An SEO audit follows a systematic process: crawl the site, check the technical foundation, analyze content, measure performance, identify keyword opportunities, and produce a prioritized action plan. Here's how to do each step, whether manually or with tools.
Step 1: Crawl the site
Before you can audit anything, you need to know what's on the site. A crawler visits every page by following internal links, starting from the homepage. For each page, it records:
- URL and HTTP status code (200 = ok, 301 = redirect, 404 = broken)
- Title tag and meta description
- Heading structure (H1, H2, H3)
- Word count (for thin content detection)
- Internal and external links
- Images and their alt text
- Structured data (schema.org JSON-LD)
- Response time
Tools: Screaming Frog (free for up to 500 pages), Sitebulb, or AuditCrawl (crawls up to 50 pages automatically as part of every report).
Step 2: Check robots.txt and sitemap
Two files at the root of every site that control how search engines discover content:
- robots.txt (
yourdomain.com/robots.txt) — tells crawlers which pages to skip. Check that it's not accidentally blocking important pages. A missing robots.txt is fine (defaults to "allow all"). - sitemap.xml (
yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml) — lists every page you want indexed. Should be submitted to Google Search Console. A missing sitemap is a problem — it slows down indexing.
Step 3: Check HTTPS and security
Every page should be served over HTTPS (not HTTP). Google penalizes non-HTTPS sites in rankings, and browsers show a "Not Secure" warning that scares visitors away.
Also check: does http://yourdomain.com redirect to https://? Does www. redirect to the non-www version (or vice versa)? All four combinations (http/https × www/non-www) should resolve to a single canonical URL.
Step 4: Analyze title tags and meta descriptions
These are the most important on-page SEO elements. For every page in the crawl, check:
- Missing titles — every page needs one. No title = invisible to Google.
- Duplicate titles — two pages with the same title confuse Google about which to rank.
- Title length — over 60 characters gets truncated. Under 30 is too vague.
- Missing meta descriptions — Google will auto-generate (usually badly).
- Description length — ideal is 120-160 characters.
Check any page instantly with our free meta tag checker.
Step 5: Check heading structure
Every page should have exactly one H1 (the main topic) and a logical hierarchy of H2s and H3s below it. Common problems:
- No H1 — the page has no clear topic signal for search engines
- Multiple H1s — dilutes the topic signal
- Skipped levels — jumping from H1 to H3 without an H2 breaks the hierarchy
- Headings used for styling — an H2 that says "Contact Us" in the sidebar isn't a real heading
Visualize any page's heading tree with our free heading checker.
Step 6: Measure Core Web Vitals (page speed)
Google measures three speed metrics that directly affect rankings:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — target under 2.5s. The biggest content element (usually a hero image) should load fast.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — target under 0.1. Elements shouldn't jump around while the page loads.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — target under 200ms. The page should respond instantly to clicks.
Tools: Our free page speed test, Google PageSpeed Insights, or Chrome DevTools Lighthouse.
Step 7: Find keyword opportunities
An audit should go beyond finding problems — it should identify growth opportunities. Using a tool like DataForSEO, Ahrefs, or Semrush, pull:
- Keywords the site ranks for (positions 1-10) — these are the wins worth protecting
- Keywords in positions 11-30 — these are "almost page 1" opportunities that could be pushed up with content improvements
- Domain authority — how the site compares to competitors in overall strength
- Backlink profile — how many sites link to this domain
AuditCrawl includes keyword opportunity data (powered by DataForSEO) in every report automatically.
Step 8: Produce the report
The final step is organizing everything into a readable report. A good audit report:
- Leads with the overall grade — one number the client understands
- Summarizes the top 3-5 issues — executive summary, not a data dump
- Groups issues by severity — critical first, minor last
- Provides specific fix instructions — "add this meta description" beats "meta description is missing"
- Includes keyword data — shows the business opportunity, not just the problems
If you're a freelancer, the report should carry your branding — your logo, your colors, "Prepared by [Your Agency]." That's what turns a report into a sales tool. AuditCrawl generates white-label PDFs with your branding built in.
The fast way: automate it
The manual process above takes 4-8 hours per site. AuditCrawl does the research in under 5 minutes: enter a URL, get keyword research across hundreds of terms, content opportunities organized by service cluster, and an AI-powered content strategy — delivered as a shareable link + downloadable PDF with your branding. $7.99 per report, no subscription.