SEO Audit Checklist

An SEO audit should follow a logical order: fix what's blocking search engines first, then what's confusing them, then what's missing. Doing it out of order wastes effort — there's little point polishing content on a page Google can't index.

1. Crawlability and indexing

Is robots.txt blocking anything it shouldn't? Is the XML sitemap present, submitted, and free of broken or non-canonical URLs? Are any important pages accidentally set to noindex?

2. Technical health

HTTPS across the whole site, one canonical hostname (no duplicate content between www and non-www, or http and https), clean 301 redirects with no chains, and no broken internal links.

3. Core Web Vitals and performance

Real, measured LCP, INP and CLS scores — not guesses. Slow-loading images and unoptimized fonts are the most common causes of poor scores.

4. On-page fundamentals

Does each important page have a unique title and meta description? One clear H1? A logical heading structure? Descriptive, non-stuffed alt text on images?

5. Content and search intent

Does each page answer the relevant customer question? Are overlapping pages clearly differentiated or assigned an appropriate preferred URL?

6. Internal linking

Do important pages get linked to from elsewhere on the site, or are they orphaned? Does the link structure make sense to both users and a crawler?

7. Structured data and Search Console

Is JSON-LD present and valid where it should be? Are there unresolved errors or warnings in Google Search Console?

8. Local signals

Is the Google Business Profile claimed, verified and complete? Does the business name, address and phone number match exactly across the website, the profile and any directories it's listed in? Inconsistent NAP details are a common, avoidable reason a business loses local visibility to a smaller competitor.

Want this run against your actual site? See SEO Services or request an audit.

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