An SEO audit involves the process of analyzing a website to see if it has been optimized for search engines. It helps recognize errors that can have a negative impact on the rankings of a website. It uncovers chances to adjust a site to get more visibility. By conducting an SEO audit you can boost your website rankings, which will have the domino effect of attracting additional traffic and help boost your business growth.
An effective SEO audit is based on hard data on a website’s technical health, traffic, and backlink profile. This process includes using different tools like semrush and Google Search Console.
How to do an seo audit
Now that you know what an SEO audit is, you might be wondering how to go about it. Like any process, an SEO audit can be broken down into several steps covering different areas. These areas include aspects as indexing, crawling, site architecture, keyword research, on page SEO and backlink analysis. If you are thinking where to start, read on to find out!
Step 1 – Run a site audit
To begin the process, consider a crawl that is similar to the one done by search engines like Google, to identify anything that might be an issue for the search engine. If you are using a tool like Semrush then you have to use the site audit option to start this process.
You can do this by creating a project and setting up an audit. Once the site audit is completed, you’ll get a dashboard that shows your score for the “Site Health.”
The overall indicator of your website’s SEO health depends on the number of problems found and how problematic these issues might be. These issues can be identified as either belonging to categories called errors, warnings, and notices. These types will assist you to prioritize your issues. The initial steps would be to address these first, then the warnings, and then notices. These will also include “Thematic Reports” that you might want to take a closer look at when it comes to different areas of technical SEO.
For example, to take a closer look at the specific issues on semrush, click on issues. This will reveal a complete list of these the crawl identified. Next, click on specific issues to find out all the affected URLs.
Some of the issues you might want to notice include crawlability issues, redirect issues, sitemap issues, issues with HTTPS, internal links problems, on-page SEO issues, markup issues and performance issues.
Out of these issues, some will take little time and effort to fix while some might take more. There may be issues that will need to be time consuming to tackle too. If you are feeling overwhelmed, Semrush offers explanations and how-to-guides on how you might address each issue.
To explore possible fixes click the “Why and how to fix it” link next to every issue you notice. Next, go through one by one and start addressing the issues that you think need to be addressed soon first.
Step 2 – Check Your Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is when visitors to your website come from unpaid search, which is called organic. Considerable drops in organic traffic levels might signify something that needs to be fixed. To do this, you will need to use a tool for organic research, such as the one offered on Semrush.
In semrush, you will see an overview page where the number of estimated website visitors to your site on a monthly basis and how that number has varied across time. Using this information, you can recognize spikes and dips in website traffic over time.
If you go to the “Position Changes” tab on a tool, which in this case is the tool offered by Semrush, you will notice how search engine rankings have changed over time on the SERPs or search engine results pages on search engines like Google.
The “Top Page Changes” widget on Semrush allows for an easy way to identify pages with the most traffic changes over a period of 28 days. If you detect an unusual drop in the level of traffic across your website for certain pages, this might be helpful in checking for what actions that might show that your site has gone against spam policies put in place by Google.
This can be checked if you have received a manual action by Google Search Console. To check this, go to “Manual actions” in “Security & Manual Actions.” Once you have clicked on it, you will find yourself on a page detailing the current status of your website.
If everything is as it should be it will show a green tick. But if you have an issue and it shows manual actions directed at the website, you need to fix this and make a reconsideration request.
Step 3 – Check for Indexing Problems
If you have pages on your website that aren’t indexed and which therefore aren’t appearing on the database of Google, this means Google is unable to rank them. To identify these issues you can do a site audit using an SEO tool like Semrush.
Next, using this tool, crawl your site and go to the “Issues” tab. Choose “indexability” in the Category” menu to identify indexing issues. This can also be used to see if your web pages have been indexed in Google Search Console directly.
In the left menu of the tool, go to the “Pages” report beneath the “Index” section. Once there, you will see a graph displaying all pages based on their indexing status. Beneath it you will see reasons for why your pages might not have been indexed, all given as a list which you can use as a checklist to work on.
With this handy list, you are able to go through the listed reasons and check out the affected pages. It is important to note that all pages don’t need to be indexed and the ones you want to rank in the search results are the ones you need to focus on getting indexed. It is not unusual to have some links that aren’t indexed.
There are some types of URLs that don’t need to be indexed including pages and redirects, admin pages, alternate pages with canonical tags and feed pages.
