# SEO Audit Guide: How to Do a Technical and Content Audit > How to do an SEO audit in seven steps: crawling, indexing, Core Web Vitals, on-page content and links, plus a sample findings list and common mistakes. _Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/seo-audit-guide — The Professional's Toolkit · updated October 2026_ --- An SEO audit is a structured check of everything that decides whether search engines can find, understand and rank your website: crawling, indexing, page speed, on-page content, internal links and backlinks. The method is simple to state. Confirm Google can reach and index your pages, then check how each page performs and reads, then rank every problem by impact and fix the biggest ones first. A small site can finish a first pass in an afternoon with free tools. **3** — Minimum technical requirements Google lists before a page can be indexed - **2.5 s** — Google's target for Largest Contentful Paint - **200 ms** — Google's target for Interaction to Next Paint - **90 days** — History in Search Console's Crawl Stats report ## What an SEO audit checks, and why the order matters Every website audit for SEO covers the same layers, and they stack. **Crawling** comes first: can search engines reach your pages at all? Indexing comes next: did Google store them? Then page experience, which covers speed, mobile layout and HTTPS. Then on-page content: titles, headings, duplicates, thin pages. Last come links, both internal links between your own pages and backlinks from other sites. The order is the point. A brilliant title tag does nothing on a page Google never indexed. A fast page earns nothing if a stray robots.txt rule hides it. So an audit works top down, and a problem in a lower layer usually waits until the layers above it are clean. Skipping ahead is the most common way audits produce long reports and no traffic. ### Technical SEO audit versus content audit People often use *technical SEO audit* for the first three layers: crawling, indexing and page experience. A content audit covers the rest: what each page says, whether it matches what people search for, and whether two pages compete for the same query. A full SEO audit does both. If time is short, start with the technical side. It affects every page at once, while a content fix usually helps one page at a time. ### The baseline: Google's three minimum requirements Before any tool, know the floor. Google says a page is eligible to be indexed when three things hold: Googlebot isn't blocked, the page returns an HTTP 200 success code, and the page has indexable content [1]. Eligible is not a promise, though. Google also states that meeting these requirements does not guarantee indexing. That gives your audit its first three questions for every important page. Is it blocked by robots.txt or a noindex tag? Does it load with a success code, or an error or redirect? Is the main content real text that Google can read? Most serious findings in a technical SEO audit trace back to one of these three. The rest of the audit is about doing better than the minimum. > 💡 **Audit templates, not pages:** Most issues repeat across a template, such as every product or blog page. Fix the template once and hundreds of URLs improve together. ## How to do an SEO audit in seven steps Here is the full sequence. Each step has a free way to start, and each one feeds the next. 1. **Confirm you are in the index.** Search Google for `site:yourdomain.com`. Google's own starter guide suggests this check first; if results point to your site, you are in the index [2]. Few or no results means the problem is upstream of everything else. 2. **Read the Page indexing report.** In Google Search Console, open the Page indexing report. It lists which URLs are indexed, which are not, and the reason for each. Look for important pages under *Crawled - currently not indexed* or blocked by robots.txt. 3. **Crawl the site.** A crawler visits every page the way a search engine would and lists status codes, redirects, broken links, missing titles and duplicate pages. This is the step Search Console cannot do for you. 4. **Check page experience.** Open the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console and confirm HTTPS works across the site. 5. **Review on-page content.** Look for missing or duplicate titles, thin pages, and several pages chasing the same keyword. 6. **Check internal links.** Find pages with no internal links pointing to them, known as orphan pages, and pages buried many clicks from the homepage. 7. **Check your backlinks.** See who links to you, and which of those links point to pages that no longer exist. Then turn the findings into one prioritized list. More on that below. ### Where Search Console fits Search Console covers steps 2 and 4 for free on any site you verify, and confirms step 1 page by page. Its reports include Page indexing, URL Inspection, Sitemaps, Crawl Stats for the last 90 days (domain-level properties only) and Core Web Vitals from real-user field data. It reports on what Google crawled, though; it is not a crawler of your site. Our [Search Console audit checklist](/articles/google-search-console-seo-audit-checklist) walks through its checks in the order that matters. ### Page experience: speed, mobile and HTTPS Page experience is where audits often get stuck on scores. Focus on the three Core Web Vitals instead. Google's targets are a Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, an Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds, and a Cumulative Layout Shift below 0.1 [3]. LCP measures loading, INP measures responsiveness, and CLS measures how much the layout jumps. Search Console groups similar URLs together, and a group takes the status of its worst metric. So one slow template, such as every product page sharing a heavy image carousel, can put hundreds of URLs into the *Poor* bucket at once. That is good news. Fix the template and the whole group moves. Check HTTPS in the same pass: every page should load securely, and the HTTP version should redirect to it. > ⚠ **Staging settings left live:** A noindex tag or a Disallow rule copied from a staging site can hide whole sections. Check robots.txt and the Page indexing report after every launch or migration. ## On-page and content checks that move rankings Once pages are reachable and fast, check what they say. Start with titles. Google builds the clickable headline in results from the page's `` element and other headings, so each important page needs a unique, descriptive title. Missing and duplicate titles are among the easiest wins in a website audit. Next, look for duplicate content. The same content under several URLs is not a spam violation, Google says, but search engines pick one canonical version to show and may waste crawling on the rest. Common culprits are `www` and non-`www` versions, HTTP and HTTPS, and URLs with tracking parameters. Each variant should redirect or point to one canonical address. Then check intent. Pull the queries each page appears for from the Performance report in Search Console and ask a blunt question: does this page actually answer that search? Pages that rank on page two for a query