A site audit is the starting point for any serious SEO strategy. Without one, you're guessing. With one, you have a clear picture of every technical issue holding your site back from ranking.

What Does a Site Audit Actually Check?

A comprehensive site audit examines dozens of technical and on-page factors including crawlability, indexation, page speed, Core Web Vitals, schema markup, internal links, meta tags, broken links, redirect chains, and more. The goal is to surface everything that could be preventing your pages from ranking or being properly understood by search engines.

Step 1: Check Crawlability First

Before anything else, confirm Google can actually reach your pages. Check your robots.txt to make sure you're not accidentally blocking important pages or directories. A single misplaced disallow rule can prevent your entire site from being indexed.

Run a robots.txt check and look for rules like Disallow: / which block everything, or specific directories that shouldn't be blocked. Also check that your XML sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console and returning a 200 status.

Step 2: Indexation Issues

Crawlable does not mean indexed. Pages can be blocked from the index through noindex meta tags, canonical tags pointing elsewhere, or simply being excluded from the sitemap. Use Google Search Console to check how many pages are actually indexed versus how many exist on your site.

Common culprits include: - Pagination pages with noindex set accidentally - Tag and category archive pages on WordPress - Search result pages being indexed - Duplicate content causing Google to choose a different canonical

Step 3: Technical SEO Checks

Work through each of these systematically:

Title tags — Every page needs a unique, descriptive title between 50 and 60 characters. Duplicate titles are one of the most common issues on larger sites. Meta descriptions — While not a direct ranking factor, good meta descriptions improve click-through rates. Aim for 150 to 160 characters. H1 tags — Every page should have exactly one H1 that clearly describes the page topic. Canonical tags — Self-referencing canonicals on every page help prevent duplicate content issues. Image alt text — Every image should have descriptive alt text, both for accessibility and SEO.

Step 4: Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal. Your Largest Contentful Paint should be under 2.5 seconds, Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1, and Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds.

Run a PageSpeed audit on your most important pages first — usually your homepage, main category pages, and top-performing content. Fix the biggest wins first: image optimisation, render-blocking resources, and server response time typically have the most impact.

Step 5: Schema Markup

Structured data helps search engines understand your content and can unlock rich results like FAQ boxes, product ratings, and article bylines. Check whether your key page types have appropriate schema — Article for blog posts, Product for product pages, LocalBusiness for local businesses, and FAQ schema where relevant.

Step 6: Internal Links

An internal link audit reveals orphan pages (pages with no inbound internal links), poor link distribution, and opportunities to pass authority from high-traffic pages to pages you want to rank better.

Prioritising Your Fixes

Not all issues are equal. Prioritise based on impact and effort:

1. Critical — Crawl blocks, noindex errors on important pages, broken canonical chains 2. High — Missing title tags and H1s, major Core Web Vitals failures, broken links on key pages 3. Medium — Missing meta descriptions, schema errors, image optimisation 4. Low — Minor formatting issues, non-critical warnings

Running regular audits — monthly is ideal for active sites — ensures you catch new issues before they compound.