If you are detect a page that needs to be indexed then you might want to consider fixing the issue following Google’s guidelines and click on “Validate Fix”
Step 4 – Look for Duplicates of the Site
If you want to grow traffic to your site, it is important that search engines like Google index the right one you want to direct all your traffic. If you have a website that runs on many different URL versions there might be a problem with crawling, indexing, and ranking that is done by search engines like Google.
Having many versions of your site can impact page rank adversely and have a negative impact on your SEO rankings.
The traffic you get needs to be directed to the preferred URL so that you can work on growing your traffic and thus your online sales and business. If you have different versions of URLs, you should ideally use a 301 redirect for the alternates.
Step 5 – Check for Mobile Friendliness Problems
Mobile friendliness is one of the key factors that affects page experience signals for search engines like Google. Google prefers mobile friendly sites and now no longer indexes sites that don’t work well on mobile.
This means that your site needs to be mobile friendly to rank high on Google research results. You can check for mobile friendliness issues by checking the issues report in the Site Audit.
To do this check if the “user agent” is set to a mobile crawler on the Semrush site audit project you are working on. If you see that it is not, click the gear icon at the top right of your page and go to User agent.
From there, choose “SiteAuditBot-Mobile” from the menu and select “Save.” Navigate to the “Issues” tab and enter “mobile” in the search bar to check for any specific problems. You can fix any problems, warnings, and notices in this manner. Additionally you can work with a developer to address any additional issues.
Step 6 – Work on Enhancing Your Site’s Speed
A quicker loading speed will help you rank high on search engines like Google. Your site needs to load fast to retain visitors from clicking away from your site. To check for your site’s speed visit “Site Performance” report from your Site Audit dashboard on a SEO tool like Semrush.
Step 7 – Analyze the Core Web Vitals of Your Site
Google’s Core Web Vitals are a set of three metrics that looks at the user-friendliness of your website. This is mostly related to speed and checking these insights needs to be done when doing a technical SEO audit since these metrics have an impact on your website rankings.
Some of the metrics you might want to keep an eye on include LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), INP (Interaction to Next Paint), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). If you are new to technical SEO you might want to do some research into these terms.
LCP measures the time it takes to load the largest element on the page, while INP looks at how long it takes for a site to respond to user interactions, while CLS looks at how much the layout of the page alters in an unforeseen way for the user.
Google’s “Core Wen Vitals” report offered by Google Search Console will let you identify “Desktop” and “Mobile” reports listing all the problems and the pages affected by it. These reports will let you get detailed insights into Core Web Vital problems of your site.
Step 8 – Ensure the Sitemap is Alright
A sitemap is what lists the pages you wish search engines like google to index. It is important to keep things like redirects, non-anonicals, or dead pages from being listed as they send mixed signals to search engines like Google.
Keep in mind to ensure the key pages you would like to be indexed by search engines like Google are present on your sitemap.
To do this you can go to Google Search Console and click site maps, which will also allow you to identify issues related to your sitemap.
Step 9 – Analyze Your Internal Links
Internal links are important in SEO for several reasons including helping search engines crawl your website, assisting users navigate your site and helps direct PageRank which is also known as link equity or link juice to the best pages. There is a report in Site Audit dedicated to internal linking issues on SEO tools like Semrush.
Step 10 – Identify Other Keywords You Could Optimize for
Doing an SEO audit will allow you to identify keywords that your competitors target and figure out if you might be missing out on chances to rank your site. Using a keyword research tool like Semrush, open the Keyword Gap tool, and enter your domain and other competitor domains and click “Compare.” Look for missing keywords your competitors rank for and weak keywords your competitors rank for better than you.
Step 11 – Look for Missed Backlink Opportunities
Backlinks are links that direct externally to your website. These are important for SEO since Google considers backlinks as votes of confidence. If these links are from authoritative sites they can enhance your site’s reputation and add a sense of credibility.
The better backlinks your site receives, the higher the chances of your website ranking high on the SERPs or search engine results pages. To do this, you can use a Backlink Gap tool to research backlink opportunities.
Using a SEO tool like Semrush you can enter your website’s domain and some competitors and click on “Find prospects.” This tool will show you a list of domains that link to your competitors but not to your site.
Step 12 – Focus on Auditing Your On-Page SEO
A common crawl will let you identify technical issues in your website. It is important to take a detailed look at specific pages including your key pages. Doing this will help you analyze the overall performance of these important pages and figure out methods to drive even more traffic and retain website visitors.
