SEO Audit Checklist
A structured SEO audit shows how discoverable, usable, and trustworthy your site appears to both search engines and real people. Getting the technical details right matters – but your voice, your content, and your demonstrated E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) ultimately decide how your site ranks – and that matters for both SEO and AEO in this new search era. Use this SEO checklist to prioritize fixes that improve technical health, relevance, experience, and measurable outcomes.
Technical Foundations
Technical foundations determine whether search engines can reach, interpret, and index your site correctly. This part of the SEO audit surfaces crawl barriers, structural issues, and performance problems before you spend time analysing rankings, content quality, or conversion paths.
- Crawlability review using a site crawl
- Robots.txt rules and accessibility checks
- XML sitemap accuracy and Search Console status
- Index coverage errors, warnings, and soft 404s
- HTTPS coverage and mixed-content issues
- Core Web Vitals for speed and stability
- Mobile responsiveness across key templates
- Page speed diagnostics and quick wins
- Canonical tag presence and correctness
- Redirect chains, loops, and status codes
- Broken internal and external links
- Duplicate content patterns and clusters
- Hreflang validation for regional or language sites
On-Page Optimization
On-page content optimisation confirms that each page sends a clear, consistent signal about its topic and purpose. Here you align titles, headers, copy, media, and internal links with the real queries and intents that matter for your audience.
- Unique, intent-aligned title tags for key pages
- Meta descriptions that clarify value, not just keywords
- Logical H1–H3 hierarchy that matches page topics
- Keywords mapped to intent and journey stage
- Descriptive, accessible image alt text
- Clean, human-readable URL structure
- Schema and rich-result markup opportunities
- Internal links supporting depth and crawl paths
- Identification of thin or overlapping pages
- De-index or consolidate low-value content
Content Quality Review
Content quality is where rankings and revenue ultimately meet. The SEO audit here tests whether pages genuinely answer questions, demonstrate experience and authority, and outperform competitors on depth, clarity, and usefulness for the searcher’s specific context.
- Primary intent match for each important page
- Topical completeness versus leading competitors
- Clarity of problem, solution, and next steps
- E-E-A-T indicators on decision pages
- Evidence, examples, and supporting data or proof
- Outdated, inaccurate, or conflicting statements
- Content freshness for time-sensitive topics
- Gaps where users must leave to finish research
- Opportunities for new articles or landing pages
User Experience (UX)
UX connects SEO to actual outcomes. Search engines increasingly reward sites that feel fast, stable, and easy to navigate. This portion of the audit focuses on friction points that quietly erode trust, engagement, and conversion rates across devices.
- Navigation clarity and label consistency
- Readability, font sizing, and contrast checks
- Layout stability during loading and scrolling
- Tap-target spacing and gestures on mobile
- Form length, error handling, and clarity
- Intrusive pop-ups, banners, or interstitials
- Conversion paths from entry page to outcome
- Accessibility basics (alt text, headings, focus)
Off-Page & Authority
Off-page signals help search engines decide whether to trust your answers over competing options. This review looks at link quality, risk, relevance, and brand presence to understand how strong your authority appears in your competitive landscape.
- Backlink profile size versus key competitors
- Quality, relevance, and topical fit of referring sites
- Toxic or spam-adjacent links that require review
- Anchor text balance across branded and generic terms
- Coverage across industry, local, and niche sites
- Unlinked brand mentions worth converting to links
- Local citation accuracy and duplication issues
Analytics & Tracking
Without clean analytics, even a great audit becomes guesswork. This section confirms your measurement stack can attribute outcomes back to channels, campaigns, and content so decisions are driven by actual behaviour, not assumptions or incomplete data.
- GA4 implementation and data integrity checks
- Configured conversion events and key actions
- Tag Manager container hygiene and versioning
- Search Console linkage and verified properties
- Channel and campaign attribution sanity checks
- Custom events for scrolls, plays, form steps
- Dashboards or reports aligned to business goals
Local SEO (If Applicable)
Local SEO ensures people can find and choose you when intent is tied to geography. Here you confirm listings, reviews, and landing pages support both proximity-based ranking factors and the confidence signals real humans look for before visiting.
- Google Business Profile ownership and accuracy
- Categories, services, photos, and business hours
- NAP consistency across major directories
- Review volume, recency, responses, and ratings
- Location or service-area landing page coverage
- Driving directions, parking, and contact clarity
- Local backlink and citation opportunities
AEO – Answer Engine Optimization
AEO Answer Engine Optimization focuses on how well your content can be quoted, summarised, and reused by AI-driven surfaces. The goal is to make answers clear, structured, and consistent so systems can safely reference you when resolving complex, multi-step questions.
- FAQ sections on key informational and service pages
- Direct, scannable answers to core user questions
- Entity clarity around brands, locations, people, and offers
- Schema supporting FAQs, articles, and local businesses
- Fact consistency across pages and platforms
- Pages tailored for featured snippet opportunities
- Clear evidence and sources where appropriate