quality and I am not sure where to start. Any tip would be most welcomed. Regards
Alex says
Hi Dragos
Link building is a huge topic. I suggest you start by reading this: https://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-off-page-seo/, it has all the information and pointers you need.
Thanks
Alex
Cecilia says
Need a complete overhaul of my site. Thanks for the tips.
Alex Chris says
Hi Cecilia
Good luck with your website. Give it some time, any SEO changes you do now may take a few moths to see the real effect in Google rankings.
Thanks
Alex
king silassie says
Thanks for this great consolidation of tips on SEO.
Pranish shakya says
Thanku for the checklists. Got a lot of new information.
Vivek Saxena says
Thank You Alex! This is absolutely a great article/ Haven’t come across such a crisp and nice description without holding back the vitals. Thank you very much! Quite informative and educational
Alex Chris says
Hi Vivek
Thanks, Glad I could help!
Alex
karen collins says
Thanks Alex, great detailed for someone who had very little understanding of this area until very recently.
krishna says
Thanks Alex, For someone new to SEO this is very useful. You have taken the initiative to explain things out so clearly.
Alex says
Hi Kirshna
Thanks for your nice comments. All the best with your SEO efforts.
Alex
Vishwajeet Kumar says
Hello Alex,
Thanks for elaborating the things so briefly. It is so easy to understand. I really like the way you evaluate the checklist of on page SEO. Great Work.
Alex says
Thanks, good luck with your SEO Audits!
Alex
Lexi Pivovarova says
For a newbie like me this post is so valuable. Thanks for the easy to read information and the meaningful additional links. I’ll be using this as a reference for a long time to come.
Narinder kumar says
Thanks for sharing great article SEO audits really interesting part of the SEO there is helpful to know the website errors and performance.
Joseph Clarke says
SEO audit is a necessity today, when there is cut-throat competition in the online world. You never know when your opponent outranks you – which is the main reason why audit must be performed every few months. The checklist you’ve written covers all the major sections of audit. Thanks!
Alex says
Hi Joseph
That’s true, SEO Audits are important and should be performed regularly.
Thanks
Alex
Daljeet Singh says
Hi Alex,
Very useful content for the beginners and layman’s. The part of content and the checklist are very easy Understandable.
Thanks
Abdul Muneeb says
Hi Alex,
SEO audit guide is great and checklist just made my day
Thanks
Alex Chris says
Hi Adbul
Thanks! Glad I could help you with SEO audting your website.
Alex
Avya says
Great checklist Alex, thanks for sharing this great information here. Before this, I had some doubts and now my doubts are clear. Thanks
Warm Regards
Alex Chris says
Hi Avya
Thanks for your comment. Glad I could help you clear your doubts.
All the best with your SEO audit.
Alex
Jaspreet Singh says
I really need this article because I have knowledge ( little-bit ) about SEO but not step by step, like SEO audit report.
Thanks for sharing this article.
Alex Chris says
Hi Vivek
Thanks, Glad I could help!
Alex
Advika Joshi says
Really a nice checklist! It has helped me a lot! Thanks for sharing this useful information Alex!
Alex Chris says
Hi Advika
Thank you as well. All the best!
Alex
Leslie says
Great checklist Alex – I keep looking for a simple and to the point reference I can give to people, but what I most often find is either too complicated for a beginner, or not actionable enough even for a pro.
Alex Chris says
Hi Leslie
I tried to cover topics suitable for both beginners and more experienced users. Thank you for your comment.
Alex
Divyanshu Jangid says
Hi Alex,
First of all amazing post! I did a chrome/lighthouse audit on my website and it shows problems in performance and progressive web app. Do you have any suggestion on how deal with these. Or any post which shows on how to get rid of chrome audit issues.
Al Gomez says
Hi Alex,
This is a good resource for performing an SEO audit to a website. It’s great that you have added this checklist. This process is a must especially when starting a campaign, in this way we can see the opportunities for the site.
Alex Chris says
Hi Al
Yes, performing an SEO audit is a must for correctly evaluating the performance of an SEO campaign. It’s actually the first check to make before starting any campaigns.
All the best
Alex
Brian says
Nothing more timely. Thank you for this.
Alex Chris says
Hi Brian
Thank you as well.
Alex
Amar singh says
If all the incoming links are keyword based (and Google did not penalize you yet) you need to urgently change them by making them more natural by using your domain name only, your full post title and things like ‘click here’,’ link’ etc ?
what does that mean sir because till now I have created all the backlinks using keywords anchor text
Alex Chris says
Hi Amar
Keeping a balance in the anchor text is always recommended. Read this post for more details: https://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-anchor-text/
Hope this helps
Alex
Pankaj Sharma says
Hi Alex,
You have defined the topic clearly and most of the things are covered and I would like to add one more thing here, Pagination It should be in your technical seo audit checklist and this issue shouldn’t be ignored in any way. Because right pagination is a must for every website technical seo.
sadiairam says
This is the best article for those who want to perform site audits.
Alex Chris says
Hi Sadiairam
Thanks a lot for your comment. All the best with your SEO Audits!
Thanks
Alex
Moshiour Rahman says
hey, This blog post is awesome. Whenever I perform an SEO Audit, I check this page then. Thanks a lot.
Alex Chris says
Hi Moshiour
Thanks a lot.
Alex
shyam says
This is a great SEO checklist, This checklist was saved my life. I audited my website to follow your points. Thanks for sharing 🙏
Alex Chris says
Hi Shyam
Thanks for your comment. Glad you found my SEO audit checklist useful!
All the best
Alex
Halina Biernacki says
I did the Audit, and reworked everything… very time consuming, but the results paid off. As of today Feb. 3, 2022, my Google SERP moved up to 8.8 position.
The CTR is nothing to brag about, but I’m optimistic that will improve in time.
Alex Chris says
Hi Halina
That’s great news! Thanks for the update.
Alex
Reima Petramaa says
Thanks for this outstanding post about SEO audit with a checklist. I have noticed that the number of backlinks can increase, although I don’t do anything. After checking, there seem to be irrelevant links from low-ranking websites. This is link spam. Is the only way to disavow these toxic links on Google Search Console?
Alex Chris says
Hi Reima
You don’t have to take any action about spammy links. Google can recognize and devalue them automatically.
Thanks
Alex