SEO tools like Semrush can help there. For example Semrush’s SEO checker will allow you to get this sorted. Using the On page SEO checker you will be able to discover pages and keywords without much effort or fill them in yourself manually if you wish.
It is important to keep in mind to prioritize the pages that bring in the most sales or revenue to your business. Remember to target keywords that are most important to your brand or business.
The on page seo checker tool will allow you to compare your data with the top com[petitros and provide useful tips you can put into action to enhance your website rankings.
Step 13 – Revamp Old Content
It is important to revive pages that used to bring in a lot of leads but don’t perform well at present. Giving them new life will help boost their rankings and attract website visitors who might turn into qualifying leads.
To do this, you can use a tool like Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to figure out what pages have declined and how they could be updated to perform better.
To do this you can start refreshing and revising outdated information. This can be done by updating references and replacing outdated details with more uptodate details.
Next, you might want to focus on dealing with pruning thin content that doesn’t offer as much value as they could be. You can merge it with more relevant content or consider taking it down completely. If you do this you need to use a redirect if you decide on deletion.
Step 14 – Remember to Optimize for AI Overviews and Featured Snippets
According to research done by Ahrefs (another brand that offers SEO tools), informational keywords often end up triggering an AI overview almost all the time, which is statistically 99.2%, in a study they did of 2 million features snippets.
According to their research around 12.3% search queries have a featured snippet, 8.6% of the clicks go to these featured snippets, and a whopping 30.9% of featured snippets rank above all the other search results.
If you want to be discoverable in the present (2025) SEO landscape it is best to consider optimizing for AI overviews and featured snippets. If you thought these two might be connected, well you are right, they are. According to Ahrefs AI overviews SERPs trigger 849% more featured snippets than those without AI overview SERPs.
This means that when your content finds itself into a featured snippet you increase the probability of being featured in an AI overview as well. Promise media agency, we are passionate about SEO services and our team located 3 main cities where Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in Australia to deliver SEO services.
What tools do you need to perform an SEO audit?
If you are conducting an SEO audit, there are many tools that you can use to do so. These tools range from free to expensive, with every tool being designed for a specific functionality.
This section of this article on what tools you need to perform an SEO audit will be focusing on specific functions, regardless of the fact that some of these might overlap in different but similar SEO tools that are available for use.
Google Search Console
Google search console can be used to track statistics like clicks, impressions, position and CTRs or click through rates. It is also possible to check for different metrics on Google Discover and Google News, if you are looking to confirm your findings. GSC or Google Search Console gives the user the ability to track different featured snippets such as sitelinks, breadcrumbs, AMP and video snippets just to name a few.
The Google Search Console tool is a useful tool for SEO professionals as it allows them to track statistics and metrics through Google’s own data (from the horse’s own mouth if you will). It also allows you to gain insights into things like Google algorithm updates, site errors, and so much more.
The best part is that this tool, despite the exceptional value it provides, is absolutely free, which makes it accessible for any SEO professional to use it despite their income level or budget.
Google Analytics
Google analytics is one of the key tools that can be used to track a site’s overall performance data from a broad range of channels, not just organic traffic streams from Google.
Some amazing features offered by Google analytics include the high thorough data gathering mechanisms that also come with data driven insights. This tool makes it easy for you to create a story that is easy for your clients to understand in terms of things like traffic to a website and conversions or leads gathered.
According to Google’s product pitch Google Analytics allows you to “unlock customer centric measurement,” which will help in figuring out how your customers interact with your site and applications along the buyer journey.
Do you want to know what the cherry on top is? This tool by Google is free for you to use. This makes this tool a great one, even if you are on a tight marketing budget.
Google Trends
Google trends is an excellent tool if you are looking for a lot of data to help you create a better SEO strategy for your business. This data shows you the interest in a search term across time.
What makes this tool cool is the fact that it allows you to search for keywords and also offers data that shows you the peak popularity of these terms, not just search volume. The larger the figure the higher the traffic you will tend to get. As a data tool, Google trends would only offer details about what searches can be expected if you decide to pick a certain keyword.
You know the best thing about this tool? It is free! Which means you can use it regardless of your marketing budget.
Google Rich Results Testing Tool
This awesome tool lets you test your structured data.
When using a code input or URL input, you can check to ensure that your structured data validates according to Google’s standards. If not you may run into problems when displaying structured data.