they half answer are often your best upside. Thin pages with little content, and two posts fighting for the same keyword, are candidates to merge. ## An SEO audit sample: what a findings list looks like A useful audit ends in a short, ranked list, not a hundred-page export. Here is what a sample might look like for a 300-page small-business site, sorted by impact. | Priority | Finding | Layer | Fix | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | Blog category pages blocked by robots.txt | Crawling | Remove the Disallow rule, resubmit sitemap | | 2 | 40 product pages under *Crawled - currently not indexed* | Indexing | Add unique descriptions, link them from category pages | | 3 | Product template fails LCP on mobile | Page experience | Compress and lazy-load the hero image | | 4 | 25 duplicate titles across location pages | On-page | Write a unique title per city | | 5 | 12 internal links to deleted pages | Links | Edit links at the source, 301 the old URLs | Notice what is missing: dozens of minor warnings about image alt text or long URLs. They can go on a second list. **Rank by reach times severity.** An issue that blocks a whole section beats one that slightly weakens a single page. For the broken-link row, our free walkthrough on [finding and fixing broken links](/articles/how-to-find-broken-links) covers both the Search Console and the crawler side. > 💡 **Keep a second list:** Park minor warnings on a separate list so the ranked fix list stays short enough to finish. ## Common SEO audit mistakes, and when it gets hard The first mistake is treating the tool's score as the goal. Site health scores count issues, and some can be pushed up by switching checks off. Traffic and indexed pages are the outcomes that matter. The second is fixing in the wrong order: polishing meta descriptions while a leftover noindex tag from a staging site hides the pages. The third is redirecting every 404 to the homepage, which Google advises against; redirect only to a true replacement page. The fourth mistake is auditing once. Sites drift. A plugin update, a redesign or a migration can undo months of work overnight. Plan a full audit at least once or twice a year, before and after any redesign, and a quick monthly look at Search Console in between. The free way gets hard at three points. Size is the first: past a few hundred pages, manual crawling and spreadsheet triage eat days. The second is frequency, because nobody remembers to recrawl weekly. The third is anything outside your own site. Search Console only reports on sites you verify, so it cannot show competitors' pages or the full backlink picture. ## Tools that do it for you When the audit needs to run on a schedule, a site audit tool takes over the crawling, the checks and the fix list. Semrush [runs a scheduled Site Audit](/articles/semrush-site-audit) with a health score and a How to fix note per issue, and Ahrefs offers [Site Audit free for sites you verify](/articles/ahrefs-site-audit). Search Console stays on alongside either one, since it is the only view of what Google itself saw. ### Google Search Console — partly solves this Page indexing lists which URLs Google indexed and why the rest were left out, URL Inspection runs a live test of any page, and the Core Web Vitals report groups slow URLs from real-user data, with email alerts for manual actions and security issues. - Where it stops: It reports only on your own verified site and only what Google crawled; it is not a crawler, so it misses on-page issues Google has not hit. - Plan: Free - How Google Search Console does it: [Search Console audit checklist, in order](https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/google-search-console-seo-audit-checklist) - More: [Google Search Console](https://professionalstoolkit.com/tools/google-search-console) ### Semrush — solves this Site Audit crawls the site once, weekly or daily, runs 140+ technical and on-page checks, and returns a Site Health score with errors, warnings and a How to fix note per issue, plus thematic reports for crawlability, HTTPS, internal linking and Core Web Vitals. 1. Create a project; the first audit starts automatically 2. Pick the crawl source and schedule 3. Work errors first, then warnings - Where it stops: The Free plan audits 100 pages; JavaScript rendering only on Pro+ and Advanced. - Plan: Free (100 pages); Site Audit is included in the SEO plan - How Semrush does it: [Running a Semrush Site Audit](https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/semrush-site-audit) - More: [Semrush](https://professionalstoolkit.com/tools/semrush) ### Ahrefs — solves this Site Audit crawls a verified site on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule for 170+ technical and on-page issues, covering indexability, sitemaps, duplicates, orphan pages and Core Web Vitals, and exports each issue with fixing instructions. - Where it stops: Free only for sites you verify; sites over 5,000 pages need Starter or higher, and auditing sites you do not own needs a paid plan. - Plan: Ahrefs Free (verified sites); Starter or higher above 5,000 pages - How Ahrefs does it: [Ahrefs Site Audit setup and limits](https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/ahrefs-site-audit) - More: [Ahrefs](https://professionalstoolkit.com/tools/ahrefs) For a fuller comparison by situation, including SE Ranking, Ubersuggest and Serpstat, see our guide to [SEO audit tools](/articles/seo-audit-tools). ## FAQ **How long does an SEO audit take?** A first pass on a small site with Search Console and a free crawler fits in an afternoon. Large sites take days, mostly in triage, which is where a site audit tool saves time. **What should an SEO audit report include?** A short list of findings ranked by impact, each with the layer it belongs to (crawling, indexing, page experience, on-page or links), the pages affected and the fix. Minor warnings go on a separate list. **Can I do an SEO audit for free?** Yes for a small site you own. Google Search Console covers indexing, Core Web Vitals and, for domain-level properties, crawl data, and a free crawler covers status codes and broken links. Competitor and full backlink data need a paid tool. **What is the difference between an SEO audit and a site audit tool's health score?** A health score counts issues the tool found. An audit decides which of them matter, in what order, and ties them to indexing and traffic. ## The bottom line An SEO audit is a top-down check: make sure Google can crawl and index your pages, then make them fast, clear and well linked, then rank every finding by how many pages it touches. Search Console plus a free crawler covers a first audit for a small site. Once the site grows past a few hundred pages or you want checks on a schedule, an audit tool saves the time, and Search Console stays on for the view of what Google actually saw. ## Sources [1] Google for Developers — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/technical (Oct 2026) [2] Google for Developers — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide (Oct 2026) [3] Google for Developers — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals (Oct 2026)