SEO Audit Process

Introduction

An SEO audit systematically evaluates your website's search optimization. This lesson provides a comprehensive framework for conducting thorough SEO audits that identify issues and opportunities.

SEO Audit Overview

A complete SEO audit covers multiple areas:

Technical SEO Audit

Evaluate the technical foundation of your site:

Crawlability Checks

• Robots.txt: Verify important pages aren't blocked
• XML Sitemap: Confirm it's valid and submitted
• Crawl errors: Check Search Console for issues
• Crawl budget: Identify wasted crawls on low-value pages

Indexing Checks

• Index coverage: Compare indexed pages to expected
• Duplicate content: Find pages with similar content
• Canonical tags: Verify correct implementation
• Noindex tags: Ensure important pages are indexable

Site Structure Checks

• URL structure: Clean, logical hierarchy
• Internal linking: Adequate links to important pages
• Orphan pages: Find pages with no internal links
• Redirect chains: Identify multi-hop redirects

Google Search: site:yourdomain.com

Compare results to:
- Number of pages in sitemap
- Number of pages you expect indexed
- Look for spam or hacked pages
            

On-Page SEO Audit

Review page-level optimization:

Title Tag Audit

• Unique titles for each page
• Include target keyword
• Compelling and click-worthy
• Under 60 characters

Meta Description Audit

• Unique descriptions per page
• Include target keyword
• Clear value proposition
• Under 160 characters

Heading Structure Audit

• Single H1 per page
• Logical heading hierarchy
• Keywords in headings (naturally)
• Descriptive subheadings

Content Audit

• Thin content: Pages under 300 words
• Duplicate content: Internal and external
• Keyword optimization: Target terms present
• Content freshness: Last update date

Off-Page SEO Audit

Analyze external factors affecting rankings:

Backlink Profile Analysis

• Total referring domains: Unique sites linking to you
• Link quality: Authority of linking domains
• Anchor text distribution: Natural vs over-optimized
• Toxic links: Spammy or harmful backlinks
• Link velocity: Rate of new link acquisition

Competitor Comparison

• Compare backlink counts to competitors
• Identify links competitors have that you don't
• Find link building opportunities

User Experience Audit

Evaluate factors affecting user experience and rankings:

Core Web Vitals Check

• LCP: Under 2.5 seconds
• INP: Under 200 milliseconds
• CLS: Under 0.1

Mobile Usability Check

• Mobile-friendly test results
• Search Console mobile usability report
• Tap target sizes
• Font readability

Page Speed Check

• PageSpeed Insights scores
• Time to First Byte (TTFB)
• Total page size
• Number of requests

Audit Tools

Essential tools for conducting SEO audits:

Free Tools

• Google Search Console: Indexing, performance, issues
• Google Analytics: Traffic and behavior data
• PageSpeed Insights: Performance metrics
• Screaming Frog (free version): Crawl up to 500 URLs

Paid Tools

• Screaming Frog (paid): Unlimited crawling
• Ahrefs/SEMrush: Backlinks, rankings, site audits
• Sitebulb: Visual technical audits

Prioritizing Audit Findings

Not all issues are equally important. Prioritize by:

Priority Framework

1. Critical: Blocking indexing, security issues, major errors
2. High: Affecting rankings on important pages
3. Medium: Suboptimal but not urgent
4. Low: Best practices, minor improvements

Practical Exercise

Summary

• SEO audits cover technical, on-page, off-page, and UX factors
• Technical issues can prevent indexing and waste crawl budget
• On-page optimization ensures pages are relevant for target keywords
• Backlink analysis reveals authority and link building opportunities
• Prioritize findings by impact to focus on what matters most