How to Do an SEO Audit: A Practical Checklist for Owners

To do an SEO audit, you check your website against what Google needs to find, understand and trust it, then turn what you find into a prioritised list of fixes. In practice that means setting a baseline, checking which pages Google has indexed, crawling the site for technical errors, reviewing speed and mobile usability, assessing your page titles and content, looking at your backlinks and local signals, and ranking every issue by impact and effort.

You can do a solid first audit yourself with free tools: Google Search Console, Google Analytics, PageSpeed Insights and a crawler such as Screaming Frog. A small site can be audited in a day or two if you work methodically. Below is the checklist we use as a starting point, the questions to ask at each step, and an honest view on when it is worth handing the job to someone else.

What an SEO audit is (and what it isn't)

An SEO audit is a health check. It tells you what is stopping your site from performing as well as it could in search, and what to fix first. It covers four broad areas:

• Technical: can Google crawl and index your pages, and do they load quickly and work properly on mobile?
• On-page: does each page clearly target a topic, with sensible titles, headings and content?
• Off-page: what does the rest of the web say about you, through links, mentions and reviews?
• Local: if you serve a particular area, are your Google Business Profile and listings in good shape?

What an audit is not: it is not a guarantee of rankings, and it is not a one-off fix that solves everything forever. Search results change, competitors improve and websites drift as people add pages and plugins. If you are new to the subject, our plain English guide to what SEO means is a good primer before you start.

The tools you need before you start

You do not need expensive software for a first audit. These free or low-cost tools will cover most of what a small business site needs.

Step 1: Set goals and record a baseline

Before you look at a single page, write down what the website is for. A plumber wants phone calls from people within a certain radius. An online shop wants product sales. A consultant wants enquiry form submissions. The audit should judge everything against that goal.

Then record where you are now, so you can measure whether your fixes worked:

• Organic clicks and impressions over the last three and twelve months (Search Console, Performance report).
• The search queries you currently appear for, and roughly where.
• Your top organic landing pages (GA4).
• Conversions from organic traffic, if tracking is set up. If it isn't, that is your first finding.

Export these into your spreadsheet with today's date. Without a baseline, you will never know whether the work paid off.

Step 2: Check what Google has indexed

If Google hasn't indexed a page, it cannot rank. This is the most common serious problem we find on small business sites, and it is often invisible to the owner.

In Search Console, open the Pages report (under Indexing). You will see how many pages are indexed and a list of reasons others are not. Work through each reason:

• Excluded by "noindex" tag: check whether this is intentional. A leftover setting from when the site was built can hide important pages.
• Blocked by robots.txt: visit yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt and make sure you aren't blocking anything important.
• Crawled, currently not indexed: Google saw the page but didn't think it was worth indexing. Usually a sign of thin or duplicate content.
• Duplicate without user-selected canonical: Google found several similar versions and picked one itself. Worth investigating.
• Not found (404): broken pages Google is still trying to reach.

Also check your XML sitemap. It should be submitted in Search Console, contain only pages you want indexed, and not include redirected or broken URLs.

Finally, do a quick sense check. Do you have 30 real pages but Google reports 400 indexed? That often means tag pages, filtered URLs or old test pages are being indexed. Do you have 30 pages but only 12 indexed? Then something is blocking the rest.

Step 3: Crawl the site

Run your crawler over the whole site. It visits every page it can find by following links, the same way a search engine does, and reports what it sees. Focus on these findings:

• Broken internal links (4xx errors): links on your own site pointing to pages that no longer exist. Fix the link or redirect the old URL.
• Redirect chains: page A redirects to B, which redirects to C. Point links straight to the final destination.
• Server errors (5xx): worth raising with your host or developer quickly.
• Missing or duplicate page titles and meta descriptions.
• Missing or multiple H1 headings.
• Mixed versions of the site: http and https, or www and non-www, should all redirect to one single version.
• Orphan pages: pages that exist (in your sitemap, say) but nothing links to them.
• Very deep pages: important pages that take four or five clicks to reach from the homepage.

Don't panic at the number of warnings. Crawlers flag everything, including plenty that doesn't matter. Your job is to spot the patterns that affect important pages.

Step 4: Speed, mobile and technical health

Google uses page experience as one of many signals, and a slow site also loses customers regardless of rankings. Run your homepage and your three or four most important pages through PageSpeed Insights.

Core Web Vitals

These are Google's three measures of real-world page experience:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how quickly the main content appears. Google's "good" threshold is 2.5 seconds or less.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. Good is 200 milliseconds or less.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the page jumps around while loading. Good is 0.1 or less.

Search Console's Core Web Vitals report shows these across your whole site using real visitor data, which is more reliable than a single test.

Common causes of slow small business sites

• Huge, uncompressed images uploaded straight from a camera or phone.
• Too many plugins, especially on WordPress.
• Cheap shared hosting struggling under load.
• Heavy page builders, sliders and embedded videos at the top of the page.
• Several tracking and chat scripts all loading at once.

