An SEO audit is a list of reasons a site is harder to find than it should be, ordered by how much each one matters. It has four parts, and the first is the one that decides whether the others are worth doing.
1. Can search engines reach and index the pages?
A page that is not indexed cannot rank, so this comes first.
Indexing status. Search Console’s page indexing report lists pages that were found but not indexed, and gives a reason for each.
robots.txt and meta robots. A Disallow rule or a noindex tag left over from development keeps pages out of results. This is the most common serious finding on a relaunched site.
Status codes and redirects. Pages that return errors, redirect chains, and old addresses that no longer redirect to the new ones all lose whatever standing the old page had.
Duplicate addresses. The same page reachable at http and https, with and without www, or with and without a trailing slash, splits signals unless one version is declared canonical.
Sitemap. It should list the pages that should be indexed and none that return errors or redirect.
2. Is each page clear to a crawler and a reader?
Titles and descriptions. Each page needs its own title that says what the page is. Duplicates and missing titles are common on sites built from templates.
Headings. One main heading, with subheadings that reflect how the page is organized.
Internal links. A page with no links pointing to it is hard to find and hard to rank. Links should use words that describe the destination.
Structured data. Where it is used, it should be valid and describe what is visible on the page. It is not required for ranking.
3. Does the page load and work well?
Core Web Vitals. Search Console reports field data for loading, responsiveness, and layout stability, measured on real visitors’ devices.
Mobile layout. Most searches are made on phones, and Google indexes the mobile version of a page.
HTTPS. Every page should load over HTTPS without mixed-content warnings.
4. Does the content answer what people search for?
This part cannot be automated. For each important page, the question is what a person typing the query wants, and whether the page gives it to them before they give up. Search Console’s performance report shows which queries a page already appears for, which is the fastest way to see a gap between what the page says and what searchers ask.
For AI assistants, the checks in How AI Assistants Find and Cite Your Website are added: whether Googlebot and OAI-SearchBot can fetch the page, and whether a firewall is blocking either.
Which parts you can run yourself
Parts 1 to 3 can be checked with free tools: Search Console, a crawl of your own site, and a look at your robots.txt. Part 4 takes the most judgment.
If you would rather have it done, our SEO & AI Visibility service begins with a written audit covering these areas. An audit finds the problems, and the fixes are separate work that we can also carry out.