SEO audit checklist

This is the order I check a website in when someone asks me why it is not being found on Google. It is written for UK business owners and in-house marketers who want to audit their own site, or who want to check a report someone else has written for them. You need no paid software to work through it, only access to your site and a free crawler.

Each line tells you what to look at and what a problem looks like. It does not explain how SEO works from the ground up; my SEO guide for UK small businesses covers that, and is worth reading first if terms such as indexing or internal links are new to you.

How to use this checklist

• Work in order. The sections run from problems that stop Google seeing your site at all to problems that only limit how well it does. A page that cannot be indexed gains nothing from a better title.
• Write down what you find as you go, with the URL, what is wrong and where you saw it. A spreadsheet with those three columns plus a column for priority is enough.
• Look at your most important pages first. For most businesses that means the home page, each service or product category page and the contact page. On a site of a few dozen pages you can check every page; on a shop with thousands, check templates and a sample of each type.
• Do not fix while you audit. Finish the list, then rank the problems. Fixing as you go tends to mean an afternoon spent on image file names while a blocked folder goes unnoticed.
• Expect menu names to move. Google renames reports from time to time. If a label here does not match your screen, look for the report that does the same job.

1. Access and a starting baseline

Before checking anything, make sure you can see what Google sees and have a record of where things stand today.

• Search Console is set up and verified for the whole domain, ideally as a Domain property so it covers http, https, www and any subdomains together. If you have never used it, start with what Google Search Console shows you.
• You own the accounts. Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Business Profile, the domain registrar and hosting should sit under a login your business controls, not only under a past developer or agency.
• Bing Webmaster Tools is connected. It can import your sites straight from Search Console and takes a few minutes. Bing’s index also feeds some other search and AI products, so it is worth seeing what it reports.
• Record a baseline. Export the last 16 months of clicks and impressions from the Search Console Performance report, plus the number of indexed and not indexed pages. Without a dated starting point you will not be able to tell later whether your fixes worked.
• Crawl the site. A desktop crawler such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider fetches every page it can reach by following links, much as Google does. The free version handles up to 500 URLs, which covers most small business sites. Keep the export; several later sections use it.

2. Crawling and indexing

This is where the most damaging problems hide, and they are often a single setting.

• The site is not blocking search engines. On WordPress, check Settings, then Reading, and make sure “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unticked. Developers switch it on while building a site and it is easy to forget at launch.
• robots.txt blocks nothing that matters. Open yoursite.co.uk/robots.txt and read every Disallow line. Blocking admin or basket pages is normal; blocking /services/ or your CSS and JavaScript files is not. Bear in mind that robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing, so a blocked URL can still appear in results without a description.
• No stray noindex tags. Filter your crawl for pages carrying noindex in the meta robots tag or the X-Robots-Tag header. Every one should be a page you genuinely want kept out of results, such as a thank-you page.
• The Page indexing report makes sense. In Search Console, read each reason listed under pages not indexed. “Crawled, currently not indexed” on a key service page usually points to a content or duplication problem; “Excluded by noindex tag” on a page you want found is a fix for today.
• Canonicals point where they should. Each page’s canonical tag should normally point to itself. Watch for every page pointing to the home page, a common template mistake, and for canonicals pointing to URLs that redirect or return an error.
• One version of the site. Type the http, https, www and non-www versions of your address into a browser. All four should end on the same URL with a single permanent (301) redirect, not a chain of two or three.
• The XML sitemap is clean. It should list only pages that return a 200 status, are indexable and are the canonical version. Check it is submitted in Search Console and that the date it was last read is recent.
• Errors are under control. From the crawl, list internal links that lead to 404 pages or redirects and update them to point at the final URL. Check any old URLs that still receive visits or links redirect somewhere relevant, not all to the home page.

3. Site structure and internal links

Search engines judge how important a page is partly by how your own site links to it. A service page buried four clicks deep, or linked only from the footer, is telling Google it does not matter much.

