When did you last audit your site’s SEO health? An SEO audit checklist is an effective way to check whether your website aligns with current search engine standards and best practices.
Search engines like Google roll out search updates frequently. Without a way to proactively find threats to your site’s visibility, an algorithm shakeup might leave it at rock bottom overnight.
Imagine waking up to lower visibility, reduced traffic, and skimpier earnings.
Don’t risk it in 2025.
Luckily for you, this 15-step SEO audit checklist can help.
Disclaimer: This content contains some affiliate links for which we will earn a commission (at no additional cost to you). This is to ensure that we can keep creating free content for you.
Before we go through the SEO audit checklist, it's essential to understand what an SEO audit includes..
An SEO audit is a comprehensive review of your website to assess its performance in search engines. It uses various SEO audit tools to examine technical issues, on-page content, and off-page factors that could be affecting your search rankings.
Think of an SEO audit checklist as a health check for your site, identifying problems that could be hindering it from getting more traffic.
By performing regular SEO audits, you ensure your site stays technically sound, content-rich, and competitive in search results, giving you a better chance to reach and retain your audience.
There are several types of SEO audits, and each focuses on different aspects of search engine optimization. Let’s quickly explore some of the most common ones that you should include on your SEO audit checklist.
This is the type of SEO audit that checks if a website is running smoothly. It examines factors such as site speed, crawlability, indexing, and broken links. If a site has issues, search engines might not rank it well.
A solid SEO audit checklist always includes technical SEO audits. This is because even small problems can significantly impact rankings, so it’s smart to review this regularly.
An on-page SEO audit is another important type that should be included in your SEO audit checklist. An on-page SEO audit focuses on everything visible on a website. That includes title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and keyword optimization.
This audit also looks at internal linking. Pages should link to each other naturally to help visitors and search engines navigate the site more effectively. Image optimization is another key part. Large, unoptimized images slow down a site, affecting user experience and rankings.
Your SEO audit checklist also needs an off-page SEO audit that focuses on how other sites interact with yours. It checks for backlinks, social signals, and overall domain authority.
For example, high-quality backlinks from reputable sites help rankings, while spammy links can do the opposite. An off-page SEO audit keeps track of all these to ensure you don’t jeopardize your website’s chances of ranking high.
This audit also looks at brand mentions. If a website is mentioned on forums, blogs, or social media, search engines consider it more trustworthy.
This is an audit for businesses that want to rank in specific areas and a necessary item on any SEO audit checklist. The key metrics checked here include Google Business Profile, local citations, and NAP (name, address, and phone number).
Why is local SEO audit important? If your business details are inconsistent across platforms, it can confuse search engines and negatively impact your rankings.
Another essential element of a local SEO audit is optimizing for location-specific keywords. Your pages should include relevant local terms, and you should actively encourage customer reviews to boost visibility and credibility in local search results.
Good reviews help boost rankings and build trust. Local link-building strategies, like partnering with nearby businesses, also improve visibility.
A mobile SEO audit ensures your website delivers a seamless experience on smartphones and tablets. As a key part of any comprehensive SEO audit checklist, it focuses on mobile responsiveness, fast loading times, and touch-friendly navigation.
A mobile SEO audit also ensures that images load fast, pop-ups don’t block content, and fonts are easy to read. If users struggle with buttons or text sizes, they’ll leave quickly, which can hurt rankings.
Content is a significant factor in SEO and should be included in your SEO audit checklist. A content SEO audit checks if a website’s content is relevant, engaging, and optimized for the right keywords.
This audit also looks at readability, formatting, and engagement. If a page has a high bounce rate, it may need better headlines, clearer structure, or more visual elements. Updating old content and improving calls-to-action is also part of the content SEO audit.
This is an audit that focuses on checking things like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). These measure how fast a page loads, how quickly users can interact, and how stable the layout is.
A site with poor Core Web Vitals scores may struggle in search rankings. Fixing slow load times, improving server response, and optimizing images can make a big difference.
A competitor SEO audit helps businesses see what others in their industry are doing right. It analyzes competitors' backlinks, content strategies, and keyword rankings. Learning from others can help a business adjust its SEO approach.
Having this in your SEO audit checklist helps you identify what you could be doing wrong and where to make improvements.
If your site suddenly loses rankings, it might have been hit by a penalty.
A penalty and recovery SEO audit checklist should check for Google algorithm updates, manual penalties, and spammy backlinks. Google will drop your ranking quickly if it notices any bad SEO practices.
So, what does this audit involve?
Recovering from a penalty involves removing harmful links, enhancing content, or correcting technical issues. Google needs to see if a site is following best practices again before rankings improve.
