An SEO audit is a review of your website that identifies what stops Google, and now AI assistants like ChatGPT, from finding, understanding and recommending your business. The result is a prioritised list of issues, showing what to fix first.
What Is an SEO Audit and What Is It For?
An SEO audit works like a technical inspection of your website: it checks whether Google can access your pages, understands what each one is about and has reasons to show them to searchers. It tells you why your site does not appear, or ranks below competitors, before you invest time and money in content or ads.
A good audit answers three questions:
- Can Google see the site? Indexing, robots.txt, sitemap and technical errors.
- Does Google understand what the site offers? Titles, descriptions, headings, content and structured data.
- Do Google and AI trust the site? Authority signals, contact details, reviews and information about the business.
When Should You Do an SEO Audit?
You should run an SEO audit whenever your website changes significantly and at least every six months. The most important moments are:
- After launching or redesigning the site.
- When visits or enquiries from Google drop for no obvious reason.
- Before hiring an agency or investing in SEO, so you know your starting point.
- When a competitor starts outranking you.
How to Do an SEO Audit in 7 Steps
These are the steps we follow in an audit, from the most critical to the most advanced. The first ones fix issues that may be hiding your site entirely; the last ones prepare it for AI-powered search.
1. Confirm Google can see your site
Start with the basics: is the site indexed? Search site:yourdomain.com on Google and see how many pages appear. Then check that robots.txt does not block the site, that no important page carries a "noindex" instruction and that an XML sitemap is submitted in Google Search Console.
2. Review titles, descriptions and headings
Every page needs a unique 30–60 character title with the service and location, a 120–160 character meta description that invites the click, and a single H1 that clearly describes the content. Duplicate or generic titles ("Home", "Services") are among the most common mistakes on small business websites.
3. Assess your content
Google needs text to understand what you do. A homepage with a few lines, or one page covering every service, makes ranking hard. Ideally you have one page per service, with at least 300 useful words written to answer the questions your customers actually ask.
4. Check speed and the mobile version
Most searches happen on phones and Google evaluates the mobile version of your site first. Use PageSpeed Insights to measure Core Web Vitals and spot heavy images, slow scripts or layout issues.
5. Analyse structured data (schema)
Structured data is invisible code that tells Google who the business is, where it is and what it offers. At a minimum, your site should have Organization or LocalBusiness schema with name, address, phone and social profiles. You can validate it with Google's Rich Results Test.
6. Prepare your site for AI search (GEO)
More and more people ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity instead of searching on Google. For these assistants to recommend your business, make sure robots.txt does not block crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot, that your main content is in the HTML (not only loaded by JavaScript) and that your site clearly shows who is behind the business. We cover this in detail in our article on GEO and AEO.
7. Optimise for direct answers (AEO)
Google and voice assistants extract short answers from well-structured pages. Use real questions as subheadings, answer in the first paragraph in 40–60 words and mark up FAQs with FAQPage schema. Lists and tables also increase your chances of being featured.
Run your free SEO audit
Our tool checks 34 of these factors in seconds, shows your website's SEO, GEO and AEO scores and emails you a PDF report with the fix for every issue.
Analyse My Website for FreeWhat Are the Most Common SEO Mistakes?
On small business websites, the same problems come up again and again. These are the most frequent, and the impact of each:
| Mistake | Impact | How to fix it |
|---|---|---|
| No meta description | Google shows random text and fewer people click | Write a 120–160 character summary for each page |
| No structured data | Google and AI cannot identify the business or its location | Add LocalBusiness or Organization schema |
| Images without alt text | Lost visibility in Google Images and poorer accessibility | Describe each meaningful image in its alt attribute |
| No FAQ section | Missed featured snippets and AI assistant citations | Create an FAQ section with FAQPage schema |
| No XML sitemap | Important pages may never be found | Generate a sitemap and submit it in Search Console |
Which Tools Should You Use for an SEO Audit?
You do not need paid tools for a first analysis. These cover the essentials:
- Google Search Console: indexing, errors and the searches already bringing visits.
- PageSpeed Insights: speed and mobile experience.
- Rich Results Test: structured data validation.
- Web Arts free SEO audit: 34 SEO, GEO and AEO checks in a single report.
Google Search Central's SEO Starter Guide is also a solid reference for what Google considers important.
Automated Audit or Professional Audit?
An automated audit is the ideal starting point: it shows the most obvious technical issues in minutes. A professional audit goes further, with keyword research, local competitor analysis, backlinks and a tailored action plan. If the free audit reveals several critical issues, it is worth talking to an SEO agency before investing in content or ads.