How to Do an SEO Audit, Step by Step

An SEO audit sounds like something you need a consultant and a login to seven tools to do. It isn't. At its heart, an audit is just a structured walk through your website asking one question at every step: is anything here stopping Google, or a customer, from finding and trusting this page?

You can do a genuinely useful audit yourself in an afternoon. This guide walks through it in the order that actually matters, so you spend your energy on the handful of things that move rankings and skip the busywork. No jargon, no fluff.

What is an SEO audit, and what isn't it?

An SEO audit is a health check. You're not trying to "hack" Google. You're finding the places where your site quietly works against itself: a missing page title, a homepage Google can't read, a site so slow people leave before it loads.

A good audit does three things: finds the issues, explains why each one matters, and ranks them so you know what to fix first. Finding 50 problems is useless if you can't tell the one critical issue from the 49 that barely matter. Keep that prioritisation in mind the whole way through.

Step 1: Check that Google can even see you

Everything else is pointless if your pages aren't in Google's index. Start here.

• Go to Google and search site:yourdomain.com (use your real domain). This shows roughly which of your pages Google has indexed. If almost nothing comes up, that's your number-one problem, nothing else matters until it's fixed.
• If you have Google Search Console set up, open the Pages report to see exactly what's indexed and what's excluded, and why.

If your pages are missing, the usual culprits are a "noindex" tag left on by mistake, a robots.txt file blocking crawlers, or a brand-new site Google hasn't discovered yet. We cover these in detail in why your site isn't on Google's first page.

Step 2: Audit your titles and meta descriptions

Your page title (the clickable blue line in search results) is one of the strongest on-page signals there is. Check every important page has one, that it's unique, and that it's roughly 30 to 60 characters, long enough to describe the page, short enough that Google doesn't cut it off.

Then the meta description: the grey summary under the title. It doesn't directly change rankings, but it heavily influences whether anyone clicks. Aim for 70 to 160 characters, written like an ad, not a robot. A missing or duplicated description is a common, easy win. We broke down exactly what a missing meta description costs your business if you want the full picture.

Step 3: Look at your headings and structure

Open a key page and check the structure:

• One H1. Each page should have exactly one main heading (H1) that clearly says what the page is about. Not zero, not five.
• A logical hierarchy. Sub-sections use H2s, sub-points use H3s, in order, not skipping levels for the sake of a bigger font.
• Real answers under real headings. If a heading asks a question, the paragraph right below it should answer it directly. This helps human readers and it's exactly what AI answer engines lift when they cite you.

Step 4: Judge your content honestly

Read your most important page as if you were a first-time customer. Is it obvious what you do, who it's for, and what to do next? Thin pages (a paragraph or two of vague copy) rarely rank. Pages that genuinely answer the questions your customers ask, clearly, in plain language. Do.

This is also where you check keywords, but don't overthink it: make sure the words your customers actually type appear naturally in your titles, headings and copy. Not stuffed in, just present.

Step 5: Check the technical fundamentals

You don't need to read code. You need to check four things:

1. Speed. A slow site loses rankings and customers. If a page takes more than about three seconds to load, especially on a phone. That's a problem worth fixing.
2. Mobile-friendliness. Most visits are on phones. Open your site on yours. If you're pinching to zoom or buttons are impossible to tap, Google sees the same thing.
3. HTTPS. Your address should start with https, not http. The padlock isn't optional any more.
4. Broken links and errors. Click around. A link that leads to a "404 not found" page wastes both a visitor and Google's trust.

Step 6: Look at your links and internal structure

Count the internal links on a key page, the links pointing to other pages on your own site. If important pages have almost nothing pointing to them, Google struggles to find and value them. A handful of relevant internal links (like the ones in this article) helps both people and search engines move through your site.

Step 7: If you're a local business, check local signals

If customers come to you or you serve a specific area, add a local pass: is your Google Business Profile claimed and complete? Is your name, address and phone number identical everywhere online? Are you collecting reviews? We go deep on this in what is local SEO, but even a quick check here surfaces easy wins.

Step 8: Don't forget AI visibility

Search isn't only Google's blue links any more, people ask ChatGPT and Perplexity for recommendations too. Two quick checks: are you accidentally blocking AI crawlers (GPTBot and friends) in your robots.txt, and does your key content answer questions in clean, quotable sentences? The good news is most of the work above already helps here. We explain the overlap in GEO vs SEO.

Step 9: Prioritise, then fix

Now you have a list. Sort it into three buckets:

• Critical: things actively blocking you: pages not indexed, no title, not on HTTPS, painfully slow. Fix these first.
• Warnings: real issues that cost you but won't sink you: weak meta descriptions, thin content, missing alt text.
• Nice-to-have: polish. Do these last, or never.

Fix the criticals, then re-run your checks. An audit isn't a one-time event, a quick pass every few months catches new problems before they cost you.

The shortcut

Doing all of this by hand is genuinely valuable. You'll understand your site far better for it. But if you'd rather see the whole list in 30 seconds, that's exactly what our free SEO scorecard does: it runs these checks for you, scores your site, and, crucially, explains each issue in plain English and tells you what to fix first. Use it as your starting checklist, then work down the list. Either way, the important thing is to start.

Frequently asked questions

How long does an SEO audit take?

An automated scan of a page takes under a minute. Working through a site by hand, the way this post describes, takes an afternoon for a small site. The fixing takes longer than the finding, which is the part most people underestimate.

What's the first thing to check in an audit?

Whether Google can see the site at all. A noindex tag or a blanket robots.txt block makes every other finding irrelevant, so indexability is always the first question and everything else follows.

Can I audit my own site without tools?

Largely yes. You can read your own titles, check your headings, load the site on your phone and view your robots.txt in a browser. Tools mainly save time and catch the pages you'd forget to check.

How do I know which issues to fix first?

Sort by whether the issue blocks visibility, drags on it, or is cosmetic. Anything stopping you being indexed or loaded comes first, snippet and content problems come second, and polish can wait indefinitely.