How to Do a Basic SEO Audit Yourself

You don't need paid software to find the obvious problems

Most small business websites have SEO issues that don't require an expensive audit tool to catch — missing title tags, broken links, slow-loading pages, or content that's never been updated since launch. Before you pay for a professional SEO audit, spend an hour running through this checklist yourself. It won't catch everything a specialist would, but it will catch the issues that are actually costing you the most traffic.

Set up the two free tools you actually need

Google Search Console is non-negotiable. If you haven't verified your site there yet, do that first — it's free and it's where you'll see how Google actually sees your site: indexing issues, search queries you rank for, mobile usability problems, and manual actions if you have one.

Google PageSpeed Insights (or the Lighthouse tab in Chrome DevTools) gives you a free performance and technical health check for any URL. Run your homepage and two or three of your most important inner pages through it.

Between these two free tools and a manual crawl through your own site, you can cover most of what a basic audit needs.

Check indexing first

In Search Console, go to the Pages report under Indexing. This tells you how many of your pages are actually indexed by Google versus excluded, and why. Common reasons for exclusion worth investigating:

• "Discovered — currently not indexed" — Google found the page but hasn't prioritized crawling it. Often a sign of low perceived quality or a site with too many thin pages competing for crawl attention.
• "Crawled — currently not indexed" — Google crawled it but chose not to index it. This usually points to duplicate or thin content.
• "Excluded by noindex tag" — check whether this is intentional. Site migrations, plugin updates, and CMS changes accidentally add noindex tags to important pages more often than you'd expect.
• "Page with redirect" — fine if intentional, worth checking if not.

If important pages (your homepage, your core service pages) aren't indexed, that's priority one — nothing else in the audit matters if Google isn't indexing the page in the first place.

Check the on-page basics manually

Pull up your five or six most important pages and check each one for:

• A unique title tag that includes the target topic and reads naturally — not stuffed with repeated keywords, not identical to three other pages on your site.
• A meta description that's present and specific to that page, even though it's not a direct ranking factor, it affects click-through from the results page.
• One H1 per page that matches what the page is actually about.
• A logical heading structure below that — H2s and H3s that break the content into scannable sections, not just bold text pretending to be headings.
• Working internal links to related pages on your site, and a clear path for a visitor to get from that page to a contact or booking action.

Run the technical checks

• Mobile usability — check the Mobile Usability report in Search Console, and manually load your top pages on your own phone. Look for text that's too small, buttons too close together, or content that overflows the screen.
• HTTPS — confirm every page loads securely with no mixed-content warnings (a padlock icon issue usually means some resource — an image, a script — is still loading over HTTP).
• XML sitemap — confirm one exists, is submitted in Search Console, and actually reflects your current pages (an outdated sitemap listing pages you've since deleted is a common issue after a redesign).
• robots.txt — open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and make sure you're not accidentally blocking Google from crawling important sections of the site. This happens more often than you'd think after a site migration.
• Broken links and redirect chains — worth a dedicated pass; see our full guide on finding and fixing broken links for the specific tools and process.
• Page speed — run your key pages through PageSpeed Insights and note any pages scoring poorly, especially on mobile. Our post on page speed vs. SEO explains which speed metrics actually matter and why.

Check content quality with fresh eyes

This part doesn't have a tool — it requires actually reading your own site like a visitor would:

• Does each page fully answer the question implied by its title, or does it feel thin and generic?
• Are there pages that haven't been updated in years and reference outdated information, old pricing, or discontinued services?
• Do your service pages contain specific, real details about how you work, or could the same paragraph describe any competitor in your industry?
• Is there duplicate or near-duplicate content across multiple pages competing for the same search terms?

If you're not sure what "quality" means in Google's own framework, our post on E-E-A-T for small business websites walks through the specific signals worth focusing on.

Check your local signals if you're a local business

• Does your Google Business Profile information (name, address, phone, hours) exactly match what's on your website?
• Is your business consistently listed across major directories with the same details?
• Are you actively collecting and responding to reviews?

Our local SEO checklist covers this in more depth if local visibility is your main concern.

Turning the audit into a priority list

Once you've been through all of this, you'll likely have a longer list of issues than you expected — that's normal, and most sites do. Sort them by impact, not by how easy they are to fix. Indexing problems on important pages come first, then technical issues affecting the whole site (speed, mobile usability, broken links), then on-page and content improvements page by page. A self-audit like this won't replace a professional review for a site with deep technical problems or a competitive market, but it will get the obvious, high-impact issues off the table before you spend money finding out about them a different way.