SEO Audit: A 16-Step Guide for Auditing Your Site

What Is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is a comprehensive evaluation of your site’s overall health. 

It helps you assess whether your website is well-optimized for search engines like Google. And alerts you to issues that could affect your rankings and the user experience. 

Generally, SEO audits analyze the following areas:

• Technical SEO: Look for potential technical problems related to how well search engines can crawl (discover) and index (store) your content
• On-page SEO: Identify issues with webpages like improper use of headings and low-quality content
  
• Off-page SEO: Assess whether you can improve the efforts you take outside your website to improve your rankings (like building links from reputable sources)
  
• User experience (UX): Analyze how easy it is for visitors to navigate and interact with your site

After conducting an audit, you’ll be able to implement changes that can lead to better rankings, more traffic, and better business results. 

16 Steps to Follow When Doing an SEO Audit

Sign up for a free Semrush account to follow along with this tutorial. 

Then, follow these steps to do an SEO site audit:

1. Run a Site Crawl

First, you’ll want to use a website crawler (bot) to check the pages on your site. To see how search engines like Google view your website.

This can help you spot problems. Which you can fix to improve your site's SEO.

Use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to run a crawl.

Open the tool, type in your domain, and click “Start Audit.”

Then, configure your Site Audit settings. And make sure to set the “Limit of checked pages” so it evaluates as many of your pages as possible. 

So, you might want to set it to 1,000 pages if your site has around 800 pages. To make sure nothing gets missed.

When you’re ready, click “Start Site Audit.”

Once your audit is ready, you’ll see an overview like this:

In the “Site Health” section, you’ll get an overall well-being score for your site. This is based on the number of SEO issues the tool found during the audit.

This section also compares your website’s health against competitors. So you have a benchmark for comparison.

The prioritization widgets at the top of your report tell you the total number of “Errors”,“Warnings”, and “Notices” found on your site.

Here’s what they mean:

• Errors are issues that need your immediate attention
  

• Warnings represent issues of medium impact
  
• Notices aren’t critical but you should still consider fixing them

Don’t worry too much about all the details yet. You’ll learn how to use the information within the different reports in the coming sections. 

2. Look for Indexing Problems

If you have pages that aren’t indexed, they won’t show up in Google’s search results. Which can significantly impact your SEO performance. 

To find issues that might prevent your pages from being indexed, head to your project in Semrush’s Site Audit. And go to the “Issues” tab.

Then, select the “Category” drop-down and click “Indexability”.

You’ll now see a list of issues that might be preventing your pages from showing in search results. 

Click “Why and how to fix” to learn more about an issue and what steps you can take to address it. 

Start with errors first (if there are any). Then, move on to warnings and notices.

If your website has a lot of indexability problems, you might want to first verify that your most important pages like your homepage and product pages are issue-free. 

To do this, use Google Search Console’s “Page Indexing” report.

From your account, click on “Pages” under the “Indexing” section.

Copy the URL of each key page. And paste it into the top search bar in the GSC dashboard.

If the page isn’t indexed, you’ll see why under the “Page indexing” section. 

Fix the issue and click “Request indexing” when you’re done.

Further reading: Google Search Console Errors: Identifying and Fixing Them 

3. Look for Manual Actions Against Your Site

Manual actions are penalties Google imposes for violating its spam policies. And they can harm your rankings or even prevent your site from showing in search results at all.

Some examples of these violations include:

• Keyword stuffing—using excessive keywords in an attempt to manipulate your site's ranking
  
• Hiding text or links on a page to try to manipulate search results
  
• Buying or selling links as a way to artificially inflate your site's importance or ranking
  
• Using generative AI writing tools to create large amounts of unaltered content that’s aimed at manipulating rankings but doesn’t add value for users

You can check for manual actions in Google Search Console (GSC).

Here’s how: 

Head to “Manual actions” under “Security & Manual Actions”.

If there are no problems, you’ll see a message saying, “No issues detected”. 

Like this:

If there are manual actions against your site, follow the steps Google has outlined in its Manual Actions report document to address them.

4. Check Your Site for Crawlability Issues

Your site needs to be crawled by Googlebot to have any chance of showing in search engine results pages (SERPs). But some problems keep it from doing that, which means your organic (unpaid) rankings and traffic could suffer. 

To discover potential crawlability issues, return to your Semrush Site Audit project.

From the “Thematics Report” section, click “View details” under “Crawlability”.

This report gives you an overview of elements that can affect how search engines crawl your site.