Think of an SEO audit checklist as your website's buddy, ensuring it stays in perfect SEO shape. With tools like Google Analytics and LinkStorm, you can proactively spot SEO issues.
Addressing them early prevents potential damage to your website. Use this 15-step SEO audit checklist to conduct a thorough audit of your website.
The first SEO audit checklist item is crawlability. It is about whether search engine bots can move through your site and access all your pages. If bots can’t crawl your content, it won’t show up in search results.
A few things can mess with crawlability:
Indexability, on the other hand, means Google not only crawls your site but also adds it to its search index. If a page isn’t indexed, it won’t show up in search results. Even if bots can crawl a page, indexing problems can keep it from ranking.
Some of the things that can block indexing include the following.
For your SEO audit checklist, use tools like Lumar, Screaming Frog, or Semrush to analyze your entire site. They identify crawlability and indexability issues and produce a site health score report.
Take a look at the example below showing a crawlability and indexability analysis by Semrush.
Image via Semrush
So, how do you keep these two components in check?
Here are some tips:
Your audience is an impatient lot.
That’s why site speed remains one of the most significant ranking factors, especially for measuring real-world user experience (UX).
The ideal page load speeds are about 2.5 seconds.
Leverage website speed test tools like Google Analytics and PageSpeed Insights for page-by-page load time analysis.
Check this example of Google Analytics in action.
Image via Loves Data
Boost your site speed and performance through:
Trimming even a few seconds off page load times can make a huge difference, so ensure you prioritize page speeds in your SEO audit checklist.
The dreaded 404 error from broken or dead links can frustrate visitors and confuse search bots. For that reason, reviewing your website's linking structure should be a priority in your SEO audit checklist.
Your website’s linking structure refers to how your pages connect through internal and external links. Internal links point to other pages on your site, while external links connect to other websites.
A good linking structure helps search engines understand your content and improves user navigation.
If your internal links are broken, point to irrelevant pages, or are missing altogether, search engines may struggle to crawl your site properly. That means your pages may not appear in search results as they should.
You can use several audit tools like Semrush, Screaming Frog, or Majestic to visually map your current link landscape and analysis through:
If you use Semrush, for example, you’ll get a backlink audit report like this.
Image via Semrush
The right linking strategy strengthens organic search visibility, so a backlink audit is a must-have step on your SEO audit checklist.
Unlike spinning straw into gold, a mere SEO audit won't miraculously enhance poor content. You may have to run it through various readability checkers, plagiarism checkers, and AI content detectors to ensure that what you publish is of high quality.
Your SEO audit checklist should prioritize evaluating your content’s quality. This is a significant development because search engines prioritize useful, relevant, and well-structured content. If your content isn’t hitting the mark, your rankings could take a hit.
To achieve this goal, consider a comprehensive content quality audit that involves the following tasks:
However, there are multiple content writing tools you can use to improve your content. For instance, Hemingway examines each sentence by evaluating its length, structure, and word order. The tool determines if it follows principles of proper sentence construction, including correctness, readability, and style consistency.
Image via Hemingway
Sharing high-quality content is one of the best customer retention strategies that builds loyalty and encourages repeat visitors.
Next up on our SEO audit checklist is mobile friendliness and responsiveness.
Google cares a lot about how your site works on mobile, and so do your visitors. If your site isn’t easy to use on a phone or tablet, you're losing traffic, rankings, and sales.
Mobile friendliness means your website looks good and works smoothly on a mobile device. It’s all about how easy it is to read text, click buttons, and navigate pages without zooming in or out.
Responsiveness, on the other hand, goes a step further. A responsive website automatically adjusts its layout to fit different screen sizes. Whether someone is on a phone, tablet, or desktop, your site should adjust its elements so that it’s always easy to read and use.
Why is this an important SEO audit checklist item? According to recent data, over 98% of the global population can access the internet via mobile devices. Moreover, as of February 2025, mobile search constitutes 63% of all organic traffic.
Therefore, ensuring excellent mobile UX is non-negotiable.
However, Google discontinued its mobile-friendly test starting December 1, 2023.
Alternative testing tools, such as Website Grader, MobiReady, and WebPage Test, will help you complete the following:
Here’s a sample report provided by Website Grader on Google.
Image via Website Grader
An excellent mobile experience matters to reach today's predominantly mobile searchers and site visitors.
User experience plays a huge part in sales conversions so you need to add it onto your SEO audit checklist.
According to a 2024 survey, some of the things leading to cart abandonment include forcing people to create an account, site errors, or the inability to see the total cost upfront. All these are closely tied to site user experience.
Image via Baymard
Furthermore, Google values sites that provide good UX aligned with user intent.
