The 30+ things we check in a free SEO audit — and why each matters

When an SEO agency says they'll "audit your website," it sounds like a mysterious, expensive process. It isn't. An audit is a checklist — a structured look at the things Google cares about when it decides whether to show your site to customers.

Our free SEO scorecard runs 30+ of these checks on your homepage in about 30 seconds, across six categories. This post explains them all: what each one is, and what it costs your business when it's broken. We'll start with the core 20, then cover the deeper technical and AI-search checks most free tools skip.

No jargon. Promise.

Meta tags — what Google shows people about you

These four checks decide how your business looks inside Google search results, before anyone even visits your site.

1. Title tag. This is the blue headline people see in Google. If it's missing, Google makes one up. If it's too long, Google chops it off mid-sentence. Either way, you look unprofessional in the exact moment a customer is deciding whether to click you or your competitor. We check that it exists and is between 30 and 60 characters.

2. Meta description. The grey text under the blue headline. Most business owners don't know this: if you don't write one, Google writes its own description of your site — and it's usually bad. It might pull your cookie notice, your menu items, or a random sentence from your footer. We check that yours exists and is 70–160 characters.

3. Social sharing tags (Open Graph). When someone shares your site on WhatsApp, the preview card (image, title, description) comes from these tags. In India, where most business sharing happens on WhatsApp, a missing preview means your link looks like spam. We check for all three.

4. Canonical tag. A small label that tells Google "this is the official version of this page." Without it, Google can get confused by duplicate versions of your pages and split your ranking power between them.

Headings — the structure of your page

5. H1 heading. Every page should have exactly one main heading — like a newspaper headline. Zero H1s and Google has to guess what your page is about. Multiple H1s and you're shouting several headlines at once.

6. Heading order. Headings should go H1 → H2 → H3, like a well-organised document. Skipping levels confuses both Google and screen readers.

7. H1 length. A main heading that's too short ("Welcome!") tells Google nothing. We check it's between 20 and 70 characters — long enough to say what you actually do.

Performance — because slow sites lose customers

8. Load time. If your homepage takes more than 3 seconds to respond, visitors on slower mobile connections — which is a lot of India — start giving up. We flag anything over 3 seconds, and anything over 5 as critical.

9. Page size. A homepage over 500KB of raw HTML is carrying extra weight that slows every visit down.

10. Image count. More than 30 images on one page usually means the page is doing too much, and every one of them is a download your customer's phone has to make.

11. Render-blocking scripts. Some code forces the browser to stop and wait before showing anything. It's the difference between a shop with the lights on and one where customers wait outside while you find the keys.

Mobile — where your customers actually are

12. Viewport tag. One line of code that tells phones "this site knows how to resize itself." Without it, your site appears as a tiny desktop page that customers have to pinch and zoom. Google ranks mobile-unfriendly sites lower — and this single missing line is often the cause.

13. Fixed-width elements. Elements hard-coded wider than a phone screen force sideways scrolling. Nobody scrolls sideways; they just leave.

Security — table stakes for trust

14. HTTPS. The padlock in the browser. Without it, Chrome literally labels your site "Not secure" next to your business name. Google also uses it as a ranking signal. There is no good reason to be on http:// in 2026.

15. Mixed content. A secure page loading insecure images or scripts breaks the padlock. It's like locking the front door but leaving a window open.

Content — what you're actually saying

16. Word count. A homepage with fewer than 300 words gives Google almost nothing to rank you for. You don't need an essay. A few hundred words saying who you are, what you sell, and where is enough.

17. Image alt text. Short descriptions attached to images. They're how Google "sees" your photos, and how your products can appear in Google Images. Under 80% coverage gets flagged.

18. Internal links. Links from your homepage to your own pages — services, products, contact. Fewer than 5 suggests your pages are islands Google can't navigate between.

19. Structured data. A machine-readable label that tells Google "we're a restaurant in Kochi, open till 11pm, rated 4.5 stars." It's how businesses get those rich results with stars and prices. Most small Indian business sites don't have it — which makes it an easy win.

