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Last month I found a redirect loop that had been silently killing one of my best pages for six months. An SEO audit would've caught it in five minutes. Here's the checklist I use now.
Your website isn't ranking. Traffic is flat. Maybe declining.
You've published content. You've done "SEO." But something's wrong.
Here's the problem: most websites bleed rankings because of issues nobody's looking for. Broken links. Slow pages. Duplicate content. Thin pages that should've been consolidated years ago. Backlinks that disappeared when a referring site died.
An SEO audit finds these problems. It's the difference between guessing why you're not ranking and actually knowing.
I run these audits on my own sites quarterly now. It's not fun, but it's saved me from some embarrassing mistakes.
Why bother auditing regularly
Search engines change how they evaluate websites constantly. Google's algorithm updates thousands of times per year. What worked last quarter might be hurting you now.
A proper SEO audit does three things:
Finds technical issues that prevent Google from crawling and indexing your pages
Identifies content gaps where you're missing opportunities or creating thin content
Evaluates your backlink profile to spot toxic links and find opportunities
Sites that run regular audits see up to 61% more organic traffic compared to sites that don't. That number surprised me too.
How often should you audit? Every 3-6 months. Or after any major algorithm update. Or whenever your traffic drops and you don't know why.
Part 1: Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the foundation. If your site can't be crawled and indexed properly, nothing else matters.
Crawlability and indexing
Check your robots.txt file. It lives at yoursite.com/robots.txt. This tells search engines what to crawl and what to ignore.
Common mistakes I've seen (and made):
Blocking pages accidentally
Blocking CSS and JavaScript files (Google needs these to render your pages)
Forgetting to include your sitemap URL
Your robots.txt should link to your XML sitemap. Speaking of which...
Audit your XML sitemap. Your sitemap at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml should only include:
Canonical URLs (not duplicates)
Pages returning 200 status codes
Pages you actually want indexed
Remove anything with a noindex tag, redirects, or error pages. A clean sitemap helps Google find your good pages faster.
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Find orphan pages. These are pages with no internal links pointing to them. Google struggles to find them, and even if indexed, they won't rank well. Run a crawl with Screaming Frog to identify them, then either add internal links or delete them.
I found 23 orphan pages on one of my sites last year. Twenty-three. Most were old blog posts I'd forgotten existed. No wonder they weren't getting any traffic.
Status codes and redirects
Run a full site crawl and look for:
404 errors - Broken pages. Either restore them, redirect them with 301s, or remove internal links pointing to them.
Redirect chains - Page A redirects to B redirects to C. Each hop loses link equity. Fix these by pointing directly to the final destination.
Redirect loops - Page A redirects to B which redirects back to A. These break completely. Fix immediately. (This was the bug I mentioned in the intro. Cost me like six months of traffic on a key page before I noticed.)
Soft 404s - Pages returning 200 OK but showing "Page not found" content. These waste crawl budget.
E-commerce sites are notorious for 404 problems. Out-of-stock products, discontinued categories, old seasonal pages. Clean these up quarterly.
Core Web Vitals
Google measures three metrics:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - How fast your main content loads. Target: under 2.5 seconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - How much your page jumps around during load. Target: under 0.1.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) - How responsive your page is to clicks. Target: under 200ms.
INP replaced First Input Delay in 2024. If your site has heavy JavaScript or long-running tasks, your INP is probably bad.
Check your Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console under the Experience section. Fix your worst pages first, usually your homepage and high-traffic landing pages.
Quick wins:
Compress images and use WebP format
Lazy-load images below the fold
Set width and height on all images to prevent layout shift
Break up long JavaScript tasks
Use a CDN for static assets
Mobile optimization
Google uses mobile-first indexing. It crawls and ranks based on your mobile version, not desktop.
Once the technical foundation is solid, audit your on-page elements.
Title tags and meta descriptions
Pull all your title tags and meta descriptions into a spreadsheet. Look for:
Title tag issues:
Too long (over 60 characters)
Too short (under 30 characters)
Missing entirely
Duplicate across multiple pages
Missing target keyword
Meta description issues:
Too long (over 160 characters)
Missing (Google will generate one, but it's rarely good)
Duplicates
Not compelling (no reason to click)
Every page should have a unique, keyword-optimized title tag. Period.
Header structure
Each page should have:
One H1 tag containing the primary keyword
Logical H2s and H3s breaking up content
No skipped levels (H1 to H3 with no H2)
Headers aren't just for SEO. They help users scan content. If your headers don't tell a story, rewrite them.
Content quality
For each page, ask:
Does this answer the searcher's question?
Is it more helpful than what's currently ranking?
Does it demonstrate expertise?
Is it comprehensive or thin?
