An SEO audit is often treated like a routine checkup. Run a tool, download a report, fix a few errors, move on. In reality, a good SEO audit is closer to an investigation. It tells you why your site performs the way it does, where growth is blocked, and what changes will actually matter.
If your rankings feel stuck, traffic is sliding, or conversions are not where they should be, an audit helps you step back and see the full picture. Not just what is broken, but what is underperforming, outdated, or misaligned with how search engines work today. This guide walks through how to do an SEO audit from start to finish. It is practical, focused, and designed to help you make decisions, not just collect data.
Understanding an SEO Audit and When You Need One
What an SEO Audit Really Is
An SEO audit is a structured review of how your website performs in search engines and, more importantly, why it performs that way. It looks at the full picture, including technical foundations, content quality, on-page signals, user experience, and authority factors like backlinks.
A proper audit goes beyond surface-level issues. It connects technical problems with content performance, user behavior, and business goals. Instead of just listing errors, it helps you understand what is holding your site back and which fixes will have the biggest impact.
What an SEO Audit Is Not
There are a few common misconceptions about SEO audits that often lead to wasted time and poor results. An SEO audit is not:
- A single tool report you download and forget
- A checklist you run once a year without context
- A purely technical exercise focused only on errors and warnings
Without interpretation and prioritization, even the most detailed report is just noise.
When You Should Run an SEO Audit
You do not always need a specific trigger to audit your site, but some situations make it especially important:
- Organic traffic has dropped or stopped growing without a clear reason
- Keyword rankings are slowly declining across multiple pages
- You launched a new website, redesigned key pages, or migrated domains
- Competitors are outranking you with less comprehensive content
- Conversions are low even though traffic remains steady
- Google released a major algorithm update
Even if none of these issues are obvious, running a full SEO audit every three to six months helps you catch problems early, before they turn into lost visibility or revenue.
How We Approach SEO Audits at Lengreo
At Lengreo, we treat an SEO audit as a diagnostic process, not a formality. Before focusing on growth tactics, we need a clear understanding of how a site is structured, how search engines interpret it, and where performance is being limited by technical, content, or structural issues.
Our audits are built to surface leverage points. We analyze technical foundations, content effectiveness, user behavior, and competitive context together, so recommendations are based on impact, not isolated metrics. Instead of producing long reports, we define a short, prioritized action list that addresses what blocks growth and amplifies what already works. For us, an SEO audit is not a one-time checklist. It is the starting point for informed optimization decisions, stronger content strategy, and sustainable search performance aligned with real business objectives. This mindset shapes every step below. Each part of the audit is designed to answer one question: what matters most right now, and why?
The SEO Audit Process: A Step-by-Step Framework That Drives Results
Technical Foundations
Step 1: Check If Your Site Is Being Indexed Properly
Before anything else, confirm that search engines can actually see and store your pages.
Start with a simple check:
- Search Google for site:yourdomain.com
- Look at how many pages appear and which ones show up
If results are missing, outdated, or unexpected, you may have indexing or canonical issues.
Then move to Google Search Console and review:
- Pages that are indexed
- Pages excluded from indexing
- Reasons pages are not indexed
Common problems include:
- Pages blocked by robots.txt
- Accidental noindex tags
- Redirected or duplicated URLs
- Thin or low value pages ignored by Google
Not every page needs to be indexed, but every important page should be.
Step 2: Look for Duplicate and Conflicting URL Versions
Search engines prefer clarity. When multiple versions of the same page exist, authority gets split and rankings suffer.
Check whether your site loads correctly across:
- http and https
- www and non-www versions
Only one version should be accessible. All others should redirect to it using 301 redirects. You should also review how your URLs are structured and whether multiple versions of the same page exist. Pay attention to differences between trailing slash and non-trailing slash URLs, parameter-based URLs created by filters or tracking, as well as paginated and filtered pages. When these variations are not handled properly, Google may struggle to determine which version should rank, and that uncertainty almost always leads to inconsistent search performance.
Step 3: Crawl Your Website Like a Search Engine
A site crawl reveals issues you will never catch manually.
Using a crawler helps you uncover:
- Broken internal links
- Redirect chains and loops
- Orphaned pages
- Duplicate titles and descriptions
- Missing headers
- Incorrect status codes
Focus first on critical issues that block crawling or indexing. Cosmetic issues matter later, not at the start.
After crawling, ask a simple question:
Can Google reach, understand, and prioritize my most important pages?
If the answer is no, nothing else in the audit matters yet.
Performance and UX
Step 4: Review Site Performance and Mobile Experience
Site performance and mobile usability are closely linked and should be reviewed together. Speed and usability both affect rankings, engagement, and conversions, and issues in either area can drive users away before content has a chance to matter.
Start by checking how fast pages load, how quickly the main content appears, how responsive the site feels during interactions, and whether elements shift while loading. Since search engines evaluate your site primarily through its mobile version, pay special attention to mobile performance and load times on slower networks.