20. Robots.txt. A small file that tells Google what it's allowed to look at. A missing or broken one can quietly block Google from your whole site, like a "closed" sign you forgot to flip.

Can Google actually find and index you? (the deeper technical checks)

The first 20 cover the basics every audit should. These next ones catch the quieter problems that keep otherwise-good sites invisible — the kind most free tools never look for.

Is this page even allowed on Google? The single most common "why am I invisible?" cause is a noindex setting — one hidden instruction that tells Google not to show the page at all. No other fix matters until it's removed, so we flag it as critical wherever we find it (in the page or in the response headers).

Are you accidentally blocking every search engine? A single Disallow: / line in your robots.txt tells Google, Bing and everyone else to ignore your entire site. It's usually a staging setting left switched on by mistake — and it's catastrophic, so we check for it explicitly.

Redirect chains. One redirect (http → https, or adding "www") is normal. But a chain — your page bouncing through two or more redirects before it loads — slows every visit, wastes Google's crawl budget, and weakens the ranking signal that reaches the final page.

JavaScript-only content. If your page shows almost nothing until JavaScript runs, some search crawlers (and our audit) struggle to see your real content. We flag it so you know your words might be invisible to the very thing meant to read them.

Sitemap. A simple list of your pages that helps Google discover and index them faster. Most builders generate one automatically — we check yours actually exists.

Favicon. The little icon in the browser tab and next to your site in some search results. A small thing, but its absence is a sign of a half-finished setup.

Showing up in AI search — ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI answers (GEO)

This is the part almost no free audit checks yet. More and more customers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for "the best [business] near me" instead of scrolling Google. Whether an AI recommends you comes down to a handful of signals — and we check them.

Can AI assistants even read your site? ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI use their own crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, and others). If your robots.txt blocks them, you simply can't be cited when a customer asks an AI for a business like yours. We check each one.

llms.txt. A new, simple file that tells AI assistants what your business does and which pages matter most. It's optional today — which makes it an easy edge while most sites don't have one.

Question-style headings. AI answers and Google's "People Also Ask" boxes pull from pages that ask and directly answer real questions. We check whether any of your headings are phrased the way customers actually search.

Who wrote this? (E-E-A-T). Google and AI assistants both favour content with a credible, named author. We look for a byline or author markup — a page that says who stands behind it is more trusted, and more quotable.

Is it current? A visible "published" or "last updated" date is the simplest freshness signal. Undated pages look stale to both Google and AI, even when they aren't.

FAQ structured data. If your page has questions and answers but no FAQ markup, you're leaving rich results on the table — and missing the easiest way for ChatGPT and Perplexity to quote you directly.

Breadcrumb structured data. On deeper pages, this tells Google (and AI assistants) exactly where the page fits in your site — and earns the tidy breadcrumb trail you see in some search results.

What a score actually tells you

We weight these checks into one score out of 100 — performance and meta tags count the most, because they're where small fixes have the biggest impact. The number matters less than the prioritised list under it: most sites have 4–6 issues, and usually only 1–2 of them are doing real damage.

Frequently asked questions

Is this really free? What's the catch? Free, no signup, no credit card. We're building a bigger product (an SEO agency in your pocket) and the free scorecard is how we earn your trust first.

Does the audit cover my whole website? The free scorecard audits your homepage — that's where most of the highest-impact problems live. Full-site crawls (every page, every issue) are part of RankAgent, which is live now: Starter is ₹2,499/mo, cancel anytime, or grab the one-time Founding Member offer.

My score is low. Should I panic? No. Most issues on this list are fixable in an afternoon by whoever built your site. The report explains each one in plain language you can forward directly to your developer.

How is this different from hiring an agency? An agency would run roughly this same checklist, wrap it in a 40-page PDF, and charge ₹15,000–50,000 a month. We'd rather show you exactly what's broken, for free, and let you decide what to do about it.

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