How do you do an SEO audit? The complete step-by-step plan

You do an SEO audit in seven layers, from technical to strategic: (1) check whether Google can crawl and index your site, (2) measure the technical side and Core Web Vitals, (3) assess on-page and content, (4) check the internal links, (5) look at your backlink profile and authority, (6) compare with the competition, and (7) rank each finding by impact so you know what has to come first. With Google Search Console, Screaming Frog and PageSpeed Insights you already get a long way for free. Below, each step runs through what exactly you look at, an example, and the mistake most people make.

The seven layers build on one another, from purely technical at the bottom to strategic at the top:

What you need before you begin

You need three free things and half an hour of preparation. Make sure Google Search Console is connected to your domain (verification can take a while, so do this first). Download the free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider, which crawls up to 500 URLs, enough for most B2B sites. Keep PageSpeed Insights at hand for the speed measurement. Optional: a free Bing Webmaster Tools account and one of the SEO tools with a free backlink check. You do not need more for a first proper audit.

Start with a goal, not with a tool. Write down which pages bring in revenue or leads. Those pages weigh more heavily in every step below: a mistake on your most important service page simply counts more than the same problem on a forgotten blog article.

Step 1: Crawl and indexation: can Google find your pages?

Everything starts here. If Google cannot crawl a page or is not allowed to index it, the rest of your optimisation does not matter. In Search Console, open the “Pages” report under Indexing and look at how many pages are indexed versus excluded, with the reason per group. Also crawl your site with Screaming Frog and filter on the Status Code, Indexability and Canonical columns.

What you look for: pages that are accidentally set to noindex, important URLs blocked in robots.txt, 404s still linked internally, and canonical tags pointing to the wrong page. Also check that you have submitted a valid XML sitemap.

Example: in Search Console you see 1,200 excluded pages with the reason “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag”. On inspection, it turns out a template of your webshop sets every filter combination to noindex, which is fine, but three important category pages are accidentally caught up in it too.

Common mistake: panicking over a high number of excluded pages. Many exclusions are correct (pagination, filters, thank-you pages). Do not look at the total, look at whether your revenue pages are indexed.

Step 2: Technical and Core Web Vitals: how fast and stable is the site?

Now that the site is findable, you measure how smoothly it loads. Run your main page types (homepage, service page, blog article) through PageSpeed Insights and note the field scores for LCP, INP and CLS. Use the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console for the overall picture across all pages.

What you look for: LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds, CLS under 0.1. Also look at mobile-friendliness, a valid HTTPS certificate, and whether your images are loaded in a modern format and at the right size.

Example: your LCP on mobile is at 4.1 seconds. The cause turns out to be an uncompressed 1.8 MB header image. Compressing it to WebP brings it back to 2.2 seconds, an improvement that touches every visitor.

Common mistake: chasing a perfect score of 100. The biggest gain sits between slow and fast, not between fast and perfect. Go from red to green and then spend your time on content.

Step 3: On-page and content: are your pages aiming at the right keywords?

Here the audit shifts from machine to human. Export all title tags, meta descriptions and H1s from Screaming Frog. Sort on missing, duplicate and too-long titles. Then manually assess your ten most important pages: does the content match the search intent of the keyword you want to rank for?

What you look for: missing or duplicate title tags, pages that aim at no clear keyword, thin content (an 80-word service page), and cannibalisation where two pages fight over the same keyword.

Example: you have three blog articles that all have “seo audit” as their main keyword. Google does not know which to show and ranks all three mediocrely. You merge them into one strong article and redirect the other two.

Common mistake: rewriting titles on gut feeling without looking at the actual queries. In Search Console, open the Performance report, filter per page and see which search terms that page already gets impressions on. That is your starting point, not guesswork.

Step 4: Internal links: do you distribute your authority to the right pages?

Internal links tell Google which pages are important and help visitors move on. In Screaming Frog you find the Inlinks column under “Internal”: the number of internal links to each page. Sort ascending and you see which important pages get too few links.

What you look for: important service pages with only one or two internal links, orphaned pages (zero incoming links, only reachable via the sitemap), and broken internal links. Also check whether your anchor texts are descriptive rather than “read more”.

Example: your most important service page has two internal links, while an old blog article has forty. You add contextual links to that service page from relevant articles and see the positions rise within weeks.

Common mistake: linking to everything in the footer and calling that “internal link building”. A link in the running text, with a relevant anchor text, weighs more than the fiftieth identical footer link.

