The Complete SEO Audit Checklist for 2025

You built a website. You published content. Traffic is... underwhelming. Sound familiar?

An SEO audit tells you exactly what's broken and what to fix first. Not vague suggestions — specific, prioritized action items.

This checklist covers everything. Work through it top to bottom, or jump to the section that matters most for your site. If you want to automate most of this, run a free scan on AuditMySite and you'll get a scored report in about 30 seconds.

Crawlability and Indexing

If Google can't crawl your site, nothing else matters. Start here.

• Check robots.txt — Visit yoursite.com/robots.txt. Make sure you're not accidentally blocking important pages. I've seen live sites with Disallow: / blocking everything. It happens more than you'd think.
• Submit an XML sitemap — Your sitemap should be at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml and submitted in Google Search Console. Every indexable page should be in it. No 404s, no redirects.
• Check Google Search Console coverage — Look for "Excluded" pages. Google tells you exactly why pages aren't being indexed. Common culprits: "Crawled - currently not indexed" and "Discovered - currently not indexed."
• Fix orphan pages — Pages with zero internal links pointing to them are invisible to crawlers. Every important page needs at least one internal link.
• Check for noindex tags — Search your HTML for noindex. Staging sites sometimes have noindex tags that survive the migration to production.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

These show up directly in search results. They're your ad copy for Google.

• Every page needs a unique title tag — No duplicates. Each page serves a different purpose, so each title should be different. Keep them under 60 characters or Google will truncate them.
• Include your target keyword near the front — "Best Running Shoes for Flat Feet | ShoeStore" beats "ShoeStore | We Have The Best Running Shoes for Flat Feet."
• Write meta descriptions that get clicks — 155 characters max. Include the keyword. Tell people what they'll get. "Compare the top 10 running shoes for flat feet, with prices and real user reviews" beats "Welcome to our shoe store."
• Check for missing meta descriptions — Pages without them get auto-generated snippets from Google, which usually look terrible.

Our SEO scanner checks all of this automatically and flags every page with missing or duplicate tags.

Heading Structure

• One H1 per page — Not zero, not three. One. It should describe what the page is about.
• Use H2s and H3s logically — Think of them as an outline. H2 for main sections, H3 for subsections. Don't skip from H1 to H4.
• Include keywords in headings naturally — "How to Choose Running Shoes" is a fine H2. "Best Running Shoes Buy Cheap Running Shoes Online" is keyword stuffing.

Content Quality

Google's gotten good at measuring content quality. Really good.

• Check for thin content — Pages with fewer than 300 words rarely rank for anything competitive. If a page doesn't have enough to say, either expand it or merge it with another page.
• Look for duplicate content — Identical or near-identical content across multiple pages confuses Google. Use canonical tags to point to the preferred version.
• Check for AI-generated content — Google's guidelines say AI content is fine if it's helpful. But low-quality AI slop gets filtered. Use our AI content checker to see how your content reads.
• Update outdated content — Articles from 2019 with screenshots of old interfaces don't inspire confidence. Update dates, stats, and examples at least annually.

Technical SEO

The under-the-hood stuff that makes or breaks your rankings. See our full technical SEO guide for deeper coverage.

• HTTPS everywhere — Your entire site should be on HTTPS. No mixed content. If you type http://yoursite.com it should redirect to https://.
• Fix broken links — Internal 404s waste crawl budget and frustrate users. Use a crawler like Screaming Frog or run a scan on AuditMySite to find them.
• Implement canonical tags — Tell Google which version of a page is the "real" one. Especially important if you have URL parameters, pagination, or print-friendly versions.
• Add structured data — Schema markup helps Google understand your content. At minimum, add Organization schema to your homepage and Article schema to blog posts.
• Check mobile-friendliness — Over 60% of searches happen on mobile. If your site isn't responsive, you're losing rankings and visitors.

Page Speed

Speed is a ranking factor. It's also a conversion factor — every extra second of load time costs you visitors. Read our page speed guide for specific fixes.

• Test with PageSpeed Insights — Aim for 90+ on both mobile and desktop. Focus on Core Web Vitals: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), FID (First Input Delay), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).
• Optimize images — Use WebP format. Compress everything. Lazy load images below the fold. This alone can cut page weight by 50-80%.
• Minimize render-blocking resources — Move non-critical CSS and JS to load asynchronously. Defer scripts that don't need to run immediately.
• Enable caching — Set proper cache headers so returning visitors don't re-download everything.

Internal Linking

• Link your important pages from your homepage — Your homepage has the most authority. Pages linked from it get a boost.
• Use descriptive anchor text — "Learn about our SEO audit process" beats "click here." Anchor text tells Google what the linked page is about.
• Create topic clusters — Group related content together. A pillar page on "SEO" linking to posts about technical SEO, on-page SEO, and link building is stronger than random isolated articles.
• Fix redirect chains — Page A redirects to B, which redirects to C. Cut out the middleman and point A directly to C.

Off-Page SEO

• Check your backlink profile — Use Google Search Console or Ahrefs to see who's linking to you. Disavow obviously spammy links.
• Claim your Google Business Profile — Essential for local businesses. Make sure NAP (Name, Address, Phone) is consistent everywhere.
• Build links through content — Create something worth linking to: original research, useful tools, definitive guides. Then tell people about it.

Open Graph and Social Tags

• Set og:title, og:description, and og:image — These control how your pages look when shared on social media. Without them, platforms pull random content from your page. Check our meta tags guide for details.
• Add Twitter card tags — Similar to OG tags but for Twitter/X. Use summary_large_image for maximum visibility.
• Test with the Facebook Sharing Debugger and Twitter Card Validator — Paste your URL and see exactly what the preview looks like.

Monitoring and Maintenance

An SEO audit isn't a one-time thing. Set up monitoring so you catch issues early.

• Set up Google Search Console alerts — Get notified about coverage issues, manual actions, and security problems.
• Run monthly audits — Use AuditMySite to run regular scans and track your score over time.
• Monitor Core Web Vitals — Google Search Console has a Core Web Vitals report. Check it monthly.
• Track rankings for key terms — You can't improve what you don't measure. Even a simple spreadsheet tracking your top 20 keywords works.

Your Action Plan

Don't try to fix everything at once. Here's the priority order:

1. Crawlability — Make sure Google can actually find your pages
2. Title tags and meta descriptions — Quick wins, big impact
3. Technical issues — Broken links, HTTPS, mobile
4. Page speed — Image optimization first, then scripts
5. Content quality — Expand thin content, update outdated pieces
6. Internal linking and structure — Ongoing improvement

Start with a scan to see where you stand. Then work through this list. You'll see results within weeks, not months.