For example, the “Crawl Budget Waste” section tells you which pages or elements take up most of your crawl budget—i.e., the maximum amount of time and resources dedicated to crawling your site within a specific window before moving on.

So, reducing crawl waste ensures important pages get crawled. And hopefully indexed and ranked.

Once you’ve gotten an overview of how your site is from a crawlability perspective, investigate specific problems by going to your “Issues” tab. 

Then, click the “Category” drop-down and select “Crawlability” to filter your results.

Now, you’ll only see issues with your site’s crawlability.

Click on a specific issue for a list of all the affected pages.

If you’re unfamiliar with the error, click on “Why and how to fix it” for more guidance.

Further reading: Crawlability & Indexability: What They Are & How They Affect SEO 

5. Identify and Fix Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is when your site has multiple pages with the same or very similar content. Which can be bad for your SEO performance.

Why?

While there’s no Google penalty for duplicate content (unless it’s created to “manipulate search engine results”), it can confuse the search engine about which version to prioritize. And your rankings can suffer as a result. 

Duplicate content also wastes crawl budget. And can even hurt your site’s credibility.

Sometimes, this issue happens when you have the same page at multiple URLs.

Regardless of what’s responsible for the duplication, use your Semrush Site Audit project to catch those issues quickly. 

Navigate to the “Issues” tab and enter “duplicate” in the search bar above the list of technical issues to filter your results.

Click on “Why and how to fix it” next to an issue for more guidance on how to address it.

Just keep in mind that there are some cases when duplicate content is necessary. Like when you have a page located at a particular URL for your U.S. audience and the same content on another URL for your U.K. audience.

In those cases, you’ll want to implement canonical tags to indicate which one is the main URL for ranking reasons. 

6. Test Your Site’s Loading Speed

The faster your site loads, the better the user experience. And faster loading times contribute to higher rankings on the SERPs. 

One way to check your site’s loading speed is through your “Site Performance” report in your Semrush Site Audit project.

Go to the thematic report section and click “View details” under “Site Performance”.

This report gives you an overview of all speed-related issues affecting your site. 

For example, the “Page (HTML) Load Speed” chart breaks down the speed at which different pages on your site load.

Longer load times (especially if they’re longer than three seconds) negatively impact the user experience. And can lead visitors to leave your site quickly.

You’ll also see a list of performance issues to address on the right side of your screen. 

To learn about an issue and how to resolve it, click “Why and how to fix it”.

If you’re new to technical SEO, you might want to ask a developer for help.

But there are also simple things you can do yourself to improve your site speed. Like compressing image sizes. And removing unnecessary site elements.

To check an individual page’s speed (you might want to do this for particularly important pages), use Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI).

Visit open up PSI, enter the URL you want to evaluate, and click “Analyze”.

When your analysis is complete, you’ll see a score for your site’s performance for both mobile and desktop.

 Scroll down to “Diagnostics” for a list of opportunities to improve your site speed.

If necessary, work with a developer to implement these changes on your site. 

7. Fix Core Web Vitals Issues

The Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics Google uses to indicate how user-friendly your site is based on its speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. And Google has confirmed they’re among its direct ranking factors.

These metrics include:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long it takes for the largest content element on the page to fully load
  
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures the time it takes from when a user starts an interaction to when the visual change is displayed
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures how much the elements on the page move around unexpectedly as the page loads

Semrush’s Site Audit has a dedicated “Core Web Vitals” report. Which you can find under the “Thematic Reports” section. 

Click “View details” to access the report.

Under the “Metrics” section, you’ll see a breakdown of your LCP and CLS scores. Along with another metric called Total Blocking Time (TBT), which can be used to estimate INP.

This report helps you prioritize fixes by giving you a list of “Top Improvements” for each metric. 

Just select an issue under one of the “Top Improvements” columns to learn more. And get suggestions for fixing each issue. 

To see the status of individual URLs, scroll to the “Analyzed pages” section.

Click on the arrow next to each link and navigate to the “How to improve” tab for more page-specific improvement ideas.

You can also check your Core Web Vitals status in GSC. 

Navigate to your “Core Web Vitals” report under the “Experience” section. 

Once you open either the mobile or desktop report, scroll down to the “Why URLs aren't considered good” section.

You’ll be able to see the main issues affecting your performance. Which you should address.

8. Review Your Site’s Internal Linking 

Internal links are hyperlinks that point to different pages on the same domain. 

And they’re helpful for user navigation, ensuring search engine crawlers can find your pages, and distributing link equity (ranking authority) across your site. 

