Two things you'll find when you Google "free SEO audit checklist": a 100-item list nobody actually runs, or a 10-item list you can't see until you hand over your email. This one is neither. It's the checklist I'd hand a small business owner who said, "I have a Saturday afternoon, walk me through it."
By the end you'll know:
- Whether Google can find and index your site at all
- Whether your pages are technically healthy enough to rank
- What your site is already ranking for (and where you're leaving traffic on the table)
- Where your time is best spent next
You'll need:
- Access to Google Search Console (free)
- Access to Google Analytics 4 (free)
- About 4 hours
- A spreadsheet or doc to capture findings
If you don't have Search Console set up, stop and do that first. It's the single most useful free SEO tool that exists, and you can't audit anything without it.
Part 1 — Can Google Even See Your Site? (30 minutes)
Most "we're not ranking" problems aren't really SEO problems. They're crawl problems. Start here.
1. Are your pages actually indexed?
Type site:yourdomain.com into Google. The number of results should roughly match the number of pages you'd expect to see.
- Way too few? Google can't find, or doesn't trust, most of your site.
- Way too many? You probably have duplicate pages, staging URLs, or filter parameters leaking into the index.
Then open Search Console → Pages → look at "Indexed" vs "Not indexed" counts. Click "Not indexed" to see why — Google will tell you in plain language ("Crawled — currently not indexed," "Discovered — currently not indexed," "Blocked by robots.txt," etc.).
2. Is robots.txt blocking the wrong things?
Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If you see Disallow: / with nothing after it, your entire site is blocked from search engines. This happens more than you'd think — usually a leftover from a staging environment that never got cleaned up at launch.
3. Is your XML sitemap submitted?
Check yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. If it loads, copy the URL and confirm it's submitted in Search Console → Sitemaps. Look for "Success" and a sensible "Discovered URLs" count.
4. Any accidental noindex tags?
In Chrome, right-click a key landing page → View Page Source → search for noindex. If it's there, that page is telling Google to ignore it. The most common offender is SEO plugin defaults, or the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" checkbox in WordPress that someone forgot to turn off after launch.
5. Does the sitemap count match what's indexed?
Sitemap says 80 URLs, Search Console says 20 indexed? That's a 75% indexing gap. Worth investigating which pages Google rejected and why.
Part 2 — Is Your Site Technically Healthy? (45 minutes)
A site that's slow, broken on mobile, or full of dead links will be deprioritized no matter how good the content is.
6. Core Web Vitals
Run your homepage and your two most important pages through PageSpeed Insights. On mobile, aim for:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): under 2.5 seconds
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): under 0.1
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): under 200ms
If any are red ("Poor"), Google is actively counting that as a ranking negative. The PSI report tells you which specific files are responsible — usually a few oversized images or a slow theme script.
7. Mobile friendliness
Use the PSI mobile tab, or pull up the page on your phone. Look for layout shifts, content wider than the screen, or tap targets too close together. More than half of search traffic is mobile; if it's broken there, you're done before you start.
8. HTTPS and mixed content
Your URL should start with https://, with a padlock in the address bar. Click the padlock — if Chrome warns about "not fully secure," some asset (usually an image or embedded script) is still being loaded over http://. Fix it. It hurts rankings and trust signals.
9. Broken internal links
Use Screaming Frog (free for up to 500 URLs) to crawl your site. Filter by 404s. Every internal link to a 404 page is leaking link equity. Either fix the link or 301-redirect the dead URL to something useful.
Part 3 — On-Page SEO Basics (45 minutes)
These are the cheapest wins on the list. Most sites have at least three of these problems on their top 10 pages.
10. Every page has a unique title tag
In Screaming Frog's title column, sort by title and look for blanks or duplicates. Each title should be:
- Under 60 characters (so it doesn't get truncated in results)
- Unique across pages
- Lead with the keyword someone would actually search
11. Every page has a useful meta description
Meta descriptions aren't a direct ranking factor anymore, but they're a huge click-through driver. Under 155 characters. Should answer "why should I click this result instead of the others?"
12. One H1 per page
View page source → search for <h1>. There should be exactly one, and it should describe what the page is about. Multiple H1s or a missing H1 makes Google guess at your topic.
13. Image alt text
Right-click a key image → Inspect → look for alt="". Empty alt text is a missed signal. Every meaningful image should have descriptive alt text — both for accessibility and so Google understands what your images are about.
14. Internal linking to your money pages
Pick the three pages you most want to rank (your "money" pages). Search Google for site:yourdomain.com "keyword they should rank for". How many internal links point to those pages from other parts of your site? If the answer is "barely any," that's your easiest ranking lift — go add 5–10 contextual internal links from blog posts and supporting pages.
Part 4 — What Are You Already Ranking For? (45 minutes)
This is the part most people skip, and it's the part that pays the best.
15. Top pages by impressions
Search Console → Performance → Pages → sort by impressions. Your top 10 pages here are what Google already thinks you're good at. Are those the pages you want to be your top pages? If not, that's a content-strategy mismatch worth addressing.
16. Top queries you're ranking 5–15 for
Search Console → Performance → Queries → filter to positions 5–15. These are queries you almost rank well for. A 30-minute content refresh on the matching page — adding the exact query phrase into the title, H1, and first paragraph — can often move you to positions 2–4, which is where actual clicks live.
17. Pages with high impressions but a 0% click-through rate
Sort queries by impressions, then look at CTR. Lots of impressions and a 0.5% CTR usually means your title and meta description aren't compelling. Rewrite them. It's the fastest traffic win on the entire checklist — you already rank, you just don't get clicked.
18. Pages indexed but getting zero traffic over 90 days
In Search Console, find pages with zero impressions for 90+ days. These are dead weight. Either improve them, consolidate them with similar pages, or noindex/remove them. Google rewards sites where every page does work; it deprioritizes sites cluttered with pages that don't.
Part 5 — Authority Signals (15 minutes)
Quick gut check on whether the wider web takes you seriously.
19. Backlinks
Plug your domain into Ahrefs' Free Backlink Checker or Ubersuggest's free tier. You're looking for:
- How many referring domains link to you?
- Are any of them spammy or low-quality?
- Where do competitors have backlinks that you don't?
You don't need hundreds of links. You need a handful from sites Google trusts in your space.
20. Brand searches trending over time
Search Console → Performance → filter "Queries containing" → your brand name. Is the line going up or flat? Brand search trending up is one of the strongest authority signals Google quietly cares about — it's a vote that humans are talking about you.
There's a ceiling on what a 4-hour DIY audit can do. Things this checklist doesn't really cover:
- Full-site crawl issues at scale — orphan pages, redirect chains, canonical conflicts across thousands of URLs
- Schema / structured data audit — whether your schema is valid and generating rich results
- Keyword gap analysis — what competitors rank for that you don't
- Content quality scoring across hundreds of pages
- Internal link equity flow — which pages are link-rich vs. link-starved
- Log file analysis — what Googlebot is actually crawling vs. what you wish it crawled
For most small business sites, the 20 checks above will surface 80% of what's broken. If you're a larger site, an ecommerce store, or you're paying an agency and want a second opinion you can hold them accountable to, you'll want the deeper version.
If you don't have 4 hours, or you'd rather have a written report you can hand to a developer or use to hold an agency accountable, Signal's SEO Discovery audit runs everything above plus the deeper diagnostics this checklist can't reach — keyword gap analysis, schema audit, content scoring, and a full crawl. Delivered as a clean PDF in under 24 hours.