How to Perform a Complete SEO Audit in 12 Steps

What Is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is the process of evaluating how well your website is optimized for search engines. 

It identifies errors that can prevent your site from ranking well. And uncovers opportunities that can help you gain more visibility. 

That way, you can boost your rankings, attract more traffic, and achieve better business outcomes.

An effective SEO website audit is based on hard data about your website’s technical health, traffic, and backlink profile. And similar data about your competitor’s websites.

The two most important SEO audit tools that will help you with that are: 

• Semrush: An all-in-one SEO suite that provides a comprehensive look at your site’s performance and helps you improve your organic search performance. For example, Site Audit checks for over 140 on-page and technical SEO issues.
• Google Search Console: A set of dashboards and reports that allows you to monitor and troubleshoot any issues related to your website’s presence on Google

We’ll take a closer look at how to do an SEO audit using these tools now.

How to Do an SEO Audit

SEO audits usually covers areas like:

• Indexing and crawlability 
• Site architecture
• Keyword research
• On-page SEO
• Backlink analysis

It can be hard to know where to start. That’s why we’ve broken the process down into 12 easy-to-follow steps. 

In a rush? Here’s an essential SEO audit checklist to get started.

1. Run a Site Crawl

Start with a crawl that simulates the way Google crawls your pages. So you can see anything that might present a problem for the search engine.

Use Site Audit for this.

First, create a project and set up the audit.

Use this guide to help you go through the setup.

Once you’re ready, click the “Start Site Audit” button. 

When the audit is done, you’ll get to a dashboard that displays your “Site Health” score.

It’s an overall indicator of your website’s SEO health that’s based on the number of issues found and their severity.

You’ll see the issues divided into three categories: 

1. Errors
2. Warnings
3. Notices

These will help you prioritize your fixes. Fix errors first, then warnings, and then notices.

You’ll also find “Thematic Reports” to take a closer look at various aspects of technical SEO. 

We’ll dive deeper into some of these in the following steps.

To review specific problems, click on the “Issues” tab.

You’ll find a full list of all the issues the crawl detected. 

Click each issue to reveal the list of all affected URLs.

Here are some examples of issues you may encounter:

• Crawlability issues (e.g., some pages returned 5xx status code)
• Redirect issues (e.g., some of your redirects are looped)
• Sitemap issues (e.g., some incorrect pages were found in your sitemap)
• Issues with HTTPS (e.g., HTTPS pages link to HTTP pages)
• Internal links issues (e.g., you have broken—non-functional—internal links)
• On-page SEO issues (e.g., you don’t have title tags for some pages)
• Markup issues (e.g., some structured data markup doesn’t comply with Google’s guidelines)
• Performance issues (e.g., some pages load slowly)

Some of these issues are quite easy to fix. Some may require more complex solutions. 

If you’re not sure where to start, the tool offers an explanation and a short how-to guide for each issue.

Just click the “Why and how to fix it” link next to each issue to see it. 

Go through the issues one at a time to start improving your website.

Further reading: If you have an especially large website, read our Enterprise SEO Audit guide.

2. Check Your Organic Traffic

Organic traffic refers to visits to your site that come from organic (unpaid) search results. So significant declines are a good indicator of something that needs to be addressed. 

To quickly check your site’s organic traffic, use the Organic Research tool.

Enter your domain and click “Search.”

Once your results are ready, you’ll see an “Overview” page like this:

The “Traffic” number at the top estimates how many monthly visits your site gets. And the chart shows how that number has changed over time.

You can use this information to spot spikes and dips in your site’s traffic.

Head over to the “Position Changes” tab to see how your rankings have changed in the search engine results pages (SERPs.)

The “Top Page Changes” widget provides an easy way to spot the pages with the biggest traffic changes over the last 28 days.

If you notice an unusual dip in traffic—whether across your entire site or for specific pages—it might be useful to check for manual actions that indicate your site has violated Google’s spam policies. 

You can check if you’ve received a manual action in Google Search Console.

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

Click it, and you’ll land on a page that displays your site’s current status.

Hopefully, you see a green tick that shows no issues are detected.

If there’s a manual action against your website, fix the issues and make a reconsideration request. 

For example, if you’ve received a manual action as a result of buying backlinks (“Unnatural links to your site”), you’ll need to get rid of those backlinks either by contacting the webmasters to ask for removal or disavowing them. 

See Google’s Manual Actions guide for more details.

Further reading: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding Google Penalties 

3. Check for Indexing Issues

Pages that aren’t indexed are ones that don’t appear in Google’s database. That means Google can’t rank them.

Find indexing issues (and other technical SEO issues) with Site Audit. 

