How to Audit Your Website's SEO: A Practical Checklist

You launched the site, wrote a few pages, and search traffic is close to zero. Before writing more content or paying for an audit, check whether search engines can find, read, and understand what you already have. Most early SEO problems are basic and fixable in an afternoon.

This checklist needs no SEO background and runs in order of impact: indexing first, then page clarity, then speed, mobile, and structured data. It ends with how to read Google Search Console's Page indexing report, where most answers show up.

You'll need access to Google Search Console for your domain and a list of the 10 to 30 pages that matter most: home, pricing, product pages, and your best posts. Log each issue you find in a simple spreadsheet so you can fix them in priority order.

Step 1: Check that search engines can index your pages

If a page can't be indexed, nothing else matters for that page. The biggest wins are often a single line of configuration left over from development.

robots.txt

Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Look for a line like "Disallow: /" under "User-agent: *", which blocks everything. It's a common leftover from staging. Also make sure real content folders like /blog/ aren't blocked.

noindex tags

View the source of each key page and search for "noindex". A meta robots tag with noindex tells search engines not to include the page in results. Many site builders have a "hide from search engines" setting that's easy to leave on at launch. The same instruction can also be sent in an HTTP header, which Search Console's URL Inspection tool will report.

Canonical tags

A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the main version of a page. Each important page should either point to itself or have no canonical at all. Watch for templates that point every canonical at the homepage, or at URLs that redirect or error. Either can quietly remove pages from search.

XML sitemap

Your sitemap lists the URLs you want indexed. Check that it exists (often at /sitemap.xml), that it's submitted in Search Console, and that it contains only live, indexable pages. Redirected, noindexed, or deleted URLs don't belong there.

Step 2: Titles, meta descriptions, and headings

Next, check whether each page clearly says what it's about. The title tag is usually the clickable headline in search results, so it matters most.

• Every page has a unique title. Duplicate titles like "Home | Brand" on ten pages make it hard for search engines to tell pages apart.
• The title leads with what the page is about in words a buyer would search, not just your brand name or a slogan.
• Each page has a meta description that summarises the page and gives a reason to click.
• Each page has one H1 that matches the page's topic, and H2s that break the content into logical sections.
• Headings describe the content below them: "How invoice reminders work" beats "Our approach".

Keyword research is its own topic; for this audit, just check that each page has one clear topic and its title and H1 reflect it.

Step 3: Content depth and intent

Thin pages are a common reason small sites struggle. A feature page with a headline, three icons, and a signup button gives a search engine little to work with and doesn't answer a buyer's questions.

For each key page, ask: does it answer what a searcher actually wants to know? Is it specific about who it's for, how it works, and what it costs? And does another page on your site cover the same topic and compete with it?

Merge competing pages and redirect the weaker URL. For thin pages, add what a buyer wants: use cases, how it works, answers to objections, and a clear next step.

Step 4: Internal links

Internal links help search engines discover pages and judge which ones matter. They also move readers from a blog post to the page that converts.

• Every important page is reachable within a few clicks from the homepage.
• No important page is an orphan with zero internal links pointing to it.
• Blog posts link to the relevant product or feature page using descriptive anchor text, not "click here".
• No internal links point to pages that redirect or return a 404 error.

Step 5: Page speed, Core Web Vitals, and mobile

Speed rarely stops a page ranking outright, but a slow, jumpy page loses visitors. Google summarises real-user experience with metrics called Core Web Vitals, which broadly measure how quickly the main content appears, how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks, and how much the layout shifts around while loading.

Run your key pages through PageSpeed Insights and check the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console, which groups URLs as good, needing improvement, or poor once there's enough real traffic data. The usual fixes: compress and resize images, remove unused scripts, limit third-party widgets, and reserve space for images so content doesn't jump.

For mobile, open each key page on an actual phone. Check that text is readable without zooming, buttons aren't cramped, and nothing overflows sideways. Google primarily uses the mobile version of a page for indexing, so content hidden or missing on mobile can count against you.

Step 6: Structured data

Structured data is code, usually JSON-LD, that labels what's on a page: an organization, an article, a product, an FAQ. It can make pages eligible for richer results and helps machines understand your content.

For most small sites, start with Organization markup on the homepage and Article markup on blog posts. Validate it with Google's Rich Results Test, and only mark up content that is actually visible on the page.

How to read Search Console's Page indexing report

The Page indexing report shows which URLs are indexed and why the rest aren't. Not every non-indexed URL is a problem; what matters is whether your important pages are indexed.

• Discovered – currently not indexed: Google knows the URL exists but hasn't crawled it yet. On a new site this is very common and often just means the crawl hasn't been prioritised yet. Add internal links to those pages and give it time.
• Crawled – currently not indexed: Google fetched the page and chose not to index it for now. This often points to thin or near-duplicate content. Improve the page rather than repeatedly requesting indexing.
• Excluded by 'noindex' tag: expected for account pages or thank-you pages, a problem if it's your pricing page.
• Duplicate without user-selected canonical, or Alternate page with proper canonical tag: Google is treating the URL as a copy of another. Check it if it's a page you want ranked.
• Page with redirect and Not found (404): normal after a redesign, but remove these URLs from your sitemap and internal links.
• Blocked by robots.txt: confirm the block is intentional.

For a single page, the URL Inspection tool shows whether it's indexed, which canonical Google chose, and when it was last crawled. After fixing a real problem, request indexing there.

A worked example: a small invoicing app

Imagine a fictional invoicing app for freelance designers. It has a homepage, pricing, four feature pages, and 12 blog posts, and almost no search traffic after three months.

1. robots.txt is fine, but the four feature pages carry a noindex tag left over from when they were drafts. That's the first fix.
2. Every blog post has a canonical pointing to /blog, so Google treats all 12 as duplicates of the blog index. The template is fixed so each post points to itself.
3. Three pages share the title "Invoicing for Designers". Each gets a distinct title: recurring invoices, late-payment reminders, client portals.
4. No blog post links to a feature page. The founder adds one relevant link from each post to the matching feature.
5. The homepage hero image is several megabytes. Compressing it is this week's only speed fix.
6. In the Page indexing report, eight blog posts sit under "Discovered – currently not indexed". With the fixes in place, the founder checks again in a few weeks.

The takeaway

Most early SEO problems aren't about strategy; they're about pages that can't be indexed, titles that don't say what the page is, and content too thin to rank. Fix those first, in that order, and use the Page indexing report to confirm Google is seeing the pages you care about.

If you want a faster first pass, Growiom's website audit checks a single page for SEO, technical, and performance issues, and its SEO keyword generator suggests primary and secondary keywords with search intent so each page you fix has a clear target.