The best part? You guessed it, it’s free!
Google Mobile-Friendly Test
Google mobile friendly test tool allows you to verify if your site is mobile friendly. Google recommends that this tool can be used as a part of the check and repair process when you consider mobile usability issues.
What’s so great about this tool, I think you know it if you have some intuition by now, it is absolutely free.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is the standard and best known tool when it comes to carrying out thorough technical SEO audits. This tool will let you perform basic crawls to more complex features like helping you to analyze JavaScript and deep canonical problems, it’s possible to create SEO audit deliverables just by using Screaming Frog as your SEO tool.
This tool not only offers advanced crawl options but it also lets you dive deep into broken links, redirects, and duplicate content.
It also lets you use XPath to extract any custom data you wish to and create XML sitemaps fast. This tool slo allows you to crawl JavaScript websites and integrations with Google Analytics together with Google Search Console too.
If you wish to use the full version of Screaming Frog, it will cost 259 dollars (USD) annually. The tool lets you choose your own currency depending on your country.
Semrush
Semrush offers a range of options when it comes to SEO. From SEO audits, link building to content marketing, Semrush has most if not everything most SEO experts need to help you out with SEO related tasks.
This versatile tool will let you save time when performing things like SEO audits, as it runs through over 120 checks. Semrush will help you detect problems like issues with page speed, crawlability, and backlinks. That’s not all, this is an excellent tool when it comes to security checks and on-page SEO.
When it comes to pricing, Semrush offers a range of tools from 119 USD to 449 USD from which you can choose from depending on your budget.
Sitebulb
Sitebulb is a crawler and site audit tool similar to Screaming Frog. This tool is comprehensive and can provide information and figure out things like crawlability problems including on page SEO, backlinks, and more.
Sitebulb has different key features that includes detailed reports for on page SEO problems including internal and external, indexability, and duplicate content. Some of these functions include some for JavaScript crawling, prioritization hints and a full PDF reporting.
This tool is quite inexpensive when compared to the different SEO tools available. It has a free version, a lite one that costs 13.50 USD per month to audit 1000 URLs, a Pro version for 35.00 USD with which you can audit 500,000USD.
Raven Tools
Raven tools is an SEO tool is a site auditing tool that provides the ability to help track keywords and ongoing SEO performance.
This tool includes Google Data Studio integrations, comprehensive marketing reports that you can private label with an agency, competitor research, keyword research, a backlink checker and other digital marketing functions.
This tool comes at a price with plans starting from 39 USD called the Small Business plan, 79 USD for the Starter plan, and 399 USD for the lead plan. Each individual plan has a certain number of domains or campaigns that you can utilize as part of your SEO strategy.
Ahrefs
If you have researched about SEO or have been working as an SEO expert, you are unlikely to be a stranger to this SEO tool. They are famous for being the counterpart of Semrush and a comprehensive suite of SEO tools that will help you carry out detailed technical SEO audits,backlink audits, content gap analysis, keyword gap analyses and more.
The pricing structure starts off with 99 USD which is the Lite plan, 199 USD which is the Standard plan, starting at 399 USD per month is the Advanced plan and finally the one starting at 999 USD per month. Every plan includes site explorer, keywords explorer, site audit tool, rank tracker, and alerts.
SEO Pro Google Chrome Extension
This is an excellent extension made by Kristina Azarenko of Marketing Syrup. It is a fantastic Chrome extension meant to help you with SEO audits.
SEO Pro is a tool that can assist with page level evaluations and can assist SEO experts with page-level checks that will help you manage heading tags issues. This includes a solid scoring system that will help scrape the page for heading tags, images, alt text, page speed problems and more. If you are looking to perform page level evaluations as part of an SEO audit work, this is an excellent tool that will allow you to manage these and get an idea on what’s going on on a page at a glance.
The best of it all, the pricing is, you might have guessed it, Free.
Page-O-Scope By Mobile Moxie
The Page-O-Scope by Mobile Moxie can allow you to identify problems with your mobile site’s design and usability by scanning the mobile versions of your pages on other devices.
Mobile landing pages can be tested on over 50 iOS and android devices using this tool. PAge-O-Scope by Mobile Moxie allows you to locate problems and other issues caused by coding errors, lapses on the part of web developers and more.
