How to Do An SEO Audit (and a list of SEO audit services)

Knowing how to do an SEO audit is key to improving your website’s visibility in Google.

You might be wondering why your competitors are over taking you?

You’re thinking:

“We have lots of content.”
“Our offering is better than theirs.”
We’ve just spent money redoing our website.”

It can be confusing. However, you can have all the content in the world (and a great offering) but if your SEO is letting you down, you’re never going to perform well in Google.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), is the process of optimising your website so search engines can understand it, rank it, and show it to the right people.

This allows Google to easily crawl and index your website, serving content in response to user search queries.

A lot of the time, the importance of this can be overlooked as brands are so focussed on the design and build of their website. Without investing in SEO and understanding what’s working and what isn’t through an SEO audit, you risk getting lost in a sea of competitors.

In this guide, we’ll be walking you through how to do an SEO audit including why this process can save you time and money.

What Is SEO?

SEO is the process of optimising your website for Google.

Without putting time and effort into this process, your website is not going to be found in Google’s search results.

This is important for various reasons but the number one reason is your content being found.

When your customers are looking for something on Google, you want to make sure your website is visible. In turn, this increases clicks to your site and the likelihood of people converting (whether that’s picking up the phone, filling in an enquiry form, or making a purchase).

There’s lots of different things that make up SEO rather than one magical formula. We’ve listed these different elements below, and they all contribute to the way Google responds to your site:

• High quality content
• Backlinks
• Site speed
• Mobile responsiveness
• Alt tags on images
• Navigation & site structure
• Keyword targeting & search intent
• Clear calls-to-action

All of these things work together to create a website that is functional, easy to use, and mostly importantly, serves the user.

Google wants to give users the best experience so the websites they feature highly in their results fulfil the criteria above. Without taking these elements into consideration, you could have the best product or service on the market but no one will be able to find it.

You may be relying on other channels, such as word of mouth or referrals. While these are powerful, many people start their discovery phase online.

Why An SEO Audit Is Important

An SEO audit is important as you need to identify what’s working and what’s not.

Looking at the list above, this means asking questions like “are these cta’s driving enquiries?” and “is this blog content serving the right search intent?”

It’s usual for businesses to publish content on their website whether that’s copy on product pages or blog content, then forget about it.

Typically the main goal is just getting the content out there.

However, it’s not the quantity of content that Google prioritises, it’s the quality of your content.

Over time, if you’re not auditing your content and your SEO, your website can grow arms and legs. It can also start to lose value, as you’re publishing content for the sake of it.

However by taking the time to audit your SEO, you can spot things like:

• Broken links
• Poor content
• Duplicate or cannibalising content
• Slow site speed
• Expired product feeds (for ecommerce websites)
• Crawl errors
• Redirect issues
• Overly complex site structure

All of these things damage your SEO, yet they’re easily missed if your only focus is continuously populating your website.

Your SEO audit makes you stop to reflect and review.

By asking key questions and looking back at what already exists on your site, you can decide whether it’s working or if it needs to be removed. Getting rid of bad content is way more valuable than adding pointless content.

When To Do An SEO Audit

A comprehensive SEO audit should be done every 6-12 months.

This time frame allows you to build up content and add to your website without the task becoming overwhelming.

Whilst you don’t want to conduct an audit too soon as SEO takes time to gain traction (often 3-6 months), these intervals allow you to review content performance before it gets out of hand.

For example, if you’re publishing two blogs a month this would soon snowball if you didn’t review them for over a year. Suddenly you have 24 blogs minimum to review and possibly improve or delete.

The same goes for your product / service pages as you might be adding to these as your business changes. You don’t want to get to a point where your SEO audit takes days to complete as you’ve left the site sitting for too long.

As a result, conducting an SEO audit every 6-12 months allows you to stay on top of your content, ensuring everything live on your website is high-quality, valuable, and serves the user.

Who Conducts An SEO Audit?

Usually the marketing team, in particular the SEO team will conduct the SEO audit. They have the best understanding of the website so they’re better positioned to make decisions about what should and shouldn’t stay.

This might include input from the design and web team when making recommendations on design and structure as both of these elements affect SEO.

At Discovery Design, we conduct an SEO audit whenever we onboard a new client. This allows us to understand the current performance of the website and make strategic recommendations for improvement.

