An SEO audit checklist for a small site: forty checks in order

Start with crawl and index. If Google cannot fetch or store your pages, nothing else matters. Then on page, content, speed, links, and measurement.

Use free tools first: Search Console, the results page, PageSpeed Insights, a crawler’s free tier. Keep a single note with the page, the issue, and the fix.

Log owners and dates. Your plan is this checklist with dates. Your roadmap is the plan over quarters. Ship fixes weekly, do not batch for months.

• Search site:yourdomain.com. Tool: Google search. Fail looks like: zero results, or only the home page. Action: create or fix links to key pages, add a sitemap, verify Search Console.
• Verify Search Console. Tool: Search Console. Fail looks like: no property, or only a URL-prefix while you use both www and non-www. Action: verify the domain property.
• Read Page indexing. Tool: Search Console, Page indexing report. Fail looks like: a spike in Excluded or Not found. Action: click a reason, sample affected URLs, fix root cause.
• Inspect key URLs. Tool: URL Inspection. Fail looks like: URL is not on Google, or a wrong canonical chosen. Action: request indexing only after you fix the cause.
• Check robots.txt. Tool: yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Fail looks like: Disallow: / on production, or blocked folders you need. Action: allow crawlers for live pages.
• Check meta robots and headers. Tool: page source and response headers. Fail looks like: noindex on /pricing or /guides/getting-started. Action: remove noindex on live.
• Submit a sitemap. Tool: Search Console Sitemaps. Fail looks like: no sitemap, or a sitemap that 404s or lists non-canonical URLs. Action: ship a clean XML sitemap.
• Set one canonical per page. Tool: page source and URL Inspection. Fail looks like: canonical points to a different page by mistake, or is missing. Action: set a correct canonical.
• Canonical host and HTTPS. Tool: curl or a redirect checker. Fail looks like: http and https both 200, or both www and non-www 200. Action: 301 all to one HTTPS host.

• Title tags fit and are unique. Tool: page source or a crawler export. Fail looks like: “Home” or 80+ characters. Action: write titles under about 60 characters with the topic first.
• Meta descriptions invite clicks. Tool: source or crawler. Fail looks like: empty or duplicated across many pages. Action: write 120 to 155 characters that match the query.
• One H1 that says the topic. Tool: rendered HTML. Fail looks like: multiple H1s, or none. Action: set one H1 that matches the intent of the page.
• Clean URL slugs. Tool: your CMS. Fail looks like: query strings like /post?id=abc or deep dated folders like /blog/date/long-string-of-tags. Action: use short, readable slugs like /pricing or /guides/getting-started.
• Internal links in copy. Tool: a crawler or manual check. Fail looks like: pages with no in-text links to your key pages. Action: add links with clear anchor text to help users and crawlers.
• Find orphan pages. Tool: crawler plus sitemap compare. Fail looks like: URLs only in the sitemap, not linked from any page. Action: add links or remove and redirect.
• Handle near duplicates. Tool: crawler for duplicate titles and content. Fail looks like: /pricing and /pricing/?ref=nav both indexable. Action: canonicalise or redirect to one.
• Add structured data where it fits. Tool: Rich Results Test. Fail looks like: no Organization on the home page, no Breadcrumb, no SoftwareApplication on a SaaS page. Action: add JSON-LD that reflects the page.
• Images have alt and sizes. Tool: browser devtools. Fail looks like: missing alt on UI screenshots, no width and height attributes causing layout shift. Action: add concise alt, set sizes.

• Map one topic to one page. Tool: a spreadsheet. Fail looks like: three posts on “how to import CSV” that overlap. Action: merge or redirect, keep one canonical page.
• Match search intent. Tool: results page in an incognito window set to the right country. Fail looks like: article for a query that shows product pages. Action: change format or target a better query.
• Fix thin pages. Tool: crawler word count plus manual judgement. Fail looks like: dozens of 150-word pages that say little. Action: expand with real steps, code, data, or remove and redirect.
• Resolve cannibalisation. Tool: Search Console Performance by query. Fail looks like: two URLs trading impressions for “{your brand} pricing”. Action: pick a primary, link and canonical to it.
• Refresh decayed content. Tool: find declining pages in Search Console. Fail looks like: steady drop over 3 months for /blog/how-to-export. Action: update, add new examples, republish.
• Push striking distance pages. Tool: Search Console filter average position 8 to 20. Fail looks like: /guides/integrations at 12. Action: improve intro, add FAQs, add internal links to it.
• Fix low CTR pages. Tool: Performance report by page, compare CTR to site average. Fail looks like: many impressions, few clicks. Action: rewrite title and description to match the query.
• Cover comparisons and alternatives. Tool: your strategy map. Fail looks like: no /compare/tool-a-vs-tool-b or /alternatives/yourproduct. Action: ship the set your buyers search.