Other technical checks

• Mobile: open the site on your own phone. Can you read the text without zooming? Are buttons easy to tap? Does the phone number work as a link?
• HTTPS: every page should load securely, with no "not secure" warnings.
• Structured data: check whether you use schema markup (LocalBusiness, Product, FAQ and so on) and test it with Google's Rich Results Test.

Online shops have extra technical challenges, such as faceted navigation and out-of-stock products. We cover those in detail in how well technical SEO works for ecommerce sites.

Step 5: Site structure and internal linking

Your site structure tells Google which pages matter most and how topics relate to each other. A good structure is simple: homepage, then main service or category pages, then supporting pages beneath them.

Ask yourself:

• Is every important service or product category reachable from the main navigation?
• Do your blog posts link to the relevant service pages, using descriptive anchor text rather than "click here"?
• Do your service pages link to each other where it makes sense?
• Are your URLs short and readable, for example /boiler-repair/ rather than /page?id=4471?

Internal linking is one of the cheapest, quickest wins in any audit. Adding a handful of sensible links from well-visited pages to important ones costs nothing but time.

Step 6: On-page SEO, page by page

Now look at your key pages individually. For a small business, that usually means the homepage, each main service or category page, and your best-performing blog posts. For each one, check:

• Is there one clear topic? Each page should target one main search intent.
• Title tag: includes the main term naturally, reads well, and stays roughly under 60 characters so it doesn't get cut off.
• Meta description: doesn't directly affect rankings, but a clear one can improve how many people click.
• H1 and subheadings: the H1 matches the topic, and H2s break the content into logical sections.
• Content matches intent: does the page answer what a searcher actually wants?
• Calls to action: is it obvious what to do next, whether that is phoning, booking or buying?
• Image alt text: describes images for accessibility and gives Google context.

A worked example

Picture a heating engineer in Leeds whose boiler repair page has the title "Services | Smith Heating". The H1 reads "Welcome". The page lists boiler repairs, servicing, bathroom fitting and power flushing in one paragraph each.

The audit findings would be: the title doesn't mention boiler repair or Leeds; the H1 tells Google nothing; and four different services are competing on one thin page. The fix is to give boiler repair its own page with a title such as "Boiler Repair in Leeds | Smith Heating", a matching H1, proper detail on what's covered, areas served, typical call-out process, and a prominent phone number. The other services get their own pages too. None of that requires technical skill, just clear thinking about what each page is for.

Step 7: Content quality, gaps and overlaps

Once the individual pages are checked, step back and look at your content as a whole.

Thin and outdated content

Look for pages with very little useful content, old blog posts that are no longer accurate, and pages that get no traffic and serve no purpose. For each, decide whether to improve it, merge it into a stronger page (with a redirect), or remove it.

Keyword cannibalisation

This happens when several of your pages compete for the same search. In Search Console's Performance report, click a query and then the Pages tab. If several URLs share impressions for one important term, Google may be unsure which page to show. Usually the answer is to consolidate them, or make each page's focus clearer.

Content gaps

Make a list of the questions customers ask you on the phone and in emails. Then check whether your site answers them. Look at what competitors who rank well cover that you don't. Gaps are opportunities, not just problems.

Trust signals

Google wants to show content from businesses that clearly know their subject. Check that your site shows who you are: an about page, real staff names, qualifications and accreditations, case details you are genuinely allowed to share, reviews, a physical address where relevant, and clear contact details.

Step 8: Backlinks and your wider reputation

Links from other websites still matter, but quality counts far more than quantity. Use Search Console's Links report to see which sites link to you. Free versions of tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush can give extra detail.

Look for:

• Relevant, genuine links: local newspapers, trade associations, suppliers, local business groups, industry directories.
• Broken backlinks: other sites linking to pages of yours that no longer exist. Redirect those old URLs to the most relevant live page so you keep the value.
• Anything suspicious: large numbers of links from unrelated, low-quality or foreign-language sites.

A word of caution on that last point. Google is generally good at ignoring spammy links, so the disavow tool is rarely needed for a small business. Only consider it if you have a manual action in Search Console, or you know a previous provider built poor-quality links on your behalf. Get advice first, because disavowing the wrong links can do harm.

If the audit shows you need more links, focus on earning them in ways that last. There are three sustainable routes: creating genuinely useful content people want to reference, digital PR (giving journalists and local media a real story or expert comment), and making sure you are listed accurately in legitimate local and industry directories.