For example, a content client might have experienced a decrease in website traffic because some of their product pages are outdated, poorly optimised, or no longer aligned with how people are searching. We would approach this by revisiting things like the website copy, page structure, and cta’s, giving people a clear reason to convert. We would also link to these pages from relevant blog content, carrying link equity and boosting performance even further.

If you’d like to know more about our SEO service, get in touch with the team here.

How to Do An SEO Audit

Follow the steps below to conduct an SEO audit that keeps your website and content performing in search engines.

Check That Crawlers Can Access Your Site

Website crawlers such as Google’s or AI tools like ChatGPT need to be able to access your website to find and index your content.
Think of this as a big library of content, and if your website isn’t in the library, it’s not going to be served.
It’s important your content shows up in search results or AI answers as this increases your visibility and reach.

Below is a simple checklist of how to do it:

1. Check your robots.txt file – make sure it’s not blocking important pages.
2. Ensure pages aren’t “noindexed” – check meta tags and CMS settings.
3. Fix broken links or server errors – crawlers can’t index pages that return errors.
4. Submit a sitemap to Google Search Console – this helps crawlers discover your pages faster.
5. Avoid unnecessary login walls – website crawlers can’t access content behind passwords.

Make Sure There Is Only One Version of Your Site

Duplicate URLs can happen when a new website is launched without a standardised URL structure. This can confuse Google, as it might not know which version to rank. Even if each page has relevant content, it can damage your SEO as Google isn’t sure which URL to serve users in response to their queries.

To check for duplicate versions of your site, try accessing it through different versions:

http://yourdomain.com
https://yourdomain.com
http://www.yourdomain.com
https://www.yourdomain.com

Once identified, set up 301 redirects to point all traffic to the right website. This ensures search engines know which URL to index and helps consolidate your SEO value.

Optimise Your Website For Mobile

With so many people browsing on mobile, your website should never be an afterthought. Just because a site looks good on a desktop doesn’t mean it will work well on smaller screens. A poor mobile experience can frustrate users and hurt your SEO, which is why testing and optimising for mobile is essential.

Here are three ways to check if your site is mobile-friendly:

1) Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

• Go to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
• Enter your URL and click “Test URL.”
• Google will tell you if your site is mobile-friendly and pinpoint any issues.

2) Resize Your Browser Window

• Open your website on a desktop.
• Drag the edges of your browser window to make it narrower.
• Check if content, images, and menus adjust and are usable.

3) Test on Real Devices By Checking

• Text readability without zooming
• Buttons that are easy to tap
• No horizontal scrolling
• Images that scale correctly

Testing your site across devices ensures a smooth experience for all users.

Check Your Site Speed

Site speed is an important ranking factor as faster websites tend to perform better in search results. A slow-loading site can frustrate visitors, leading to higher bounce rates as people want answers straight away.

With attention spans getting shorter, users expect content to load quickly, and delays can cost you traffic and conversions.

To test your website’s speed, use Google PageSpeed Insights.

Simply enter your URL and the tool will give you a score out of 100. Aim for a score of around 80 or higher. PageSpeed Insights also provides a list of recommendations you can implement to improve load times, such as optimising images and leveraging browser caching.

Regularly checking and improving site speed ensures a better user experience, higher engagement, and stronger SEO performance.

Check Core Web Vitals

Google uses Core Web Vitals to measure real-world user experience, which can affect search rankings and results. These metrics focus on how quickly your site loads and how responsive it is for the user.

The three Core Web Vitals are:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How long it takes for the largest visible element to load. Aim for under 2.5 seconds.
2. Interaction to Next Paint (INP): How quickly your site responds to user interactions. Aim for less than 200 milliseconds.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): How much the page layout shifts unexpectedly. Aim for a score below 0.1.

Sites that perform well on these metrics often have longer time on site and lower bounce rates as people are more engaged.

How to check Core Web Vitals:

• Go to Google Search Console.
• In the sidebar, open the Core Web Vitals report.
• View separate reports for Desktop and Mobile.
• Pages are scored as Good, Needs Improvement, or Poor. Click each rating to see affected pages.

How to fix common issues:

• LCP: Optimize hero images and above-the-fold elements, improve server response times, and remove render-blocking CSS/JS.
• INP: Minimise JavaScript execution, optimise event handlers, and remove unnecessary third-party scripts.
• CLS: Set explicit width and height for images and videos, and use fixed containers for dynamic content like ads.

