An SEO audit sounds like something that needs specialist software and a forty page report. A full one does. But the checks that find the biggest problems on a small business website are ones you can do yourself in an afternoon, with free tools, and they’ll tell you whether you need more help or not.
What an SEO audit is for
An audit answers three questions. Can search engines find and read your pages? Do those pages match what people search for? And does anything about the site put visitors, or Google, off?
You’re not trying to fix everything. You’re trying to produce a short list of problems in order of importance.
What you’ll need
- Google Search Console. Free, and the only place to see how Google views your own site. If it isn’t set up, do that first and give it a few days to gather data.
- PageSpeed Insights. Google’s free speed test.
- A spreadsheet, with one row per page.
- Your phone.
The seven checks
1. Is the site in Google at all?
Type site:yourdomain.co.uk into Google. You’ll see a rough list of the pages it has stored. If important pages are missing, or you see pages that shouldn’t be public, note it. Then open the page indexing report in Search Console, which lists pages that aren’t indexed and gives a reason for each.
2. One page per thing you sell
List your services and your main locations. Does each have its own page? A single “Services” page listing eight things rarely ranks for any of them. Equally, check you don’t have two pages competing for the same search.
3. Titles and descriptions
In your spreadsheet, record the title of every main page. Look for duplicates, titles that are only the company name, and anything called “Home”. Each title should describe that page and include the phrase a customer would search for.
4. The content itself
Read each key page as a customer would. Does it answer the obvious questions: what’s included, who it’s for, where you work, roughly what it costs, how to start? Pages with a couple of thin paragraphs are common, and they’re a frequent reason a site doesn’t rank.
5. Speed and mobile
Run your homepage and one service page through PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile results. Then use the site on your own phone over mobile data. Is the text readable without zooming? Do buttons work with a thumb? Does anything jump around as it loads?
6. Links
Click every link in your menu and footer. Fix anything that leads to an error page. Then check that each service page is linked from at least one other relevant page, not only from the menu. Pages with nothing pointing to them are hard for search engines to value.
7. Your local presence
If you serve a local area, search for your business name. Check your Google Business Profile is claimed, the category is right, and the name, address and phone number match your website exactly.
Turning your SEO audit into a to-do list
You’ll end up with a long list. Sort it into three groups:
- Blocking problems. Pages that can’t be indexed, broken links, a site that doesn’t work on mobile. These come first because nothing else will work until they’re fixed.
- Missed opportunities. Missing service pages, weak titles, thin content. This is where most of the gains are.
- Polish. Small speed improvements, tidier addresses, image file names. Worth doing, but last.
Within each group, start with the pages that matter most to the business. Your best selling service comes before the blog post from three years ago.
An audit that produces a list nobody acts on is just a report. Pick the top five and book time to do them.
What a DIY audit won’t catch
Be realistic about the limits. Checking by hand won’t reliably find crawl problems on larger sites, faults in redirects, issues with how scripts load content, or weaknesses in the sites that link to you. It also won’t tell you much about competitors.
If your own checks turn up indexing errors you can’t explain, or you’ve fixed the obvious things and nothing has moved after a few months, that’s the point to bring someone in.
When you want a second pair of eyes
A professional SEO audit goes deeper into the areas above and ends with a prioritised plan. That’s where our SEO work starts, and the crawling, indexing and speed side is covered by technical SEO.