Here’s an example of an internal link:

The Semrush Site Audit tool has a dedicated “Internal Linking” report. Which you can find under your “Thematic Reports”.

First, take a look at the “Internal Link Distribution” section.

This data tells you how well internal links are distributed across your site. 

Click on “# Weak pages” to see a list of webpages that don’t have enough links pointing toward them.

Look for opportunities to add links to those pages.

Next, look at the list of internal linking issues. 

Click on the “# issues” button next to a particular issue to see a list of all the affected URLs.

Go through the list to fix the problems. 

Further reading: 11 Common Internal Linking Mistakes & How to Fix Them 

9. Audit and Fix Schema Markup Issues

Schema markup (also called structured data) is code you can add to webpages to help Google understand the content better. Which can help your result stand out if it ranks.

This is because schema markup makes your results eligible to appear as rich results—which show extra details about your page. Like star ratings, user reviews, recipe ingredients, etc.

And they can look like this:

Capturing a rich result can make your page stand out from your competitors in SERPs. To increase visibility and encourage more people to click through to your site. 

Use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to simplify generating schema for your pages.

After you’ve implemented the code, go to the “Markup” thematic report in Semrush’s Site Audit tool to identify structured data errors.

Click “View details” to see your report.

Site Audit gives your site a markup score based on the number of valid and invalid structured data it detects:

Scroll to the “Structured Data Items” section for a full list of errors. 

If you have invalid items, click “View all invalid items” to see a list of the links affected. And what fields need to be corrected.

10. Do a Competitor Analysis and Find Keyword Gaps

Comparing yourself against your competitors helps you identify where they may be outperforming you. And can reveal valuable search terms you can target to improve your SEO results.

If you don’t know who your closest organic competitors are, use Semrush’s Organic Research tool to quickly identify them.

Just enter your domain and navigate to the “Competitors” tab.

Then, scroll down to the “Organic Competitors” section to see a list of your organic competitors.

Next, use the Semrush Domain Overview tool to compare your domain performance against competitors.

Open the tool, enter your domain, and click “Search”.

Then, navigate to the “Compare domains” tab. 

Add up to four competitors and click “Compare”.

The report will give you a visual comparison of the key metrics like:

• Authority score: Reflects the overall quality of a domain or webpage
  
• Organic traffic: How much traffic a domain gets from the SERPs
  
• Organic keywords: How many unpaid keywords a domain is ranking for
  

Scroll down to the “Top opportunities” section to see a list of keywords your competitors are ranking for but you aren’t.

Click “View details” for more information on keywords you can use in your content to boost your rankings.

You’ll automatically be taken to Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool. 

Scroll down to the “All keyword details for:” and make sure your domain is selected. 

Use the “Missing” tab to find terms all your competitors are ranking for but you aren’t. And use the “Weak” tab to find terms that you have lower rankings for than all your competitors. 

You might also want to reference the “Intent”, “Volume”, and “KD%” (keyword difficulty—a measure of how difficult it will be to rank in the top 10) columns to identify the right search terms. 

Further reading: Keyword Gap Analysis: What It Is & How to Do It

11. Study Your Site's Organic Traffic Performance

Organic traffic refers to visitors who come to your website through search engine results. It helps you see how well your SEO is working and where you can improve.

To get data on your domain’s organic traffic, go to the “Traffic acquisition” report in your Google Analytics 4 account and make sure to set the date to the last full month. 

You’ll see a breakdown of traffic from different sources, including organic search.

Use this report to track your progress regularly.

Then, use Semrush’s Organic Research tool to compare yourself to a competitor’s site.

Open the tool and enter a rival’s URL in the search bar. Then, click “Search”.

The “Traffic” metric is an estimation of that site’s monthly organic traffic in the following month. And if you click it, you’ll see a graph showing the traffic trend.

Use this information to see how you’re performing compared to your competitors in terms of organic traffic.

12. Optimize Your Webpages

Optimizing your existing content is a great way to get better performance out of what you already have.

Use Semrush’s On Page SEO Checker to get action items that can improve your pages’ rankings. 

Open and configure the tool for your site.

When your audit is ready, you’ll see a list of improvement ideas in various categories like:

• Strategy
• User experience
• SERP features
• Content

Head to the “Optimization ideas” tab for a list of pages with suggested improvements, ordered by priority.

Click the “# ideas” button next to a page for detailed recommendations. Like making your text more readable or adding more relevant keywords to your content.

Each recommendation comes with tips on what to do, why it's important, and how challenging it will be to implement.