Check for thin content. Pages with under 300 words rarely rank for anything competitive. Either expand them or consolidate with other pages.
Check for duplicate content. Use Screaming Frog's "Near Duplicates" feature to find pages with similar content. Consolidate them and 301 redirect the duplicates.
Check for keyword cannibalization. If multiple pages target the same keyword, they compete against each other. Pick one page to be the canonical version, and either redirect or differentiate the others.
I had two blog posts both targeting "backlink checker" and neither ranked. Combined them, redirected one, and the merged page hit page one within two months.
Internal linking
Internal links pass authority and help Google understand your site structure.
Audit your internal links by checking:
Do your most important pages have the most internal links?
Are orphan pages getting linked?
Is anchor text descriptive (not "click here")?
Do you have pages with too many outbound internal links (over 100)?
Build topic clusters. Link related content together. Your pillar pages should get links from all supporting content.
Referring domains - The number of unique sites linking to you. More is better (quality permitting)
Domain Rating/Authority - How authoritative are the sites linking to you?
Anchor text distribution - A natural profile has mostly branded anchors (70%+) with some keyword anchors
Dofollow vs. nofollow ratio - A natural mix is healthy. 100% dofollow looks suspicious
Toxic link identification
Not all backlinks help you. Some hurt.
Look for links from:
Spammy link directories
Unrelated foreign language sites
Sites with thin or scraped content
Known link schemes or PBNs (private blog networks)
Sites with "guest post" or "sponsored" in every article
If you find genuinely toxic links, use Google's Disavow Tool. But be careful. Disavowing legitimate links hurts you. Only disavow if you're certain the links are harmful.
Lost and broken backlinks
Links disappear. Sites go offline. Pages get deleted.
Run a "lost backlinks" report to see what you've lost recently. Sometimes you can reclaim them:
If a page moved, reach out and request the updated URL
If a site died, that link is gone (unless someone like Revised acquires the domain)
Also check for broken backlinks pointing to 404 pages on your site. Set up 301 redirects to capture that link equity.
Competitor backlink analysis
Your competitors' backlinks are your opportunity list.
Pull their backlink profiles and look for:
High-authority sites linking to them but not you
Types of content earning links (resources, tools, research)
The "link intersect" feature in most SEO tools shows sites linking to multiple competitors but not you. These are your lowest-hanging fruit.
Brand mentions
Unlinked brand mentions are free link opportunities.
Set up Google Alerts for your brand name and key products. When you find mentions without links, reach out and ask. Most site owners will add the link if you ask politely.
Part 4: Content audit
Content decays. What ranked two years ago might be outdated and losing traffic now.
Traffic trend analysis
Pull your pages by organic traffic over the past 12-24 months. Categorize them:
Growing - These are working. Keep doing what you're doing
Stable - Monitor these. They might need refreshes soon
Declining - Prioritize these for updates
Zero traffic - Decide: update, consolidate, or delete
Content freshness
For each declining page:
Is the information still accurate?
Are statistics and examples current?
Have search intent or competition changed?
Could this be consolidated with similar content?
Update declining pages with fresh data, better examples, and more depth. Add "Updated for 2025" to titles when relevant.
E-E-A-T assessment
Google evaluates Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Audit for:
Author bylines - Who wrote this? Are they credible?
Author bios - Do they demonstrate expertise?
Citations - Are claims backed by sources?
Contact information - Can users reach you?
Privacy policy and terms - Do you have these?
For YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics like health, finance, or legal content, E-E-A-T matters even more.
Part 5: The authority problem
Here's where most audits stop. Technical: fixed. On-page: optimized. Content: refreshed.
And rankings still don't move.
Because authority is the hardest part. You can have perfect technical SEO, great content, and still not rank because you don't have the backlinks that signal trust to Google.
Real authority comes from links on sites Google already trusts. Wikipedia. Reddit. Hacker News. Major publications. These aren't links you can just ask for. They're earned over years. Or they happen by luck.
Or you find another way.
Revised takes a different approach. We find contextual backlinks from trusted sources by acquiring domains that already have them. When authoritative sites link to dead pages, we acquire those domains and redirect that link equity to relevant content.
It's not link building. It's link reclamation at scale.
If your audit reveals a backlink gap where competitors are outranking you with more authority, that's the problem Revised solves. See how it works.
Core Web Vitals on high-traffic pages - Fix within 2 weeks
Declining content - Update within 1 month
Backlink gaps - Ongoing priority
Run this audit every quarter. Compare to previous audits. Track progress.
And if your backlink profile is the bottleneck, if competitors are outranking you with more authority from trusted sources, Revised can help. We handle the hardest part of SEO so you can focus on everything else.