Next, assess mobile usability. Text should be readable without zooming, buttons and links easy to tap, and content should fit the screen without horizontal scrolling. Look out for broken layouts, intrusive popups, or elements that disrupt navigation.
Rather than chasing perfect scores, aim for consistent performance across key pages. Practical fixes like compressing images, reducing heavy or unused scripts, improving server response time, using caching, and cleaning up bloated themes or plugins often deliver noticeable improvements, especially on mobile.
Content and Relevance
Step 5: Evaluate Your Content With Honest Criteria
Content is often the biggest growth lever and the most neglected part of an audit.
Instead of asking whether content exists, ask:
- Does it fully answer the search intent?
- Is it still accurate and up to date?
- Does it show expertise or just repeat common points?
- Is it easy to scan and understand?
- Does it help users take the next step?
Review your top pages first. These usually generate the most impressions and offer the highest return on improvement.
Categorize pages into clear actions:
- Update and expand
- Rewrite from scratch
- Merge with similar pages
- Remove or deindex
Avoid keeping pages simply because they exist. Weak content drags down strong pages over time.
Step 6: Check for Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages target the same or very similar keywords, causing them to compete with each other instead of working together. This competition confuses search engines and often leads to weaker rankings across all affected pages.
You can usually spot cannibalization when rankings constantly shift between different URLs, when several pages sit on the second page of results instead of one page ranking strongly, or when impressions are spread thin across multiple similar pages. Instead of building authority, these pages dilute it.
To fix the issue, consolidate overlapping content where it makes sense and define a clear keyword intent for each page. Weaker pages can be redirected to stronger ones, while others may need to be rewritten to target different stages of user intent. In most cases, one well-structured, authoritative page will outperform several average pages competing for the same search terms.
Step 7: Review On-Page SEO Fundamentals
On-page SEO exists to create clarity, not to force optimization. Its main role is to help search engines clearly understand what a page is about and how it fits into the rest of the site. While these elements are basic, they are still often misused or overdone.
Review each important page and focus on whether the fundamentals communicate intent clearly. Title tags should describe the page in plain language, meta descriptions should set accurate expectations, and each page should have a single main heading that matches user intent. Subheadings should guide readers naturally, URLs should be clean and readable, and all images must have an alt attribute; use descriptive text for informative images to boost SEO and accessibility, or an empty alt=” for purely decorative elements. Internal links should connect related pages in a way that feels helpful, not forced.
Avoid over-optimization. Pages with keyword-stuffed titles and unnatural phrasing rarely outperform pages written for real people. In most cases, clarity and usability win over aggressive optimization.
Authority and Structure
Step 8: Analyze Internal Linking Structure
Internal links guide both users and search engines.
A strong internal structure:
- Helps important pages get crawled faster
- Distributes authority across the site
- Improves user navigation
During your audit, look for:
- Orphaned pages with no internal links
- Important pages buried too deep
- Overuse of generic anchor text
- Broken internal links
Link intentionally. Each internal link should serve a purpose, not just exist.
Step 9: Assess Your Backlink Profile
Backlinks still matter, but quality outweighs quantity.
Review your backlink profile for:
- Number of referring domains
- Authority and relevance of linking sites
- Anchor text distribution
- Sudden drops or spikes in links
A healthy profile usually shows:
- Mostly branded or natural anchors
- Links from related industries
- Gradual growth over time
Low quality links are common and usually harmless unless patterns suggest manipulation. Only act when there is a clear risk.
Market Context and Priorities
Step 10: Analyze Competitors and Identify Content Gaps
SEO does not happen in isolation. Your rankings depend partly on how strong your competitors are, so reviewing their performance is a key part of an SEO audit.
Compare your site with top competitors by looking at their content depth and structure, keyword coverage, backlink authority, site architecture, and overall page speed and user experience. This comparison often highlights content gaps, topics competitors cover more effectively, and areas where your site can improve without starting from scratch.
As you analyze competitors, identify keywords they rank for that you do not, topics you have only partially addressed, and long-tail queries with clear intent. These insights help you decide where to create new pages, expand existing content, and strengthen your topical authority. The goal is not to copy competitors, but to understand what works for them and apply those lessons strategically.
Step 11: Prioritize What to Fix First
An audit without prioritization leads nowhere.
Use a simple framework:
- High impact, low effort fixes first
- High impact, high effort projects second
- Low impact fixes only if time allows
Examples of high impact fixes:
- Fixing indexing blocks
- Improving key landing pages
- Resolving major speed issues
- Consolidating duplicate content
Clear priorities prevent overwhelm and make progress measurable.
Final Thoughts
An SEO audit is not about chasing perfection or fixing everything at once. It is about clarity. When you understand how your site is being crawled, how your pages are interpreted, and where users lose interest, decisions become easier and results become more predictable.
The strongest audits connect technical health, content quality, and real user behavior into one clear picture. They help you stop guessing and start prioritizing. Instead of reacting to drops or algorithm updates, you gain a framework for steady improvement. When done regularly and acted on thoughtfully, an SEO audit becomes less of a corrective task and more of a growth tool that keeps your site competitive as search evolves.