A landing page testing option is also available with this tool and it is also country aware, which allows you to test landing pages in international arenas too. One impressive feature offered by this tool includes the ability to preview CTAs and the conversion funnels used on these devices to ensure that they function well across many mobile devices.
Pricing plans also include access to various levels of projects depending on how much you invest. Live testing and tracking, which allows access to all the six tools that have basic features of its pricing plans. They have packages starting at 99 USD per month, followed by another plan at 279 USD per month, ending with an Agency plan that costs 879 USD per month.
MST SERP Counter Chrome Extension
This is an efficient extension that can help you identify how your page is ranking in the SERPs. All you need to do is install it and load up a SERP and the extension will add numbers to the left-hand side.
One of the key features of MST SERP which displays the number next to the search results, which will allow you to identify the position of any website result.
HubSpot Website Grader
The HubSpot Website Grader is a well known tool with many different versions.
This tool checks a site with four main categories for performance including site performance, search engine optimization, mobile friendliness and security.
The best thing about it is that it is (you probably guessed it) that it is free to use.
Oncrawl
Oncrawl is a website crawler that is comparable to Screaming Frog. It differs from Screaming Frog because it runs in the cloud. This means that it has considerable URL allocations, which can go up to over 300 million URLs. What’s more it also has more than 500 charts and 12 data points to be used that will allow you to inform your SEO audits.
Using these crawls you can manage and monitor changes to your site and keep track of them. Doing this will allow you to make changes so that it doesn’t have a negative impact on your SEO strategy.
Oncrawl lets you use your crawl with other data such as publishing data, product pricing, and AMP implementations. It is possible to create custom reports based on the data insights gathered instead of depending on data that might not be useful for a report.
If you are wondering, there is more to this tool’s functionalities in that it allows you to crawl down to the smallest details, such as JavaScript crawling, virtual robots.txt, staging sites, crawl speed, subdomains and more.
If you want to get to know the pricing, you need to call.
On-Page Audit Tools
On-page SEO is a very important part when it comes to optimizing your site. By focusing on on-page SEO you can take the required steps to keep your page competitive for months on end.
Frase.io
Frase.io is a really cool tool for on-page SEO. It is a cloud based application that lets you take your on page SEO strategy to the next level. Its user interface comes with a workflow that lets you to see the top search results that you choose, and to look at them all in one place, without having to resort to using spreadsheets.
It is quite like Surfer SEO when it comes to the on page SEO interface. This tool lets you include words on the page that are taken into account when it comes to the overall on page SEO score. If you have a high score more likely you will be able to be sure that a page is well optimized.
One of the awesome features when it comes to Frase.io is that it allows for automated AI generated content briefs that can be customized for all your clients. Frase.io lets you use AI to generate content too. This can be used to generate ideas for your content based on your key competitors who are performing well to enable a smooth workflow.
When it comes to pricing, there are 4 plans. Starting with Solo, which costs 14.99 USD monthly. Next comes Basic which costs 44.99 USD monthly. Then there’s the Team plan which costs 114.99 USD per month. Finally there is the Pro Add-On which costs 35 USD per month which lets you get unlimited monthly AI generated content and other awesome features.
Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is a competitor of Frase, but it is slightly different and includes content optimization
features along with content audit capabilities.
Some of the cool features when it comes to page optimization is that it offers a range of key functionalities such as content audit capabilities, keyword research abilities. The Grow Flow AI offered by Surfer SEO allows for growth management platforms, and Ai outline generator and comes as a Google Chrome extension.
This tool comes in differently priced packages. Starting at 59 USD per month which is the Basic package, next comes Pro at 119 USD, then Business $239 and Enterprise which you need to call to customize.
Inlinks
Inlinks is a SEO tool which offers entity based internal linking capabilities that utilizes AI to generate links.
It also lets you create automated content briefs that can help with on page SEO optimization just like Frase and Surfer SEO. Inlinks offers a customized AI platform which allows for specific opportunities that are linked with entities which makes this tool one of a kind and in a league of its own.
Inlinks comes with the capability of Schema optimization, which includes automated Schema markup functionalities.
It has a free version and paid versions. The first paid option is Freelancer which starts off at 39 USD per month, Agency at 156 USD per month and a special customized enterprise plan.
Hopefully, you have some idea about how to do an SEO audit and what tools you can use to go about it. This comprehensive guide was written with the hopes of equipping you on your SEO journey to take your business to the next level. We hope that you gained some or many valuable insights into performing an SEO audit by reading this article.
