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What an SEO audit covers, step by step

An SEO audit is a health check for how search engines see a website. What gets examined, from crawling and indexing to content, links and local search, and what the result looks like.

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When a website doesn’t get the visitors it should, the reasons are rarely obvious. Pages may be missing from Google altogether, several pages may compete for the same search term, or the content may answer questions nobody asks. An SEO audit looks at all of it systematically and turns it into a list of what to change, in order of impact.

Here’s what that check covers.

1. Goals: what the site should achieve

An audit starts with questions, not tools. Who should find the site? With which search terms? Which pages should bring enquiries or sales? A local carpenter, an online shop and a software company need different things from search, and the same finding can be urgent for one and irrelevant for another.

The answers set the frame for everything that follows.

2. Crawling: can search engines get in

Before a page can rank, a search engine has to find and read it:

  • robots.txt: does it allow what should be crawled, and block only what shouldn’t?
  • XML sitemap: does it exist, list all important pages and nothing else, and is it known to the search engines?
  • Status codes: do pages return what they should? Broken links (404), server errors (5xx) and long redirect chains waste crawl effort and frustrate visitors.
  • Internal links: can every important page be reached through links, or are some pages orphaned?
  • JavaScript: is the content in the HTML, or does it only appear after scripts run?

3. Indexing: what ends up in Google

Being crawled doesn’t mean being indexed. The audit compares what should be in the index with what is:

  • Google Search Console shows which pages are indexed and why others aren’t.
  • noindex tags that shouldn’t be there, for example left over from a staging setup.
  • Canonical tags: does every page point to the right main version, so duplicates don’t compete?
  • Duplicate content: the same text under several URLs, with and without a trailing slash, or with tracking parameters.
  • Languages: for multilingual sites, hreflang tags that tell search engines which page is for which language.

4. On-page: the content and its signals

Next, every important page is checked on its own:

  • Title and meta description: unique, descriptive, the right length, with the main search term.
  • Headings: one clear h1, a logical structure below it.
  • Content: does it answer what people search for, in depth? Are there pages that compete for the same term (keyword cannibalisation), or topics that are missing entirely?
  • Images: descriptive file names, alt text, sensible sizes.
  • Structured data: Schema.org markup for the business, products, articles, FAQ, events, so search engines can show rich results.

5. Performance and mobile

Search engines index the mobile version of a site first. The audit checks how the site works on a phone and how it does on Core Web Vitals: how fast the main content appears, how quickly the page reacts, and whether the layout jumps. Slow pages and broken mobile layouts are flagged with their causes.

6. Off-page and local

Not everything happens on the site itself:

  • Backlinks: which other sites link here, how relevant and trustworthy they are, and whether there are spam links worth knowing about.
  • Local search: for businesses with a location, the Google Business Profile, reviews, and whether name, address and phone number are consistent across directories.
  • Competitors: which sites rank for the target terms, and what they offer that this site doesn’t.

7. The result: a prioritised list

The audit ends with a report that sorts every finding by impact and effort:

  • Critical: things that keep pages out of the index or break the site for visitors.
  • High: clear gains, such as missing titles, duplicate pages or slow key pages.
  • Ongoing: content gaps and improvements that pay off over time.

Each finding says what’s wrong, why it matters and what to do about it. That makes the report usable on its own, whether the changes are made in-house, by an agency, or together.

The short version

  • Goals first: who should find the site, with what, and to do what.
  • Crawling: robots.txt, sitemap, status codes, internal links, JavaScript.
  • Indexing: Search Console, noindex, canonicals, duplicates, hreflang.
  • On-page: titles, headings, content, images, structured data.
  • Performance and mobile, off-page signals and local search.
  • Result: a prioritised list of what to change and why.

If you’d like an SEO audit of your website, get in touch.

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