Your strategy sets what to write next. It lists the searches you want, the pages that answer them, and how you will earn links and mentions. Write it once a year and read it each month. Your plan is dates on that list for this quarter. Your roadmap is the plan over quarters.

• Largest Contentful Paint. Tool: PageSpeed Insights and the Core Web Vitals report. Fail looks like: LCP above 2.5 seconds on mobile. Action: optimise the hero image, inline critical CSS, improve server time.
• Cumulative Layout Shift. Tool: PageSpeed Insights. Fail looks like: CLS above 0.1. Action: set width and height on images, reserve space for embeds, avoid layout jank in the header.
• Interaction to Next Paint. Tool: PageSpeed Insights. Fail looks like: INP above 200 ms. Action: reduce heavy JS, defer non-critical scripts, keep event handlers light.
• Time to First Byte. Tool: a server response checker. Fail looks like: slow TTFB on first request. Action: use caching, a CDN, and keep server work minimal.
• Render-blocking resources. Tool: Lighthouse or PSI diagnostics. Fail looks like: many render-blocking CSS and JS files. Action: combine, defer, or preload what matters.
• Images and fonts. Tool: PSI and devtools. Fail looks like: uncompressed images, no lazy loading, blocking web fonts. Action: compress, serve modern formats, lazy load below the fold, use font-display: swap.

• Referring domains. Tool: a free backlink checker. Fail looks like: zero links to yourproduct.com months after launch. Action: start with launches, listings, and useful tools or data.
• Broken backlinks. Tool: backlink checker export plus a redirect checker. Fail looks like: links to 404s after a URL change. Action: add 301s to the closest live page.
• Internal link hierarchy. Tool: crawler inlinks report. Fail looks like: /pricing buried three clicks deep, few in-text links. Action: link to /pricing from top nav, key pages, and relevant guides.
• Link earning plan. Tool: your strategy doc. Fail looks like: no plan to earn mentions. Action: schedule launches, list on relevant directories, ship a small tool or dataset worth citing.

• Choose one KPI to read weekly. Tool: Search Console and analytics. Fail looks like: chasing positions on a keyword. Action: set clicks from non-brand search, signups from search, or revenue from search.
• Set goals as a number and a date. Tool: your planning doc. Fail looks like: “rank first for ‘project management’”. Action: “two hundred clicks a week from non-brand searches by March”.
• Make a dashboard. Tool: Search Console, or Looker Studio linked to Search Console and GA4. Fail looks like: no single view of KPIs and diagnostics. Action: build one page and read it weekly.
• Write a one-page monthly report. Tool: your notes and the Performance report. Fail looks like: exports with no judgement. Action: say what changed and why, what you shipped, what next, and add the figures as a table.

1. 1

   Triage by impact and effort

   Fix any crawl blocks first. Then pages that already get impressions, then broken links, then speed. Leave nice-to-haves for later.

2. 2

   Turn fixes into a plan

   Write owners and dates next to each item. Group work into weekly batches. Protect one hour a week to ship the next fixes.

3. 3

   Feed your strategy

   Add missing page topics and link ideas to your strategy. Keep one page per topic. List how you will earn links and mentions this quarter.

4. 4

   Watch the KPI

   Read the KPI weekly. When it moves, open the diagnostics. Look at impressions, positions, indexed pages, vitals, and referring domains.

If you buy help, size the budget by the work: how many pages, fixes, and links, and by the value of a search click to your business. A consultant sells judgement, an agency sells execution, an in-house hire sells continuity, and a report sells the judgement once. Avoid anyone offering guaranteed rankings, secret techniques, or paid links.

DIY SEO is realistic with free tools and one hour a week. It will not write forty good pages a month or earn links for a product nobody wants to cite. Use automation to draft, then add your own data, screenshots and decisions. Google does not penalise AI-assisted writing as such. It acts on scaled content abuse that adds no value of its own.

Organic and paid both help a new product. Paid learns which queries convert. Organic holds them after you stop paying. Read Search Console’s Performance report for positions and clicks. Use analytics for conversions and revenue by channel. For rivals, rely on the results page and suites for estimates, not gospel.