60-point website SEO audit with a 90-day action plan

A website SEO audit is a structured check of everything that affects how your site performs in search: whether Google can index it, how fast it loads, how clear each page is, and how well your business shows up locally. A good audit doesn't just list problems. It tells you which few fixes to make first.

Many of my first calls start the same way. The owner shares a 40-page PDF from an automated tool. Hundreds of “errors,” red warnings on every page, and a score out of 100. They ask me where to begin. Usually, most of those warnings don't matter at all. Two or three of them matter a lot. Finding those two or three is the real job of an audit.

What a website SEO audit is really for

An audit is a decision tool. Its goal is to turn “something is wrong with our SEO” into a short, ordered to-do list.

That matters because not every warning is a problem. For example, Google's own Page indexing report documentation says not to expect every URL on your site to be indexed. Some pages are duplicates or thin by design, like tag archives. What counts is that your key pages are indexed. A tool that flags 200 unindexed tag pages as “critical” is creating noise, not insight.

Why an audit matters more in 2026

Search has shifted fast. Several changes mean an audit from even two years ago may now point you in the wrong direction.

• AI answers sit on top of many results. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear as a source in AI Overviews or AI Mode. An indexing problem now costs you visibility in two places at once.
• Speed metrics changed. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in March 2024. INP measures how fast a page reacts when someone taps it. Old reports still quoting FID are out of date.
• Rich results changed. FAQ rich results stopped showing in Google Search on May 7, 2026. An audit telling you to add FAQ markup “for rich snippets” is behind the times.

Free checker, DIY audit or professional audit?

You have three realistic options. Each one has a place. Here is how they compare.

If your site is small and your time is free, the DIY route is a great start. The steps below will get you most of the way.

How to run a basic SEO self-audit, step by step

You can do this in an afternoon. All the tools here are free, or have a free version.

1. Open Google Search Console. Go to the Page indexing report. Check that your homepage, main service pages and city pages are indexed.
2. Inspect your top three pages. Use the URL Inspection tool on each. It tells you whether Google can index the page and which version it treats as the main one.
3. Test speed on a real phone profile. Run your top pages through PageSpeed Insights. Focus on the real-user section at the top, not just the score.
4. Crawl the site. Screaming Frog's free version crawls up to 500 URLs. Sort by status code to find broken pages and redirect chains.
5. Review titles and headings. In the same crawl, look for missing, duplicate or very long title tags. Each key page should have a clear, unique one.
6. Check your business details. Compare your name, address and phone number on your site, your Google Business Profile and major directories. They should match exactly.
7. Search like a customer. Type your main service plus your city into Google on your phone. Note who shows up in the map results and in AI Overviews.

Want to go deeper on step seven? A geo-grid ranking scan shows how your map position changes street by street, which a single search can't.

How I prioritize what an audit finds

Every finding goes into one of three buckets. The order matters more than the length of the list.

1. Blockers

These stop Google or customers outright. A key page set to noindex, a wrong primary category on the Business Profile, or a broken contact form. I fix these first, every time.

2. Trust gaps

These confuse Google about who you are. Inconsistent phone numbers are the classic case. In my hair salon Maps case study, the audit found 17 of 41 citations listing the wrong phone number from a previous owner. Cleaning those up was part of the climb in local rankings.

3. Growth opportunities

These are pages or content you don't have yet. Missing service pages, missing city pages, or questions your customers ask that no page answers. A competitor analysis is often the best way to spot these.

Based on what I've seen, the highest-impact problems are rarely deep in the code. They are simple setup mistakes that nobody checked. In my dental clinic audit, the Business Profile was listed under “Health Consultant” instead of “Dentist.” That one setting was keeping the practice out of dental searches. No crawler would have caught it.

Common SEO audit mistakes

• Treating the score as the goal. A tool's health score is not a Google metric. Rankings, calls and form fills are what count.
• Fixing everything at once. When many changes ship together, you can't tell which one helped.
• Ignoring the local layer. For a local business, your Business Profile, reviews and citations often matter as much as the website.
• Auditing once and forgetting. Plugins update, pages move and Google changes its rules. A light re-check every few months catches drift early.
• No baseline. Without recording your starting rankings and traffic, you can't prove later what worked.

How to choose someone to audit your site

Google has a helpful page on how to choose an SEO. It suggests asking for examples of past work, asking whether they follow Google Search Essentials, and asking whether they will share every change made to your site. It also says plainly that no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google.

I agree with all of that. I would add one more question: “What would you fix first, and why?” A good auditor answers in plain words, with a reason tied to your business. If the answer is a list of fifty items with no order, keep looking.

An audit is the cheapest way to stop guessing. Even if you do all the work yourself afterwards, knowing the right order saves months.

You can also start with my free local SEO audit tool. It scores the basics in a few minutes and shows what to fix first.

If you'd like me to take a first look, ask for a free mini audit and I'll share the top issues holding your site back.