Your website is live, it looks good, but hardly anyone finds it on Google. This is far more common than you might think. And it is rarely caused by one big mistake – usually it is ten small ones that add up. That is exactly what an SEO audit is for: going through your website step by step so that, instead of guessing, you have a list of things that need fixing.

Keep in mind that an audit is not a magic report with a score of 87/100. A good audit ends with you knowing what to fix this week, what to fix this month and what can wait.

When an audit is worth doing

It pays off most before a redesign or website migration, when traffic from Google starts to fall, or when you feel that “we have been doing SEO for a year and nothing happens”. It also makes sense for a brand-new website – mistakes from the first weeks can drag on for years.

What we found when auditing our own website

It is easiest to explain with an example, so let’s start with ourselves. When we audited seoforyou.sk, we found, among other things:

  • a sitemap listed in robots.txt that returned a 404 error – so Google had no way of finding out which pages we had,
  • a copy of the entire website on a forgotten test domain, indexed by Google and competing with the original,
  • two almost identical articles about SEO that were stealing rankings from each other,
  • a phone number in the footer that, when tapped, dialled a demo number from the theme.

None of these could be spotted just by looking at the website in a browser. That is why we audit from a checklist, not from gut feeling.

1. Technical: does Google see your website correctly?

We start in Google Search Console, in the Pages report. It shows in black and white what Google has indexed and why it left some pages out. Then check:

  • robots.txt and the XML sitemap – the sitemap should only contain live pages that you want in Google,
  • 404 errors and redirects – old URLs should be redirected (301) to the closest relevant page, otherwise you lose the value of the links pointing to them,
  • duplicate content and canonical tags – including test domains, versions with and without www, and http,
  • HTTPS across the whole website.

We cover this part in more detail in our article Technical SEO.

2. Speed and Core Web Vitals

Simply enter your URL into PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile result. We mainly track LCP (how quickly the largest element loads – the target is under 2.5 seconds), INP (how quickly the page responds to a click) and CLS (whether content shifts while loading). Very often the main problem is images: photos uploaded at full size and in JPG instead of WebP. Converting images to WebP alone can save more than half of their size.

3. On-page: does Google understand what the page is about?

Every important page should have its own title (roughly up to 60 characters), a meta description, one H1 heading and a meaningful URL. It sounds trivial, but even on our own website some service pages had an H1 that said only “Our services” or “PPC” – Google has no chance of understanding which search to show such a page for.

The second common issue is keyword cannibalisation: a service page and two blog posts all compete for the same keyword. The result? None of them ranks high. The fix is simple – every keyword should have one main page, and the others should link to it.

4. Content and trust

Google wants to know who is behind a website. Check that your site has a real article author (not “admin”), contact details, company details and a privacy policy. Above all, make sure there are no leftovers from the theme. English demo texts or made-up testimonials look bad to both visitors and Google.

5. Backlinks

Look at who links to your website and how the competitors in the top positions compare. For a quick overview, the Links report in Search Console is enough; to compare yourself with competitors you need a tool such as Ahrefs or Semrush. You can read more about earning links safely in our article Backlinks.

6. Local SEO

If your customers are in a specific town or region, your Google Business Profile belongs in the audit too – name, categories, reviews and whether your address and phone number are the same on your website and in directories. We have described the process in our article Google Business Profile.

Checklist for a first review

  • The website is in Google Search Console and the sitemap is submitted without errors.
  • robots.txt doesn’t block anything important.
  • No copy of the website is indexed anywhere on the internet.
  • Internal links don’t point to 404 pages or through redirect chains.
  • Every page has its own title, meta description and one H1.
  • Every important keyword has one target page.
  • LCP on mobile is under 2.5 s and images are in WebP.
  • The website shows a real author, contact details and company details.
  • Your Google Business Profile is verified and complete.

If you end up with more question marks than ticks after this list, feel free to get in touch. An audit is the first step of our SEO service and the first consultation is free – just send us a message.