SEO audit checklist: what to check and what to pay for

An SEO audit checks whether Google can find, read and trust your website, and then tells you what to fix first. For a small business site, a useful audit covers five areas: indexing (are your pages in Google at all), technical health (speed, errors, mobile), your main pages (titles, headings, content, internal links), local signals (your Google Business Profile and contact details) and, now, AI search. You can run most of this checklist yourself with free Google tools in an afternoon. The part worth paying for is the judgment: knowing which ten of the two hundred warnings matter and in what order to fix them.

What an SEO audit is

An SEO audit is a review of your site against the things search engines need to rank it. It ends in a report with a list of problems, ranked by how much each one is costing you.

Google is upfront that there's no trick to this. Its own SEO Starter Guide says there are "no secrets here that'll automatically rank your site first in Google." An audit can't promise rankings. It can find what stops a good site from being seen, and that's usually boring stuff: pages Google never indexed, a slow homepage, five pages with the same title, a phone number that differs between the site and the Google profile.

There are two kinds you'll hear about. A technical SEO audit looks only at the plumbing: crawling, indexing, speed, redirects, broken links and structured data. A full audit adds your content, your keywords, your competitors and your local presence. For most small businesses the full one is the one to get, because the technical side is rarely the only problem.

What a useful audit checks

Any audit, yours or a paid one, should answer these questions:

1. Are your important pages indexed by Google, and if some aren't, why?
2. Does the site load fast enough on a phone, and does anything jump around as it loads?
3. Are there broken pages, broken links or redirect chains?
4. Does each main page have its own clear title, one main heading and enough text to explain what you do?
5. Do your pages link to each other in a way that makes sense?
6. Does your Google Business Profile match your site?
7. Can AI search tools reach your site, and do your pages answer questions plainly?
8. Which of all that should you fix first?

Most audits skip the last one.

A checklist you can run with free tools

You don't need Semrush or Ahrefs. Three free Google tools cover most of it.

Google Search Console. It's the most useful free tool an owner has. The Performance report shows which searches you appear for, how often people click, and which pages get the traffic. The Page indexing report shows how many pages Google has indexed and has a table called "Why pages aren't indexed" that lists the reasons for the rest.

PageSpeed Insights. Paste in your homepage and your busiest service page. If your site gets enough traffic, the top of the report shows field data from real Chrome users, which is the number Google pays attention to.

Rich Results Test. If your site uses structured data (code that tells Google you're a local business, or that a page has FAQs), this tool shows whether Google can read it and flags errors.

Add one more check that costs nothing: search Google for your business name and for your main service plus your town, on your phone, signed out. Note what you see. That's your baseline.

Technical checks: indexing, speed and errors

Start here. Nothing else matters if Google can't see the page.

• Open the Page indexing report in Search Console. Compare the number of indexed pages with the number of real pages on your site. If you have 20 service pages and Google indexed 6, you've found your first problem.
• Look at the reasons in "Why pages aren't indexed." Some are fine, like redirects or pages you blocked on purpose. Others, like "Discovered, currently not indexed" on your main service pages, need attention.
• Check that your sitemap is submitted in Search Console and lists only your real, current pages.
• Run PageSpeed Insights on mobile. Google's Core Web Vitals targets are a Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, an Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and a Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. If you're well past those, speed goes high on the fix list.
• Click through your own site on a phone. Look for broken links, pages that 404, forms that don't send and menus that don't open. Send yourself a test enquiry from the contact form.

Page checks: titles, headings and internal links

Pick your ten most important pages: the homepage, each main service, your pricing or contact page. For each one, check:

• The title tag. Each page needs its own, written for a person, with the service and usually your town in it. Keep it short enough that the main point shows before Google cuts it off.
• The meta description: one or two sentences that say what the page offers. Google doesn't always show it.
• One main heading (H1) that says what the page is about, in the words a customer would search.
• Enough text to answer the question that brought someone there. A service page with two sentences and a stock photo gives Google very little to rank.
• Internal links. Your service pages should link to each other where it helps, and your blog posts should link to the service they relate to. Orphan pages, the ones nothing links to, tend to get ignored.
• Duplicate pages. If five location pages say the same thing with the town name swapped, expect Google to treat them as one page, or as spam.

One thing you can skip: the meta keywords tag. Google's starter guide says plainly that Google Search doesn't use it.