Further reading: The Ultimate Guide on How to Do a Content Audit (+ Template)

13. Update Underperforming Content

Content that doesn’t perform well still has potential. By refreshing these pages, you could improve your rankings and also improve the user experience.

Find pages that are showing a negative performance trend in Google Search Console.

Head over to your “Search results” report, click on the “Date:” filter at the top of your page, and pick a comparison period.

Then, click “Apply”.

Filter your report by “Pages” and look at the “Clicks Difference” and “Impressions Difference” columns.

Then, make note of pages with the most severe declines.

Once you know which pages need to be refreshed, use Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant to improve the content quality.

Open the tool, and click “+ Analyze new text”.

Paste in your content. Or click “Import text from web” and add the page URL.

Next, add at least two keywords (consider using ones you determined in your keyword gap analysis) and click “Get recommendations” to get started.

The tool will automatically give your content a total score out of 10. And rate the text based on four categories:

• SEO
• Readability
• Originality
• Tone of voice

Scroll down for recommendations on how to improve in each category.

Some suggestions include adding more recommended keywords, fixing link issues, rewriting sentences to match your tone of voice, and reworking hard-to-read sentences.

Further reading: SEO Writing: 12 Tips for Creating SEO-Optimized Content

14. Perform a Backlink Analysis

Backlinks are links from other websites that lead to your site. And they’re beneficial for SEO because search engines like Google use links as an indicator of a website’s authority and trustworthiness. 

Use Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool to analyze your backlink profile.

Open the tool, add your URL, and click “Start Backlink Audit”.

Next, you’ll be asked to configure the tool. Click “Start Backlink Audit” once you’ve set up your project.

When the audit is complete, you’ll see a dashboard like this:

Pay attention to these metrics in the “Overview” tab:

• Overall Toxicity Score is based on how many toxic domains refer to your site. The higher the score, the more low-quality domains there are linking to yours.
  
• Referring Domains shows you how many unique domains link to your site. The more unique and relevant domains that link to your site, the higher the chances of improving your search engine rankings.
  
• Authority Score measures your domain’s reputability. The closer it is to 100, the more reputable your site appears to be.

With this information, you can take steps to improve your backlink profile. And your chances of ranking highly.

Further reading: How to Do a Backlink Audit (5 Simple Steps)

15. Find and Pursue Backlink Opportunities

To improve your backlink profile, you’ll need to engage in link building. Which is taking measures to get other sites to link to you.

One way to do this is to find out which sites link to your competitors. So you can reach out to them.

Use the Semrush Backlink Gap tool to identify links your competitors have but your site doesn’t. 

Enter your domain and your competitors’ domains. And click “Find prospects”.

By default, the tool will show you a list of domains that link to your competitors but not to you.

Click on the arrow next to the number of backlinks in any competitor’s column to see the exact pages that contain backlinks from a particular domain:

Analyzing the content on these pages can help you understand what type of content attracts backlinks in your industry. Which can help you determine which of your pages are good backlink candidates.

Then, select the domains you want to contact for backlinks and click “+ Start outreach”.

You’ll automatically be taken to Semrush’s Link Building Tool, where you can:

• See an extensive list of backlink prospects 
• Email webmasters and ask for backlinks
• Keep track of your outreach campaigns’ progress
  

Further reading: How to Find Your Competitors’ Backlinks: A Step-by-Step Guide

16. Monitor Your Rankings 

To know if your tactics are working, monitor your keyword rankings. And make adjustments to your strategy as needed.

Use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool for this.

To get started, open the tool and enter your domain. Then, click “Set up tracking”.

Next, you’ll be asked to configure Position Tracking.

Once the tool is ready, you’ll see a summary of your domain’s visibility, estimated traffic, and average position for your tracked keywords.

The “Competitors” section under the “Competitors Discovery” tab lets you compare yourself against your competitors across several key metrics.

This way, you can pinpoint exactly where you stand in your niche. And determine whether you need to adjust to get better results.

Run Your First SEO Audit

Doing regular SEO audits alerts you to potential issues before they can hurt your rankings. Or the user experience. 

And Semrush’s Site Audit tool provides the information you need to do a thorough audit. 

It identifies over 140 on-page and technical SEO issues. And helps you prioritize SEO issues so you can tackle the most critical ones first. 

Get started today.

About the Author

Hava Salsi

Writer

Hava Salsi is a Swiss-based content writer specializing in B2B SaaS, HR, and tech. With over 5 years of experience working with startups and businesses around the world, she produces engaging, user-centric content that ranks highly and drives conversions.