Step 9: Local SEO checks

If you serve customers in a particular town or region, local signals are often where the biggest gains sit. Check the following:

• Google Business Profile: verified, correct primary category, accurate opening hours, service areas, services listed, real photos, and regular updates.
• NAP consistency: your business Name, Address and Phone number should be identical across your website, Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Yell, Facebook and trade directories. Old addresses and phone numbers cause confusion.
• Reviews: how many, how recent, and do you reply to them? A steady flow of genuine reviews matters more than a burst.
• Location content: does your site clearly say which areas you cover? If you have location pages, are they genuinely useful, or near-identical copies with the town name swapped?
• Local schema: LocalBusiness markup with your details on the contact page or homepage.

We go into this in much more depth in our guide to local SEO for small businesses.

Step 10: Prioritise everything into an action plan

This is where most DIY audits fall down. You will end up with dozens of findings, and fixing them in the order you found them is a mistake. Score each issue for impact and effort, then start with high impact, low effort fixes.

Issue	Likely impact	Effort	Who can usually fix it
Important pages set to noindex	High	Low	Owner or web developer
Site not redirecting to a single https version	High	Low to medium	Web developer or host
Weak or duplicate title tags on key pages	Medium to high	Low	Owner
Incomplete Google Business Profile	High for local firms	Low	Owner
Broken internal links	Medium	Low	Owner
Several services crammed onto one page	High	Medium	Owner with copywriting help
Poor Core Web Vitals	Medium	Medium to high	Web developer
Content gaps against competitors	Medium to high	High (ongoing)	Owner or SEO specialist

Treat this as a guide rather than a rule. A slow site matters more for an online shop than for a sole trader with a five-page brochure site. Use your goal from Step 1 to decide.

Common mistakes when auditing your own site

• Chasing tool scores. A health score from an SEO tool is not a ranking factor. Fixing 200 minor warnings to move a score from 82 to 96 is rarely the best use of your time.
• Ignoring the business goal. Traffic that never turns into enquiries isn't a win. Always connect findings back to conversions.
• Changing everything at once. If you rewrite every page, change URLs and move hosts in the same week, you won't know what helped or hurt.
• Changing URLs without redirects. This is one of the fastest ways to lose rankings you already have.
• Relying on "site:" searches. Typing site:yourdomain.co.uk into Google gives a rough idea only. Search Console is the accurate source.
• Stopping at the report. The audit is the start of the work, not the work itself.

How often should you do an SEO audit?

For most small businesses, a thorough audit once a year is sensible, with lighter monthly checks in between: a quick look at Search Console for new indexing errors, a scan of traffic trends and a check of your Google Business Profile.

You should also audit outside that cycle whenever something significant happens:

• Before and after a website redesign or platform change.
• After a noticeable, sustained drop in organic traffic.
• When you add a new service, location or product range.
• When you take over a site that someone else has been managing.

Ongoing maintenance takes less time than most people expect once the big problems are fixed. If you are trying to plan your week around it, our guide on how much time per month SEO takes gives a realistic picture.

Should you do it yourself or outsource it?

Plenty of small business owners can do a useful first audit themselves, especially on a small, simple site. But there are clear points where professional help pays for itself in time saved and mistakes avoided.

	DIY audit	Professional audit
Cost	Your time, plus free tools	A fee, or included in ongoing SEO work
Best for	Small, simple sites with no obvious problems	Larger sites, ecommerce, traffic drops, migrations
Strengths	You know your customers and business better than anyone	Experience of what actually matters, faster diagnosis, fewer false alarms
Risks	Missing hidden technical issues, fixing the wrong things first	Paying for a long generic report with no action plan
Implementation	You still have to do the fixes	Often includes carrying out the fixes

Signs it is time to outsource

• Your organic traffic has dropped and you can't find the cause.
• You're planning a redesign, a new platform or a domain change.
• You run an online shop with hundreds or thousands of URLs.
• The audit has found technical issues you don't feel confident fixing.
• You've got the list of fixes but no time to carry them out.
• You suspect a previous agency built poor-quality links.

What to look for in an agency

Be wary of anyone who offers a "free audit" that is really an automated report designed to frighten you into signing up. Be even more wary of anyone who promises first place on Google or guaranteed rankings, because nobody can honestly promise that. Avoid any provider who can't explain, in plain terms, how they would earn links through useful content, digital PR and accurate local listings.

Good signs include: clear, fixed pricing you can understand before you commit; an action plan in plain English, not jargon; an explanation of why each fix matters to your business; and a willingness to tell you when something isn't worth doing. If you want to compare what ongoing support typically includes, our SEO packages for small business set out exactly what you get each month.

What a good professional audit should give you

Whoever does it, the output of a proper SEO audit should include:

1. A short summary of the biggest problems and opportunities, readable in five minutes.
2. A prioritised action list with impact, effort and who should do each task.
3. Evidence, such as screenshots or exports from Search Console, so you can see the problem for yourself.
4. A baseline of current traffic, queries and conversions to measure against.
5. Clear next steps, including what you can handle in-house and what needs a specialist.

If an audit doesn't give you those five things, it isn't finished.