How to do an SEO audit of your website

A website SEO audit answers one question: what is stopping your pages from getting more search traffic? The answer is usually a mix of technical problems (pages Google can't index), duplication (pages competing with each other) and content that doesn't match what people search for. This guide covers all three in a practical order.

Step 1: Scan the site

Start with a crawl: a tool that visits your pages the way a search engine does and records what it finds. For a small site, scanning your homepage and the pages it links to catches most problems. Paste your domain into the free scanner below to check up to 20 pages at once.

Step 2: Check what Google has indexed

A crawl shows what is on your site. Google Search Console shows what Google actually did with it. Open the Pages report (under Indexing) and look at two numbers: indexed and not indexed. Then read the reasons for the not-indexed pages.

• Excluded by noindex tag: fine for thank-you pages and account pages, a problem for anything you want to rank.
• Crawled, currently not indexed: Google read the page and decided it wasn't worth indexing yet. Usually a content quality or duplication signal.
• Discovered, currently not indexed: Google knows the page exists but hasn't crawled it. Often a sign of weak internal linking.
• Duplicate without user-selected canonical: Google found several versions of the same page. Set a canonical. See what is a canonical tag.

Step 3: Fix technical blockers

Go through the scan results and fix anything that stops a page from being crawled or indexed:

• Pages returning 404 or 5xx errors that are still linked internally.
• Redirect chains (A to B to C). Link to the final address instead. Our guide to 301 vs 302 redirects explains which to use.
• Rules in robots.txt that block pages you want in search. See blocked by robots.txt.
• Missing or broken XML sitemap. See what is an XML sitemap.

Step 4: Find duplicates

Duplicate titles and descriptions are the most common issue on small sites, especially shops and blogs built from templates. When ten pages share the title "Products | My Store", Google has to guess which one is relevant. Give every page a title that describes that page. Our guide to duplicate title tags shows how to spot and fix them.

Step 5: Review on-page basics

For each important page, check the title, meta description, H1, opening paragraph and images. The SEO audit checklist has the full list of 25 checks. The short version:

• One clear H1 per page that matches the title.
• A title under about 60 characters with the main phrase near the start.
• A meta description that tells searchers what they will get.
• Alt text on meaningful images.

Step 6: Look at content against search data

Technical fixes remove obstacles. Content is what earns rankings. In Search Console, open the Performance report and sort queries by impressions. Look for:

• Queries ranking 4 to 20: you are close. Improving the page that ranks for them is usually the fastest win.
• High impressions, low click rate: the title and description aren't convincing. Rewrite them.
• Pages with no impressions at all: they may not match anything people search for. Merge, improve or remove them.

The free Search Console analyzer finds these patterns in your export for you.

Step 7: Check links

Internal links tell Google which pages matter and help it discover new ones. Make sure every important page is linked from at least one or two related pages, with anchor text that describes the destination. Then remove or fix broken links. See internal linking for SEO.

Step 8: Write down a fix list

An audit is only useful if it turns into work. Put every issue into a single list, ranked by impact:

1. Anything that blocks indexing on pages you want to rank.
2. Duplicate or missing titles on important pages.
3. Quick wins from Search Console (positions 4 to 20, low click rate).
4. Content gaps and thin pages.
5. Everything else.

That ranked list is exactly what Clarnic produces automatically, from your own Search Console, Analytics, Bing and Clarity data, and keeps up to date every day.