If your website traffic has stalled (or worse, dropped), it’s often a sign that something under the hood needs attention.
An SEO audit is like a checkup for your site. It helps you identify what’s working, what’s broken, and where you should focus first. The truth is, you can’t fix everything at once, and you don’t need to. The key is prioritization.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to run an SEO audit, spot the issues hurting your rankings, and create a plan to fix them step by step. If you’d like expert support while you’re at it, our SEO services can help.
Why SEO audits matter
Think of your website like a house: over time, things wear out, dust builds up, and maybe a door squeaks. If you don’t check in now and then, small problems can pile up until they block visitors from coming in. An SEO audit gives you a complete picture of your website’s health, covering technical performance, content quality, and authority signals like backlinks.
Step 1: Crawl your site like Google does
The best place to start is by seeing your site the way search engines do. Use a site crawler like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Semrush to scan your website for common issues.
What to look for in your crawl report
- Broken links: Both internal and external. These create dead ends for users and search engines.
- Redirect chains: Too many hops slow down crawlers and waste crawl budget.
- Duplicate content: Multiple URLs serving the same or very similar content can dilute ranking signals.
- Missing metadata: Title tags and meta descriptions are critical for click-through rates.
- Thin content: Pages with little useful information that don’t serve a clear purpose.
Fix the broken stuff first. A clean crawl is the foundation for everything else.
Step 2: Check site speed and mobile performance
Speed is a ranking factor, but more importantly, it’s a user factor. People will bounce if your site speed drags. Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse tools show where your pages stand and how to improve them.
Key performance elements to review
- Core Web Vitals: Focus on Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
- Mobile usability: Ensure buttons are tap-friendly, text is legible, and layouts don’t break.
- Image optimization: Compress and serve images in next-gen formats like WebP.
- Hosting and caching: Make sure your server response times are fast and caching policies are set.
Even small improvements here can lead to better engagement and rankings.
For reference, Google provides detailed developer documentation on Core Web Vitals and how they affect SEO.
RELATED: Learn how to conduct a SERP analysis.
Step 3: Audit your content
Search engines rank pages that solve problems for users. If your content doesn’t align with search intent, it won’t perform.
How to evaluate your content
- Relevance: Does the page actually answer the search query?
- Depth: Is it comprehensive enough, or is it a thin overview?
- Freshness: Outdated stats or old references can hurt credibility.
- Engagement: Check bounce rate, time on page, and scroll depth in Google Analytics.
- Duplicate content: Use canonical tags where necessary.
As you identify weak spots, create a list of updates starting with pages that already rank on page 2 or 3 of Google. These are the lowest-hanging fruit.
Step 4: Look at technical SEO and indexing
Technical SEO means making sure search engines can crawl, understand, and index your site properly.
Technical checks to prioritize
- Robots.txt: Make sure you aren’t blocking important pages.
- XML sitemap: Keep it clean, updated, and submitted in Google Search Console.
- Canonical tags: Prevent duplicate content issues.
- HTTPS: Secure sites are standard now; make sure all pages redirect properly to HTTPS.
- Structured data: Schema markup can improve rich results in search.
Step 5: Evaluate your backlinks
Backlinks are still one of the strongest ranking signals. But not all links are good links. Some can actually hurt you.
Backlink audit checklist
- Quality over quantity: Links from authoritative sites carry more weight.
- Relevance: A link from a related industry source is far more valuable than a random directory.
- Toxic links: Spammy or low-quality backlinks can drag your site down. Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to identify and disavow them.
- Lost links: If strong backlinks have disappeared, consider outreach to reclaim them.
Strong, healthy backlinks show search engines that your site can be trusted.
Step 6: Review your analytics and Search Console data
Google Analytics and Google Search Console give you direct feedback on how your site performs in search.
Metrics to keep an eye on
- Top queries: See what terms are already driving impressions and clicks.
- CTR (click-through rate): Low CTR may mean your title tags or meta descriptions need work.
- Index coverage: Watch for errors, excluded pages, or sudden drops in indexed pages.
- Bounce rate: High bounce rates on key pages may signal content or UX issues.
- Conversions: Traffic doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t turn into leads, signups, or sales.
This data helps you prioritize fixes that will move the needle fastest. Be aware that conversions are now called “Key Events” in GA4.
Step 7: Prioritize fixes (you can’t fix everything at once)
By now, you’ll have a list of issues, from broken links to slow pages to thin content. Trying to tackle everything at once is overwhelming. Instead, create an SEO strategy that ranks issues by impact and effort.
A simple prioritization framework
- High impact, low effort: Fix these first (e.g., broken links, missing titles).
- High impact, high effort: Plan these next (e.g., site speed improvements, full content rewrites).
- Low impact, low effort: Tackle when time allows (e.g., small metadata tweaks).
- Low impact, high effort: Consider skipping unless strategically important.
This framework keeps your team focused on changes that improve rankings and UX the most.
Step 8: Create an action plan
An SEO audit is only useful if it leads to action. Turn your findings into a prioritized roadmap.
What a simple action plan looks like
- Immediate fixes: Resolve broken links, missing metadata, and critical technical errors.
- Short-term goals (1–3 months): Update, prune, or consolidate underperforming content.
- Medium-term goals (3–6 months): Improve site speed, refine internal linking, strengthen backlinks.
- Long-term goals (6+ months): Content expansion, structured data implementation, authority-building campaigns.
Revisit your plan regularly to track progress and adjust as your site evolves.
Step 9: Keep auditing on a regular schedule
SEO isn’t “set it and forget it.” Sites change, competitors improve, and search algorithms evolve. A quarterly SEO audit keeps you proactive instead of reactive. Even a light check every few months can catch problems before they tank your rankings.
Make Your SEO Audit Work for You
An SEO audit doesn’t need to be overwhelming. Start with a crawl, fix the obvious issues, and prioritize the rest based on what will have the biggest impact. Remember: you’re not trying to fix everything today; you’re building a process for ongoing improvement.
For those who’d like help, our SEO services are designed to uncover the biggest opportunities, make fixes manageable, and move your rankings in the right direction. We’ve guided countless businesses through this process, and we’d love to do the same for you. Tell us about your project today.