• Important pages are close to the home page. Your crawler reports crawl depth. Every service, location or main category page should be reachable within three clicks.
• No orphan pages. Compare the URLs in your sitemap with the URLs your crawler found. A page in the sitemap that the crawl never reached has no internal links pointing to it.
• Navigation matches how customers think. If you offer boiler repair and boiler installation, each should have its own page and its own menu entry, not share one “Heating” page.
• Links in the body copy carry descriptive anchors. “Our boiler installation service in Croydon” tells Google and the reader where a link goes. “Click here” tells them nothing.
• URLs are short and readable. /services/boiler-installation/ is better than /index.php?page_id=482. If your URLs are messy but the pages already have traffic, note it for later rather than changing them in a hurry; changing URLs needs redirects and care.

4. Page titles, headings and other on-page elements

These are the parts of a page that tell Google and searchers what the page is about. Check them on every important page.

• Every page has a unique title tag that names the main thing the page offers and, for a local business, the place. Your crawler lists missing and duplicate titles. Paste the ones you rewrite into the title tag and meta description checker to see whether Google is likely to cut them off.
• Meta descriptions exist and are specific. Google often rewrites them, but a clear description of what the page offers and why someone should click still helps when it is used.
• One H1 per page that matches the page’s purpose, with H2s and H3s that break the content into logical sections rather than being used for font size.
• Images have useful alt text describing what is in them, and file sizes that make sense. A 4 MB photo used as a 300-pixel thumbnail slows the page for no benefit.
• The words match UK searches. A site written by an overseas developer or adapted from a US template may say “attorney”, “realtor” or “zip code”. Your customers search for solicitors, estate agents and postcodes, and Google matches pages to the words people actually use.

5. Content quality and trust

Technical fixes let Google read a page. Whether it ranks depends mostly on whether the page is the most useful answer to the search.

• Each page has one clear job. Write the search you want each important page to win next to its URL. If two pages are aiming at the same search, you have keyword cannibalisation and should merge them or give each a distinct purpose.
• Pages answer what a customer needs to decide. For a service page that usually means what is included, who it suits, rough cost or what affects it, the area you cover and how to get in touch. Search the term yourself and compare your page with the pages that rank.
• No thin or near-duplicate pages. Location pages that differ only by the town name, empty tag archives and short placeholder pages dilute the site. Improve them, merge them or remove them from the index.
• Content is current. Look for old prices, discontinued services, staff who have left and events in past years. Out-of-date pages cost trust with readers before they cost anything in search.
• The business is identifiable. An about page with real people, a physical or service address, a UK phone number and clear contact details all help. If you trade as a limited company, the Companies Act trading disclosure rules also expect your registered name, company number and registered office to appear on the website.
• Reviews and evidence are genuine. Testimonials should be real and attributable. Since the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which the CMA enforces, publishing fake reviews or hiding negative ones is unlawful, not just a credibility risk.

6. Speed and Core Web Vitals

Google measures how quickly real visitors see and can use your pages, using Chrome data from actual visits. These measures are the Core Web Vitals.

• Check the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console first, because it uses real visitor data grouped by page type. Small sites may not have enough visits to show data, which is normal.
• Test your key templates in PageSpeed Insights: the home page, a service or category page and a blog post. Read the field data at the top before the lab score underneath.
• Know the thresholds. Google’s “good” marks are Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint within 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, judged at the 75th percentile of visits, separately for mobile and desktop.
• Look for the usual causes: oversized hero images, sliders, a dozen plugins each loading their own scripts, chat widgets, and slow, cheap hosting. Fonts and cookie banners that push content down as they load are common causes of layout shift.
• Keep it in proportion. Speed matters for visitors and is one signal among many. A slightly slow page that answers the search well will usually beat a fast page that does not.

7. Mobile and usability

Google indexes the mobile version of your site, so the mobile version is the one being judged. Check it on an actual phone, not only by narrowing a desktop browser.

