How to do website SEO audit

A website SEO audit requires you to systematically evaluate how well a site performs across technical, on-page, and off-page factors that search engines consider. Start by crawling the entire website with a tool like Screaming Frog, Semrush, or Ahrefs to identify crawlability issues, broken links, redirect chains, duplicate content, and XML sitemap problems. During this crawl, note pages with missing or duplicate title tags and meta descriptions, which are critical for click-through rates in search results. Check your Core Web Vitals using Google PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console, paying particular attention to Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift—these are ranking factors. Review the site's mobile responsiveness, as Google prioritizes mobile-first indexing. Look for pages with thin or duplicate content, and identify any issues with internal linking structure that might prevent proper crawl distribution or keyword targeting. Check whether the site is properly indexed in Google Search Console and look for any manual actions or crawl errors reported there.

For on-page optimization, audit the target keywords for each page and verify they align with actual search intent and competition level. Check if high-priority pages have optimized headings, keyword placement in opening paragraphs, and sufficient word count for the topic. Evaluate whether pages are solving the user's problem comprehensively compared to top-ranking competitors. Technical issues like robots.txt restrictions, noindex tags, canonical tag errors, and improper redirect implementations often prevent pages from ranking despite good content.

The off-page audit focuses on backlink profile quality and diversity. Use Ahrefs or Moz to identify toxic or spammy links that might trigger manual penalties, low-quality directory links, and suspicious referring domains. Compare the client's backlink profile against top-ranking competitors to identify link-building opportunities. Check whether the site has proper structured data markup for its business type—particularly Schema.org markup for local businesses, products, or articles. Finally, review Google Analytics and Search Console data to understand actual search traffic patterns, which pages are underperforming relative to their ranking position, and where user experience issues might be hurting conversions. The most valuable audits connect technical findings to actual business impact, showing which fixes will likely drive the most traffic and revenue improvement.