Website SEO Audit Checklist: 25 Checks You Can Do in 30 Minutes

A website SEO audit checklist is only useful if you finish it. Most guides list 100 items, and nobody gets past the first screen. This one has 25, ordered by how often each problem is the real reason a small business site gets no traffic. I have run these checks on hundreds of sites, and a handful of them explain most of what goes wrong.

Set a timer for 30 minutes. Open your site in one tab, Google Search Console in another, and keep a pen nearby. Every check you pass earns a point.

Website SEO audit checklist: how to run it in 30 minutes

You need three free things: Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and a browser. If your site is not yet in Search Console, that is check number two, and it takes five minutes.

I keep that line in mind during every audit. Owners often spend a weekend polishing meta descriptions while the whole site is set to "discourage search engines." Work top to bottom. The order matters.

Website SEO audit checklist, part 1: crawling and indexing

If Google cannot find or index your pages, nothing else matters. These six checks come first for that reason.

• 1. Your pages appear in Google. Search site:yourdomain.com. If the count is far below your page count, you have an indexing problem.
• 2. Search Console is connected and verified. No data means no diagnosis.
• 3. Robots.txt is not blocking the site. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for "Disallow: /".
• 4. An XML sitemap exists and is submitted. Check the Sitemaps report in Search Console.
• 5. One version of the site answers. http, https, www, and non-www should redirect to a single address.
• 6. No accidental noindex. In WordPress, check Settings, then Reading, and make sure "Discourage search engines" is off.

Website SEO audit checklist, part 2: on-page basics

These checks decide whether Google understands what each page is about, and whether a searcher wants to click it.

• 7. Every page has a unique title tag of roughly 50 to 60 characters, with the main keyword near the start.
• 8. Every page has a unique meta description of roughly 150 to 160 characters that sells the click.
• 9. Each page has exactly one H1.
• 10. The keyword appears in the H1 and the first paragraph, written naturally.
• 11. URLs are short and readable, like /seo-audit/, not /page?id=482.
• 12. Images have descriptive alt text.
• 13. One page targets one search intent. Two pages fighting for the same query dilute each other.
• 14. A clear call to action sits above the fold. Traffic without action is a hobby.

Website SEO audit checklist, part 3: speed, mobile, and trust

Google measures real-user experience with Core Web Vitals. Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights and compare against the thresholds below. I go deeper in my guide to speeding up a WordPress website.

• 15. Largest Contentful Paint is under 2.5 seconds.
• 16. Interaction to Next Paint is under 200 milliseconds.
• 17. Cumulative Layout Shift is under 0.1.
• 18. The mobile layout is usable with readable text and tap targets that fit a thumb.
• 19. HTTPS works everywhere, with no mixed-content warnings.
• 20. No intrusive popups cover mobile content.
• 21. Trust basics are visible: contact details, an About page, and a privacy policy.

Website SEO audit checklist, part 4: content and links

• 22. No thin or duplicate pages padding out the site.
• 23. Every important page has at least three internal links pointing to it.
• 24. No broken links or 404 pages on key paths.
• 25. Your Google Business Profile is claimed, and the name, address, and phone match the site exactly. Local businesses should treat this as the first check, not the last.

Google's own Search Essentials describe the baseline for all of this. If a check above is unclear, that page explains the requirement in plain terms.

Website SEO audit checklist: score yourself and pick what to fix first

Count your passes. If you scored 19 or higher, the site is healthy, and growth will come from content. Between 11 and 18, you are leaking traffic, and most of the fixes are cheap. Below 11, start with checks 1 to 6, because indexing failures cancel everything downstream.

Those numbers come from the SEO test we ran on our own site before recommending the model to anyone, listed in the portfolio. The method was boring: fix indexing, write one page per intent, link them together. Nothing in this checklist is secret.

If the audit shows the problem is the site itself, rather than a few settings, read when to redesign and how to keep your rankings.