• The mobile page holds the same content as desktop. Text hidden behind tabs is fine; sections removed entirely on mobile are invisible to Google.
• Text is readable and buttons are easy to tap without zooming, and nothing scrolls sideways.
• Phone numbers are tap-to-call and forms are short enough to complete on a phone.
• Pop-ups do not cover the content. Google treats intrusive interstitials as a poor experience. A cookie consent banner you are legally required to show is not penalised in the same way, but keep it compact so visitors can still see what the page is about.

8. Structured data

Structured data, or schema markup, is code that labels facts on a page, such as your business name, address, opening hours or a product’s price, so search engines read them without guessing.

• Find out what markup you already have. Run your home page and a few key pages through Google’s Rich Results Test. Themes and plugins often add markup nobody asked for.
• The markup matches what is visible. An address, rating or price in the code that does not appear on the page breaks Google’s guidelines.
• Local details are correct. For a local business, check the name, address, UK phone number in +44 format and opening hours are identical to your Google Business Profile.
• Your expectations are realistic. Google stopped showing How-to rich results and now shows FAQ rich results only for a small group of authoritative government and health sites. Review stars marked up by a business about itself are not shown either. Markup still helps search engines understand the page, but it will not add stars or drop-down answers to most small business listings.

9. Local SEO, if customers find you by location

If you serve customers in a particular town, borough or region, a large share of your search visibility comes from the map results and your Google Business Profile rather than your website alone. Local search has enough moving parts to need its own list, so work through the local SEO checklist for the profile, reviews, citations and location pages. From the website side, check three things here: your name, address and phone number match the profile exactly, each area you genuinely serve is covered by content with something specific to say about it, and the page your profile links to is the right one.

10. Links from other sites

Links from other websites are still one of the ways Google judges whether a business is real and respected. For most small businesses the job here is to understand what you have, not to chase numbers.

• See who links to you in the Links report in Search Console. It is free and shows the sites and pages linking most often.
• Check where those links land. Links pointing to pages that now return a 404 are wasted. Redirect the old URL to the closest live page.
• Note the obvious gaps. Trade bodies you belong to, suppliers, local business groups, sponsorships and UK directories relevant to your sector often link to members on request.
• Do not panic about spammy-looking links. Every site collects some. Google says it ignores most of them. The disavow tool is for a narrower case: you know paid or manipulative links were built to the site, by you or a previous agency, and they have caused or could cause a manual action.
• Check your brand mentions. Search your business name in quotes. Articles that mention you without linking are a polite email away from becoming a link.

11. Measurement

An audit should end with a way to tell whether your changes are working, so check that the numbers you will rely on are trustworthy.

• Analytics is on every page, once, with no page firing the tag twice. Your crawler can search the source code of every page for your GA4 measurement ID.
• Enquiries are tracked as key events in GA4: form submissions, clicks on phone numbers and email links, and purchases if you sell online. Test each one; my guide on checking your conversion tracking works walks through how.
• Consent is respected. Tags that set non-essential cookies should wait until the visitor accepts them. Expect analytics to show fewer visitors than really arrive once people can decline, and use Search Console clicks as your steadier measure of organic search.
• Search Console and analytics are linked, so you can see search queries alongside what visitors did on the site.

What to do with what you find

Most self-audits produce a long list. The skill is in the order you tackle it. I rank each item by two questions: how many important pages does it affect, and does it stop pages being indexed or only hold them back? Anything that blocks indexing on pages that bring in enquiries goes first, whatever the effort. After that, fix the problems that affect whole templates, because one change repairs every page built on them. Single-page tweaks such as an individual title or a missing alt attribute come last.

Set a date to re-check. Search Console usually takes days to weeks to reflect a fix, and rankings move more slowly than that, so compare against your baseline after a month or two rather than the next morning.

If the list turns up problems you are not sure how to fix, or you would rather have someone else work through it, there are two ways I can help. A full SEO audit covers everything on this page in depth and ranks every fix in a written action plan your developer can follow. If you first want a second opinion on what matters most, you can request a free SEO audit and I will tell you what I would fix first.

Updated 6 October 2026