SEO audit checklist: 25 checks for any page

An SEO audit sounds like a big project, but for a single page it comes down to a few questions. Can Google find and index the page? Does it understand what the page is about? Is the page good enough to deserve a click? This checklist walks through each one. You can run the checks by hand, or paste the address into the free checker below and get most of the answers in a few seconds.

Why audit one page at a time

Site-wide audits produce long reports with hundreds of warnings, and most people never get past the first screen. A page-level audit is different: you pick a page that matters (a product, a service page, a popular article), check it properly, fix what is wrong and move on. Start with the pages that already get impressions in Google Search Console, because small fixes there move clicks fastest.

1. Indexing checks

If Google can't index a page, nothing else on this list matters. Check these first.

1. The page returns a 200 status. Not a redirect, not a 404, not a soft error page.
2. There is no noindex in a robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag header. See our noindex guide.
3. robots.txt does not block the address. A blocked page can still appear in results, but Google can't read it. Test it with the robots.txt tester.
4. The canonical tag points to the page itself, or to the version you want indexed. More in what is a canonical tag.
5. The page is in your XML sitemap and linked from at least one other page on the site.

2. Title and description

The title tag is still one of the strongest on-page signals, and together with the meta description it is your advert in the results.

1. There is exactly one title tag, and it describes this page, not the whole site.
2. The title fits: roughly 50 to 60 characters, or under about 600 pixels on desktop. See title tag length.
3. The main phrase is near the start of the title, written the way people search for it.
4. There is a meta description of about 120 to 155 characters that says what the visitor gets. See meta description length.
5. Titles and descriptions are unique across the site. Duplicates make pages compete with each other.

3. Content and headings

1. One clear H1 that matches the topic of the title.
2. H2 and H3 headings follow the structure of the content, not the design. Our header tags guide explains how.
3. The opening paragraph answers the main question directly. Readers and AI answers both reward this.
4. There is enough content to be useful. Not a word target, but enough to answer the question fully. See how long should a blog post be.
5. The page is not stuffed with keywords. Read it out loud: if it sounds odd, rewrite it.

4. Links

1. Important pages get internal links from related pages, with descriptive anchor text.
2. No broken links. Dead links waste visitors and crawl time. Use the broken link checker.
3. No redirect chains in your own links. Link straight to the final address.
4. Paid and user-generated links are marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc".

5. Images and media

1. Every meaningful image has alt text that describes it. Decorative images get an empty alt="".
2. Images are a sensible size and use modern formats like WebP or AVIF.
3. The page has a social preview image set with Open Graph tags, so links look good when shared.

6. Technical basics

1. The page works on a phone: a viewport meta tag, readable text and no sideways scrolling.
2. The page uses HTTPS and has no mixed content warnings.
3. Structured data is valid, if you use it. Check it with the schema checker.

How to prioritise what you find

Not every item carries the same weight. Fix them in this order:

• Blockers first: noindex, robots.txt blocks, wrong canonicals and error status codes. These stop a page from ranking at all.
• Click-through next: titles and descriptions. These change how many people click from the rankings you already have.
• Quality and structure: headings, content gaps, internal links and images.
• Polish last: schema, social tags and small technical warnings.

Turn the checklist into a habit

A one-off audit catches today's problems. The ones that hurt are the ones that appear later: a plugin update that adds noindex, a redesign that removes headings, a title someone shortened to nothing. Re-check your top pages after every big change, and once a month otherwise. If you would rather not do it by hand, Clarnic connects to Google Search Console, Analytics, Bing and Clarity and turns what it finds into one ranked list of fixes for the whole site.