Here’s a checklist of things to do when you conduct an SEO audit of your website to test its UX:
User experience isn’t just about making a website look nice — it directly affects your search rankings. Search engines want to display results that keep visitors happy. Make UX a priority in your SEO audit checklist, and you’ll see better rankings, more traffic, and happier visitors.
Websites get hacked a lot, and according to a 2024 SiteCheck survey of over 53 million sites, about 681,182 sites were infected by malware. This illustrates the importance of site security protocols.
Unless you’ve got $ 4.88 million to spare, you need to add a security audit to your SEO audit checklist. But what does a site security audit mean?
Auditing site security protocols involves checking your website for security vulnerabilities that could compromise user data or make your site a target for hackers. Google and other search engines only prioritize secure websites that protect users from fraud, malware, and identity theft.
Here’s an example of a site security audit report.
Image via Semrush
A secure website fosters better user trust, helps you avoid Google penalties, and can potentially increase click rates. Therefore, ensure that site security is part of your SEO audit checklist.
Next on our SEO audit checklist is auditing XML sitemaps and robots.txt files. An XML Sitemap is like a roadmap of your site for search engines. It lists all the important pages you want search engines to index.
If your XML Sitemap is outdated, has broken links, or includes pages that shouldn’t be indexed, search engines might not crawl your site efficiently.
On the other hand, a robots.txt file tells search engines which parts of your site they should and shouldn’t crawl. It’s useful for keeping search engines away from duplicate content, admin pages, or other areas that don’t need to be indexed.
But if it’s set up wrong, it can block search engines from crawling important pages, tanking your rankings.
In short, you need to make time for XML sitemaps and robots meta tags in your SEO audit checklist.
Look at this example of a robots.txt audit report.
Image via Search Engine Roundtable
When it comes to ticking off XML sitemaps and robots.txt files from your SEO audit checklist, use the following questions as a guide.
You can use SEO software like LinkStorm and Google Analytics to gain insights that will help you streamline this task on your checklist.
Did you know that 67.9% of the global population is active social media users?
This is why it’s important to seamlessly integrate your social media accounts with your website. Social media integration involves linking your website with your social media platforms, allowing visitors to easily find, share, and interact with your written content.
As an integral part of the SEO audit checklist, you can improve social media integration on your site in the following ways.
Leverage some good social media management tools to streamline this process.
According to estimates, Google processes nearly 255,000 search queries per second. Before customers visit your physical store or call, they’ll research your brand online.
GBP is a crucial local SEO tool for local businesses; hence, including it in the SEO audit checklist is a must.
Google uses GBP to understand more about your business and show it in local searches. If your profile is missing details or has incorrect information, you won’t rank as high in search results.
A well-optimized profile boosts visibility, builds trust, and increases clicks to your website.
See what an optimized GBP looks like; notice all the important business information it provides.
Image via Google
Here are the steps you need to complete as part of your GBP audit checklist:
Internal search optimization is an integral part of a modern SEO audit checklist. It is when someone types a query into the search box on your blog.
Search relevance refers to how well the results match what the user is looking for. If someone searches for “running shoes” on an online store but the top results show socks, the search function isn’t doing its job.
Internal search optimization identifies your readers’ needs and preferences and content development opportunities. It reveals the search terms visitors used and their path through your site, showing how well search results drove engagement.
This Google Analytics search report displays, among other results, the search terms users entered on the sample website.
Image via Google Analytics
You can review the internal site search relevance and results on your website for your SEO audit checklist in the following ways:
Fine-tune things so visitors can easily find helpful content on your site. This can also lower bounce rates, boost better engagement as well as help you identify content gaps in your website. Make sure you add it onto your SEO audit checklist.
Let's delve into the most important step on any SEO audit checklist—the on-page audit.
As we mentioned in an earlier section, on-page SEO elements are the parts of your website you can control directly. They help search engines understand your content and determine if it's relevant to users.
On-page SEO elements have to be optimized, or your website might struggle to rank on the first page of Google. Some of the key on-page SEO elements that need to be taken care of as you go through your SEO audit checklist include the following.
Tools like Semrush or On-page SEO Checker can help you audit key landing pages and blog posts.
Here’s an example of a detailed on-page audit report.
Image via Slide Geeks
Overlooking on-page SEO can lead to visibility drops, a strong reason to include it in your 2025 SEO strategy and SEO audit checklist.
Duplicate content can be a ranking roadblock. It often confuses search engines on what to prioritize so your SEO audit checklist must address duplication issues.
Duplication issues happen when the same or very similar content appears on multiple pages of your website, or even across different websites. Whether accidental or repurposed, duplication dilutes your content and authority.