Regularly checking and optimising Core Web Vitals ensures a faster, more engaging website, which benefits both users and SEO performance.

Review Content

The quality of your content is essential when optimising your website for Google. This concept is often lost with many brands believing it is the amount of content they’re producing that matters.

However a website with a lot of poor content will perform worse than a website with less but more valuable content.

The key is making sure you answer the users search query in the best way possible.

This means reviewing your content and asking the questions:

• Does this serve what the user is looking for?
• Does the content make sense for the page it’s on?
• Are there clear calls-to-action so they know what action we want them to take?
• Have we got lots of content on the same topic?
• Are we missing any content?
• Are the headers and sub-headers clear and descriptive?
• Have we broken up content with bullet points and paragraphs?
• Do we need more imagery?
• How can we incorporate video?
• Is the content up to date?

All of these things affect the quality of your content, and in turn, your SEO.

For example, let’s say you’re a surveying company. Your about us page might talk about your business being established for 10 years, specialising in level 2 surveys, and operating in Newcastle.

However this might not have been updated for 5 years.

In that time:

• You’ve been in business 15 years (more established, more experience)
• You now offer level 2 and level surveys (more expertise, better offering)
• You now operate in Newcastle, Sunderland, and Durham (more choice, better scope)

This affects your SEO because search engines prioritise fresh, relevant content that matches what users are currently searching for. If your pages are outdated or incomplete, you can miss out on ranking opportunities.

Analyse Your Backlinks

Backlinks play an important role in SEO. In simple terms, the more high-quality websites that link to yours, the more trust you build with Google. These links act as signals that your content is credible.

However, backlinks aren’t about quantity alone as the quality of those links matters far more. Links from reputable, relevant websites can strengthen your SEO, while spammy or low-quality backlinks can harm your rankings.

It’s also important to review the anchor text used in backlinks as anchor text should be clear and descriptive so users know what to expect when they click. A healthy backlink profile is mostly made up mostly of branded and generic anchors, which indicate links have been earned naturally. An unusually high number of keyword-rich anchors can be a red flag and may increase the risk of Google penalties.

To review your backlink profile, you can use tools like Ahrefs to check the number and quality of links pointing to your website.

Look For Gaps

Analysing gaps in your content and backlink profile helps uncover missing opportunities to strengthen your SEO. By identifying keywords and topics you’re not targeting, you can focus your efforts on what your audience actually cares about.

There’s often an existing search demand for topics you don’t yet cover. This means you could be missing out on traffic and leads because the content doesn’t exist. Once these gaps are identified, you can start creating content to meet that demand, whether that’s launching a new product / service page, writing a blog post, or producing a downloadable resource.

As your site becomes more useful and authoritative, strong content naturally attracts more backlinks over time.

You can also spot missing backlink opportunities by analysing competitor backlink profiles and identifying websites that link to them but not to you. By understanding why those sites are linking out, you can create better or more relevant content and reach out to earn those links.

SEO Audit Services

Below are a list of typical SEO audit services when you partner with an agency to manage this on your behalf:

• Technical SEO audit (crawlability, indexing, site structure)
• On-page SEO review (titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal linking)
• Content audit (quality, relevance, duplication, and gaps)
• Keyword and search intent review
• Mobile responsiveness check
• Site speed analysis
• Core Web Vitals check
• Backlink profile review
• Competitor SEO benchmarking
• Recommendations and implementation roadmap

Professional SEO audit services allow you to feel confident that all of the necessary checks have been carried out, giving your website the best chance of performing well in search results.

How to Do An SEO Audit (and a list of SEO audit services)

Knowing how to do an SEO audit is the first step to increasing your brand’s visibility in Google.

You need to make sure your website can be found otherwise your offering can get lost among your competitors, so you’re losing out on valuable traffic and leads.

SEO can be an afterthought but this process is a fundamental part of boosting your business’ online presence and driving more people towards your products or services. From here you can educate them about your offering and convert them into a customer.

Even the best websites in the world fall short with investing in SEO.

If you need help with your SEO, including conducting an SEO audit, get in touch with our team. We work with clients across multiple industries helping them increase their visibility and engagement in search engines.