SEO Audit Checklist: 15 Things to Check Before You Blame Google

When traffic drops or a site just will not rank, it is tempting to blame the latest Google update. Sometimes that is fair. More often, something on the website itself has been quietly holding it back. This checklist covers the main things we look at in a technical SEO audit.

You will need access to Google Search Console and, ideally, a crawler such as Screaming Frog. For a small site, most checks can be done in an afternoon.

Indexing and crawling

1. Are your important pages indexed?

In Search Console, open the Pages report. Check which pages are indexed, which are not and why. A key service page marked "Crawled, currently not indexed" is a strong sign Google does not see enough value in it yet.

2. Is robots.txt blocking anything important?

Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt and make sure it is not blocking folders you want to rank. This happens surprisingly often when a site goes live from a staging setup.

3. Are there accidental noindex tags?

Crawl the site and filter for noindex. Only pages you intentionally want hidden, like thank you pages or account areas, should carry it.

4. Is your XML sitemap clean?

Your sitemap should list only live, indexable URLs. Remove redirects, broken pages and noindexed pages, then submit it in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Site structure

5. Can every important page be reached in a few clicks?

Pages buried deep, or not linked from anywhere, get crawled less and rank worse. Main services and categories should be reachable from the menu or homepage.

6. Are there broken internal links?

Links to 404 pages waste crawl budget and frustrate visitors. Fix or update them.

7. Are redirects set up correctly?

After a redesign or URL change, every old URL should 301 redirect to the most relevant new page. Watch for redirect chains, where one URL redirects to another that redirects again.

Speed and experience

8. How do your Core Web Vitals look?

Search Console shows real user data for Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift. Start with pages marked poor. Oversized images, heavy scripts and slow hosting are the usual causes.

9. Is the site genuinely mobile friendly?

Test on a real phone, not just a resized browser. Text should be readable, buttons easy to tap and nothing should spill off the screen.

10. Is HTTPS everywhere?

Every page should load securely, and the http version should redirect to https.

Content and on page

11. Do pages have unique titles and descriptions?

Duplicate or missing title tags make it harder for Google to tell pages apart. Each important page needs its own descriptive title.

12. Are pages competing with each other?

If three blog posts and a service page all target the same keyword, they can split your rankings. Merge overlapping pages or give each a clearly different focus.

13. Is there thin or outdated content?

Pages with a few lines of text, or posts untouched for years, can drag down how Google sees the whole site. Improve, merge or remove them.

Technical extras

14. Is structured data valid?

Run key pages through Google's Rich Results Test and fix errors in Organization, LocalBusiness, Product, FAQ or Review schema.

15. Are canonical tags pointing the right way?

Canonical tags tell search engines which version of a page is the main one. A wrong canonical can quietly remove a page from results. If you serve several countries, check that hreflang tags are correct too.

What to do with your findings

Do not try to fix everything at once. Sort the list into three groups:

• Critical: anything stopping important pages from being indexed.
• High impact: speed problems, broken structure and duplicate content on key pages.
• Nice to have: smaller metadata and schema fixes.

Work through the critical list first, then measure for a few weeks before moving on. If you would like a second pair of eyes, request a free SEO audit and we will send you a prioritized list.

Frequently asked questions