With duplication, search engines never know which version to prioritize, and that can impact your rankings. It’s like having two actors playing the same role in a movie — it’s confusing and unnecessary.
Besides, Google values unique information.
Image via Backlinko
So, make sure you include a duplicate content audit in your SEO audit checklist:
Remember, a timely check on duplicates can safeguard your rankings.
One of the most effective strategies to help your website rank high is featured snippets.
They're the short answers Google pulls from web pages to answer a search query quickly. They appear at the very top, sometimes referred to as “Position Zero.” Google collects this information to help users find what they need quickly, without needing to click on a link (though many still do).
Here’s an example of a featured snippet when you search “SEO audit checklist.”
Image via Google
There are different formats of Featured Snippets that you can apply to your website.
So why do featured snippets matter enough to be included in your SEO audit checklist? Here are the notable reasons:
The next question you probably have right now is, how do I optimize my website for featured snippets? It’s very simple and doesn’t require much. Google usually picks snippets from content that’s already ranking so you first need to ensure your content is good enough for ranking.
Once you’ve taken care of that, try the following quick tips to complete your SEO audit checklist.
To check if your site has featured snippets, search for questions related to your content to see if they appear. You can also use the Google Search Console or premium SEO tools like Moz, Semrush or Ahrefs.
Wrapping up our SEO audit checklist is removing zombie pages. These are pages that are dead weight. Zombie pages don’t bring in traffic, don't rank well, and don't add any real value to your site. They just sit there, taking up space and making your website look bigger than it is.
They're a hidden problem that can drag down your rankings without you even realizing it. Any good SEO audit checklist includes removing zombie pages for a good reason.
Zombie pages come in many different forms, including the following.
So, how do zombie pages hurt your SEO? Here’s how.
Google has a limited number of pages it will crawl on your site. If it’s crawling zombie pages, it’s ignoring better pages that matter. Every SEO audit checklist focuses on making sure Google spends time on the right pages.
Google looks at your site as a whole. If a significant portion of your pages is of low quality, it drags down the entire site. That means even your best pages could struggle to rank.
If someone lands on a useless page, they’ll leave. High bounce rates indicate to Google that your site isn’t performing well, and as a result, your rankings drop.
Every page on your site competes for authority. If you have 500 pages, but only 50 are good, those 50 don’t get as much power as they should. Trimming the dead weight helps your strongest pages perform better.
Besides deleting zombie pages, you can also redirect them to similar, better pages. This way, any link juice from the old page goes to a good page instead. Alternatively, you can update the content available on a zombie page and optimize it for new keywords.
Another potential solution is to apply a noindex tag to prevent Google from indexing the particular zombie page. You can find zombie pages through web analytics tools like Google Search Console or Screaming Frog.
Q1. Why is an SEO audit checklist necessary?
A. This SEO audit checklist will help you:
Q2. Can I execute the 15-step SEO audit checklist independently, or should I hire a professional?
A. Yes, you can use this checklist to conduct an SEO audit for your website, without requiring professional help. You will, however, need SEO audit tools to carry out the various steps in the checklist.
Q3. Will this SEO audit checklist remain effective as search engine algorithms change?
A. Yes, it’s adaptable, focusing on the core elements that impact search engine rankings. This adaptability helps future-proof your website and content against search engine updates.
Q4. Are the steps in this SEO audit checklist applicable to any type of website?
A. Yes. This SEO audit checklist is versatile, catering to different types of content, websites, and industries. You might, however, need to customize the checklist based on your specific business needs and SEO goals.
Q5. How frequently should I use the SEO audit checklist?
A. Given the constant changes, quarterly audits ensure you're in the SEO health loop. This helps to make timely adjustments to align with updates and maintain organic search prowess.
You now have a comprehensive 15-step SEO audit checklist to optimize your site for the latest standards and adapt to evolving trends.
Use this checklist to make sure your site is all set to rank high on Google SERP.
And when SEO audits get technical, our search engine optimization services are at your disposal. Attrock’s SEO experts are ready to help you use this SEO audit checklist and elevate your SEO strategy.
Disclaimer: This content contains some affiliate links for which we will earn a commission (at no additional cost to you). This is to ensure that we can keep creating free content for you.
You’ve probably heard that video marketing is king. But knowing how to create a video…
Knowing how to start a blog isn’t as complicated as most people assume it to…
Good customer retention strategies are what keep a business from constantly starting over. Getting someone…
Looking for the best passive income ideas to get some extra cash in your pocket?…
You may have a great product, but no one will know your business even exists…
Did you know that your employees can be your biggest advocates? Not surprisingly, an increasing…