Step 5: Backlinks and authority: who refers to you and how credible are you?

Authority largely comes from outside: other sites that link to you. Use a free backlink check (most SEO tools offer a limited free version) to look at your referring domains. You are looking for quality and relevance, not merely numbers.

What you look for: how many unique domains link to you, whether those are relevant and trustworthy sites, whether you have lost valuable links (broken backlinks), and whether there is a suspicious network of spammy links pointing at you. Compare your number of referring domains broadly with that of your competitors.

Example: your competitor has 60 referring domains from your sector, you have 12. That partly explains why they rank higher. Your finding: a targeted digital PR and guest article approach to close that gap.

Common mistake: fixating on a single domain authority number. That is an estimate from a tool, not a ranking factor from Google. Ten relevant links from your field are worth more than a hundred irrelevant ones.

Step 6: Competition: where do they rank higher and why?

An audit in isolation misses context. Choose your two or three most important competitors and search your core keywords in an incognito window. Look at which pages sit above you and why: is their content deeper, their technical side faster, their authority stronger?

What you look for: keywords where they rank and you do not (content gaps), page types they have and you lack (for example comparison pages or tools), and the format Google rewards for that search term.

Example: on “outsource seo audit” a competitor sits at the top with a page that concretely names the costs. You only have a general service page. Your finding: create a specific page that answers that question.

Common mistake: copying the competitor blindly. Look for the why behind their position and do it better, not the same.

Step 7: Prioritise by impact: from findings list to action plan

This is the step that makes an audit valuable. You now have dozens of findings. Without prioritisation, that is a to-do list no one works through. Score each finding on impact (how much traffic or leads this delivers), reach (how many important pages it touches) and effort (how much work it is). A simple formula: impact times reach, divided by effort.

What you look for: the handful of interventions with high impact and low effort. Roughly 20% of the interventions usually deliver 80% of the result. Those you put at the top.

Common mistake: working in the order of the tool, from top to bottom. A tool sorts on the severity of the “problem”, not on business impact. You prioritise on revenue.

Worked example: ranking findings

Suppose your audit delivers four findings. Here is how you rank them:

1. Three revenue pages are on noindex (impact high, effort low). One line of code, direct effect on your most important pages. Priority 1.
2. Most important service page has only 2 internal links (impact high, effort low). A few links from existing articles. Priority 2.
3. LCP on mobile is 4.1 seconds (impact medium, effort medium). Compress images, touches all visitors. Priority 3.
4. 200 old tag pages have thin content (impact low, effort high). Touches no revenue pages. Priority 4, or simply skip it.

Note that the tool will probably put finding 4 at the top as “200 problems”. You put it at the bottom, because it delivers nothing. That is how an audit that delivers results differs from one that only shows a score: first clear the blockers, then the wins with the most leverage.

Common mistakes in an SEO audit

• Optimising for vanity numbers. The number of indexed pages or an audit score of 92 says nothing about revenue. Steer on pages that bring in customers.
• Seeing the audit as a one-off project. A cleaned-up site slowly decays again. Repeat the core checks every quarter.
• Focusing only on the technical side. Tools see the technical side well, but do not see whether you aim at the right keywords. Positioning and content require a human eye.
• Not translating findings into owners. Who takes on what, and when? Without an owner and a deadline, your action plan stays put.

Checklist: SEO audit step by step

• Search Console connected, indexation report reviewed
• Site crawled with Screaming Frog, status codes and indexability checked
• Core Web Vitals measured with PageSpeed Insights (LCP, INP, CLS)
• Mobile-friendliness and HTTPS checked
• Title tags, meta descriptions and H1s assessed on your top 10 pages
• Search intent and cannibalisation checked
• Internal links to revenue pages inventoried
• Backlink profile and referring domains reviewed
• Two or three competitors compared
• All findings scored on impact, reach and effort
• Top 3 actions with owner and deadline recorded

How you also become the source AI cites

A site that is technically clean, clearly structured and answers the right questions in substance is not only found better in Google. It is also exactly what generative search engines need to cite you: crawlable, unambiguous and with a clear answer per page. That is the core of generative engine optimization, and it starts with the same foundations you lay in this audit.

Do you not want to do the audit yourself, or do you want your findings translated into a prioritised plan with expected impact? Take a look at our SEO service. Get in touch and we will go through your site together.