Run a basic SEO audit in a day

The short answer

A basic SEO audit checks five things in order: whether Google can find and index your important pages, whether the site works technically (speed, mobile, redirects, errors), whether each page is set up to match a search (titles, headings, internal links), whether the content is useful and current, and whether other sites link to you. Indexing comes first because nothing else matters for a page Google hasn’t indexed.

For a small business site of under a few hundred pages, you can run a solid audit in a day with free tools: Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and a crawler. Below is the checklist we use, the tool for each step, and how to turn the findings into a short fix list instead of a 90-page report nobody reads.

Tools you need

1. Indexing and crawling

Open the Page indexing report in Search Console. Google says you shouldn’t expect every URL to be indexed and that non-indexed URLs can be fine, so look at which pages are missing, not the total.

• Are your key pages indexed? Check the homepage, every service page and every location page with the URL Inspection tool.
• Any important page marked “noindex”? This often happens after a redesign when a staging setting is left on.
• Is robots.txt blocking anything it shouldn’t? Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt and read it.
• Is there an XML sitemap, submitted in Search Console, listing only pages you want indexed?
• “Crawled, currently not indexed” on important pages often points to thin or duplicate content rather than a technical fault.
• Manual actions: check the Manual actions report. It should say no issues detected.

2. Technical health

• One version of the site. http, https, www and non-www should all redirect to a single version.
• Broken links and 404s. Your crawler lists them. Fix internal links that point to dead pages, and redirect old URLs that had traffic or links.
• Redirect chains. A redirect that points to another redirect slows crawling. Point it straight at the final page.
• Core Web Vitals. Google’s web.dev guidance sets “good” as Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of visits. Our Core Web Vitals guide explains each in plain English.
• Mobile usability. Open your key pages on a phone. Text readable, buttons tappable, nothing wider than the screen.
• Duplicate pages. Printer versions, tag archives and URL parameters can create copies. Use canonical tags or remove them.
• Security. Every page on HTTPS with no mixed-content warnings.

3. On-page setup

Export every page from your crawler with its title, meta description and H1, and look at them side by side.

• Unique title tags that say what the page is about. Google’s starter guide says a good title is unique, clear, concise and accurate.
• One clear H1 per page that matches the page’s main topic.
• Meta descriptions that are short and specific to each page. Google often writes its own snippet, but a good one still helps.
• One page per search intent. If two pages target the same phrase, merge them or give each a distinct job.
• Internal links from your homepage and related pages to each service page, with descriptive anchor text.
• Image alt text on meaningful images.
• Structured data (Organization or LocalBusiness) tested in Google’s Rich Results Test.

Skip the meta keywords tag: Google’s documentation says Search doesn’t use it.

4. Content quality

• Does each service page answer the obvious questions: what it is, who it is for, where you offer it, how it works, what affects price, how to get started?
• Is anything out of date? Old prices, staff who left, discontinued services, references to past years.
• Thin pages. Pages with a few sentences rarely rank. Expand, merge or remove them. Google says word count alone doesn’t matter for ranking, so judge usefulness, not length.
• Pages with impressions but few clicks. In Search Console’s Performance report, sort by impressions. High impressions and low clicks often means the title doesn’t match what searchers want.
• Pages that lost traffic. Compare the last three months with the same period last year to find pages that slipped.

Rather have someone run it with you?

Book a free 30-minute call. We open your Search Console and site with you and point out the two or three fixes we would make first. No obligation. Pick a time that works for you.

5. Links

• Who links to you? Search Console’s Links report lists top linking sites. Ahrefs’ free webmaster tools (now called Ahrefs Free), available for sites you verify, show more.
• Are the links real? Links from local organizations, suppliers, press and industry sites are what you want. Hundreds of links from unrelated foreign directories suggest someone bought links in the past.
• Broken inbound links. Links pointing at pages that now 404 are wasted. Redirect those URLs to the closest live page.
• Competitor gap. Note where your three closest competitors have links that you could reasonably earn too.

6. Local and AI search checks

• Google Business Profile verified, correct category, hours and website link.
• Name, address and phone identical on your site and main listings.
• AI search. Search your main questions and see whether Google’s AI Overviews cite you. Pages that answer a question clearly in the first paragraph, with specifics, give these features something accurate to draw on. See our guide to SEO for Google AI Overviews.

Turn findings into a fix list

An audit is only useful if it ends in a short, ordered list. Sort each finding by impact and effort:

1. Blockers first: important pages not indexed, noindex mistakes, manual actions, site-wide redirect errors.
2. High impact, low effort next: rewriting titles on pages with high impressions, fixing broken internal links, adding internal links to service pages.
3. Bigger projects last: speed work, new service pages, content rewrites, link earning.

Repeat a light version every quarter (indexing, errors, traffic drops) and a full audit once a year or after any redesign. If a redesign is coming, read our guide on keeping SEO through a redesign before launch.

When to bring in help

If the audit turns up indexing problems you can’t explain, a traffic drop after a migration, or a long list of technical fixes, it is usually cheaper to have a specialist do them than to learn by trial and error. JLB USA’s SEO services are billed month to month, and you can cancel after any month.

Keep reading

• Questions to ask when hiring an SEO company (and good answers)
• Local SEO vs organic SEO: the difference and how to split effort
• Local SEO checklist for small businesses (2026)
• SEO vs PPC: which is better for a small business

Related services

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• Website redesign without losing SEO
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