Crawl your site and head to the “Issues” tab. 

Select “Indexability” in the “Category” drop-down to see only indexing issues. 

You can also check to see whether your pages have been indexed directly in Google Search Console.

Head to the “Pages” report under the “Index” section in the left menu. 

Here, you can see a graph of all pages based on their indexing status. 

Underneath, you’ll see a list of reasons why the pages haven’t been indexed.

Go through all the listed reasons one by one. Inspect all the affected pages.

Remember that not all pages have to be indexed—only the ones you want to rank in search results. It’s completely normal to have some URLs that aren’t indexed.

Here are some examples of URLs that don’t have to be indexed:

• Pages with redirects
• Admin pages
• Alternate pages with canonical tags
• Feed pages

If you find a page that should be indexed but isn’t, fix the issue by following Google’s guidelines. Once done, hit the “Validate Fix” button.

Alternatively, grab a specific URL and enter it into the top search bar in the Google Search Console dashboard.

You’ll see the URL’s status. 

You can also request that Google index the URL by clicking the “Request Indexing” link.

Further reading:

4. Check for Duplicate Versions of Your Site

It’s essential that Google indexes only one version of your site. 

To illustrate why, consider that these are all different versions of the same site to search engines: 

• http://www.yoursite.com
• http://yoursite.com
• https://www.yoursite.com
• https://yoursite.com

If your website runs on more than one of these URL versions, it can cause many issues with crawling, indexing, and ranking. Because Google will see them as duplicates. 

Plus, having multiple versions of your site can dilute PageRank. Which can also have a negative impact on your SEO rankings. 

You can check this very easily. 

Just enter all the versions of your site into a web browser. You should be automatically redirected to the preferred version. 

For example, if your preferred URL version is “https://yoursite.com,” you should be redirected to it if you enter any other version into your browser.

If you can access your site through various versions, use a 301 redirect for the other versions. 

Further reading: The Ultimate Guide to Redirects: URL Redirections Explained

5. Check for Mobile-Friendliness Issues

Mobile-friendliness is one of the main page experience signals for Google. And Google no longer indexes sites that don’t work on mobile devices.

That means your site’s usability on mobile devices can directly influence your ability to rank in search results.

Check for mobile-friendliness problems using the “Issues” report in Site Audit.

First, make sure your “user agent” is set to a mobile crawler. 

If it’s not, click on the gear icon at the top right-hand side of your page, and click “User agent:”

From here, select “SiteAuditBot-Mobile” from the drop-down. Then, click “Save.”

Navigate to the “Issues” tab. 

Then, enter “mobile” in the search bar to see any mobile-specific issues on your site. 

Fix any errors, warnings, and notices that you can address by yourself. Then work with a developer to go through the rest.

Further reading: The Complete Guide to Mobile SEO—Tips & Best Practices

6. Analyze Your Site’s Speed

Better loading speed helps you rank higher on Google. And it’s better for the user experience.

Data shows that the slower a page loads, the higher the chance of users leaving the website. 

To check your site’s speed, head to the “Site Performance” report from your Site Audit dashboard.

Here, you’ll see a list of all the issues affecting your site’s loading time.

To learn more about a specific issue and how to address it, click on the “Why and how to fix it” link in that issue’s row. 

Address as many issues as you can. You should see your site speed (and rankings) improve as a result. 

Further reading: What Is Page Speed & How to Improve It

7. Analyze Your Core Web Vitals

Google’s Core Web Vitals are a collection of three metrics that assess the overall user-friendliness of your site. While they’re largely related to speed, checking these metrics should be part of your technical SEO audit because they affect rankings.

Here’s a closer look at what the specific metrics are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long it takes to load the largest element on the page
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures how long it takes for a site to respond to user interactions
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures how much the layout of the page shifts unexpectedly for the user

There’s a dedicated Core Web Vitals report in Site Audit.

Just click “View details” in the “Core Web Vitals” widget in the dashboard. 

You’ll see a breakdown of each metric (note that Total Blocking Time is used as an approximation for INP). Like this:

If you scroll down, you’ll see a table labeled “Analyzed Pages.” 

Here are all the metrics for each of your analyzed pages. 

If you’d like to change the list of pages that are evaluated (like when you want to focus on your most important pages), click the “Edit list” button. 

Edit the list as you wish. And click “Save.”

You can also check these metrics using Google Search Console. 

Head to the “Core Web Vitals” report under the “Experience” section in the left menu.

You’ll see both “Desktop” and “Mobile” reports listing all the issues and the affected pages.

Click “Open Report” at the top of either chart for more details.

These reports will give you detailed insights into any Core Web Vitals issues your site may have.