Local and AI-search checks

If customers come to you, or you go to them, local search is probably where most of your enquiries start.

• Your name, address and phone number should be identical on your site, your Google Business Profile and the big directories.
• Your Google Business Profile should be verified, in the right primary category, with real photos, current hours and recent reviews you've replied to. If the profile isn't showing at all, our guide on why a Google Business Profile isn't showing up walks through the fixes.
• Your site should have a page for each main service and say where you work.

AI search is the newer check. ChatGPT, Google's AI answers and similar tools pull from websites they're allowed to crawl. OpenAI's crawler documentation says sites that allow its OAI-SearchBot crawler can appear in ChatGPT search results, and that changes to robots.txt can take about 24 hours to take effect. So the first AI check is simple: open yoursite.com/robots.txt and make sure you aren't blocking the crawlers you want. The second is about writing. Pages that answer a question in the first two sentences, in plain words, are easier for any of these tools to quote.

What a paid audit should hand you

A paid audit should run the checks above with better tools and tell you what they mean for your business. You should get:

• A written report in plain English that you could hand to your developer or read yourself.
• A prioritized fix list. The top of the list is what's costing you the most, the bottom is nice to have.
• Findings tied to your pages, with the URL and the problem named. "Page speed could be improved" is useless. "Your homepage hero image is 4 MB and is the main reason it loads slowly on phones" is a finding.
• A clear split between what you can fix yourself and what needs a developer.

That's how we do ours. An Ortha SEO audit starts from $59, paid in full before work starts, and covers a technical check (speed, indexing and errors), keyword and competitor research, a review of your main pages, a structured data and AI-search check, and a prioritized fix list in plain English. You get a written report. Fixes are quoted separately, or you can move to monthly work. Our pricing page lists everything, and if you want the wider picture of what SEO help costs, we covered that in how much SEO costs for a small business.

Red flags in cheap audits

Plenty of audits are a tool export with a logo on top. Watch for these:

• A 60-page PDF with hundreds of warnings and no order. If everything is a priority, nothing is.
• A single "SEO score" out of 100 as the headline. Google doesn't use that number. It was made up by the tool.
• No mention of Search Console. An audit that never looked at your Search Console data is guessing.
• A promise of first-page rankings or a guaranteed number of visitors. Nobody can promise that, and Google says as much.

What to do with the findings

An audit only pays off if the fixes happen. Work in this order:

1. Fix anything that stops Google indexing your main pages. This comes first, every time.
2. Fix broken pages, broken forms and redirect problems.
3. Rewrite titles and headings on your ten main pages.
4. Fix the worst speed problems on those same pages.
5. Line up your Google Business Profile with your site.
6. Then work on content: fuller service pages and posts that answer real customer questions.

Run the free checks again about a month after the fixes go in, and look at Search Console to see if more pages are indexed and if clicks are moving. A full audit once a year is enough for most small sites. Do one sooner if you redesign, change platforms or see traffic drop sharply. Our website maintenance checklist covers what to watch between audits.

If you'd like someone else to run the audit and tell you straight what's worth fixing, send us a few lines about your site.

FAQ

What does an SEO audit include?

A useful SEO audit checks indexing, site speed and errors, your main pages (titles, headings, content and internal links), your local presence and AI-search access. It ends with a prioritized list of fixes, ordered by how much each problem is costing you.

How do I do an SEO audit of my own website for free?

Use Google Search Console for indexing and search data, PageSpeed Insights for speed, and the Rich Results Test for structured data. Then review your ten main pages by hand for titles, headings and content, and check that your Google Business Profile matches your site.

How often should a small business site be audited?

Once a year is enough for most small sites. Run one sooner after a redesign, a platform change or a sharp drop in traffic.

Can ChatGPT do an SEO audit?

It can help. ChatGPT can review page text you paste in, suggest better titles and point out unclear writing. It can't see your Search Console data or your real visitors' speed numbers unless you give them to it, so treat it as a second opinion and use Google's free tools for the facts.

What's the difference between a technical SEO audit and a full SEO audit?

A technical audit covers crawling, indexing, speed, errors, redirects and structured data. A full audit adds keywords, competitors, page content and local search. Most small businesses need the full one.

How much does an SEO audit cost?

Prices vary widely by provider and site size. At Ortha, an SEO audit starts from $59, paid in full before work starts, and you get a written report with a prioritized fix list.