The tool distinguishes between pages that have severe issues (“poor URLs”) and those that just need some improvement.

Go through the issues and follow the instructions on how to fix them. 

8. Analyze Your Internal Links

Internal links are a crucial part of SEO for three reasons: 

1. They help search engines crawl your website
2. They help users navigate your website
3. They help you to direct PageRank (also called “link equity” or “link juice”) to the most important pages

There’s a report in Site Audit dedicated to internal linking issues. 

Click “View details” in the “Internal Linking” widget.

You’ll get a list of issues related to internal links. And tips on how to fix them.

The report will also give you a useful overview of your pages based on Internal LinkRank (ILR)—a metric that measures how strong your interlinking is for different pages.

Going through each category will help you identify two types of pages: 

1. Important pages that don’t get enough internal links (so you can point more internal links to them)
2. Pages with good ILR scores (so you can use them to distribute link equity to other pages)

Further reading: Internal Links: Ultimate Guide + Strategies

9. Find Keywords You’re Missing Out On

An SEO audit is a great opportunity to look at the keywords your competitors target. And discover whether you’re missing out on any opportunities. 

Open the Keyword Gap tool, enter your domain and up to four competitor domains, and click “Compare.” 

The tool will compare the sets of keywords the analyzed domains are ranking for.

Scroll down to the list of keywords and take a look at the “Missing” and “Weak” tabs: 

• Missing: Keywords your competitors rank for (but you don’t)
• Weak: Keywords your competitors rank for higher than you do

The list will likely reveal some hidden keyword opportunities you may not have considered. 

10. Find Missed Backlink Opportunities

Backlinks are links that point from an external site to yours. 

They’re important for SEO because Google views backlinks as votes of confidence. Especially when those links are from authoritative sources in your niche.

Generally, the more high-quality backlinks your site gets, the higher its chances of performing well in search results.

You can use the Backlink Gap tool to find backlink opportunities.

Just enter your domain and the domains of up to four competitors. Click “Find prospects.”

The tool will show a list of domains that link to your competitors but not to you: 

These are domains that are likely to link to your website since they’re already linking to similar sites (your competitors). 

Click on the arrow next to the number indicating the number of backlinks from a certain domain.

This expands the view to show specific pages that link to your competitors. As well as the anchor text and target URLs.

Now, you can try to replicate these backlinks.

Select the ones that are relevant to your website and click the “Start outreach” button in the top-right corner. 

This will send the selected prospects to the Link Building Tool, where you can set up a new project for your domain. 

The tool will help you: 

• Find backlink prospects from various sources
• Reach out to the domain owners and ask them for backlinks
• Keep track of the progress of your outreach campaigns

Further reading: 

11. Audit Your On-Page SEO 

A general site crawl will help you find technical issues across your website. But it’s also good to take a closer look at specific pages (especially your important ones).

This will help you analyze their performance and find ways to improve them.

On Page SEO Checker will help you with that.

Let the tool find the pages and keywords automatically. Or fill them in manually.

You don’t need to check all your pages. Instead, focus on the ones that: 

• Bring the most conversions
• Target the keywords that are most important for your business

The tool will compare your data with the top-ranking competitors and provide actionable tips and recommendations to improve your rankings in various on-page SEO audit areas. 

To check the ideas for a specific page, go to the “Optimization Ideas” tab. And click the “# ideas” button next to the page’s URL:

You’ll get a detailed list of all the suggestions (with tips and difficulty levels). 

Implement the recommendations to help your pages perform better. 

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

12. Update Declining Content

Updating pages that used to perform well but no longer do can give them new life. To boost their rankings and attract more traffic.

Use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to identify pages that have declined in the search results. 

Follow the steps to configure your settings. You can also check out our Position Tracking setup guide for step-by-step guidance.

Once your results are ready, you’ll see a dashboard like this:

Visit the “Pages” tab for a full list of pages that rank for at least one keyword in your campaign. 

Look at the “Diff” columns under “Estimated Traffic” and “Average position.” And take note of the pages with the most notable declines.

Once you have a list of pages that need to be refreshed:

• Revise outdated information: Update references and and replace outdated information with current statistics and details
• Prune thin content: If you have thin content that doesn’t provide substantial value, consider merging it with a more relevant page or removing it altogether (you should implement a redirect if you choose deletion)
• Improve content readability: Ensure your content is easy to read. Use clear headings, bullet points, visual breaks, and shorter paragraphs for a better user experience. 

Continue to Improve Your SEO

A website audit is a valuable first step. But SEO is an ongoing process. 

Use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to track your SEO improvements over time. And discover new issues that might get in your way.

Run your first SEO audit today.