The Most Comprehensive SEO Audit Checklist for 2024 & Beyond

For websites that don’t rank well – or websites that want to rank higher than they already do – an SEO audit makes a lot of sense. An SEO audit is an assessment of your current SEO practices and how well they are working. The more in-depth an SEO audit is, the better, as it will show you exactly what you need to adjust in order to rank higher on search engines.

A complete SEO audit can make a huge difference, allowing you to stay in front of your competition. That should include running through a checklist, and the good news is we have created a free SEO audit checklist right here!

Our Audit SEO Checklist

Check off each of the following steps to maximise your search engine ranking potential and appeal more to your target audience. Doing so routinely is excellent SEO management!

Run a Website Crawl

One of the first steps on your SEO audit list should be running a web crawl of your site. Technical SEO audits often start with this, as it’s a way of clearly providing data that will help you adjust your site to maximise its performance. There are several web crawler software tools out there, such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and Lusha, so consider using one to kickstart your audit.

Update Content

Your content may not be doing much heavy lifting when it comes to search engine optimisation, which is why any SEO audit checklist should involve updating your content. If you have content that’s not evergreen – for example, an article that lists the best tech for 2022 – then you’ll need to create a new article that’s relevant today. It’s especially important for 2024 and beyond to ensure the content is of the highest quality to rank higher, which means creating original, genuinely helpful articles that appeal to your users. A short, generic article written by AI won’t cut it!

Don’t only focus on written content, though. While it is crucial – and can help you include more relevant keywords on your site – it’s not the only form of content that matters. Images and videos are far more engaging than large blocks of text, so be sure to include those!

Going Global? Learn about international SEO

Fix Broken Links

Having too many broken linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. can be detrimental to your SEO strategy. After all, broken links equals a poor user experience, and that’s the opposite of what Google wants! The first step, of course, is actually finding the broken links via the Index Report in Google Search Console. From there, you can sort through any broken links by getting those pages back up and running (or deleting them).

Test Core Web Vitals

The core web vitals are important metrics from Google that they use to measure the useability of your website. These numbers can paint a very clear picture of how well your website runs, so pay attention to them! Since March 2024, the core web vitals include LCP, INP, and CLS – all individual metrics that measure different aspects of a page’s performance. If your score is anything less than good, adjustments to your site may be necessary.

Check Backlinks

One of the most popular ways to improve search engine ranking is through backlinking. How effective are your backlinks, though, really? Checking and analysing your backlinks should be part of your SEO site audit checklist, as it will show you which types of backlinks are working best for your strategy. With this knowledge, you can choose better backlinks going forward, boosting your SEO.

Remove Duplicate Content

Does your website have duplicate contentDuplicate content is content that appears more than once across a single website. Duplicate content can be a sign of poor resource management, low trust, or a lack of quality control.? It’s a good idea to check, as Google doesn’t like duplicate content, and your site may get penalised for it, which means ranking lower than you would otherwise. This step involves finding the duplicate content and then removing it as necessary.

Do you need help with defining your website’s content? Our SEO services can help you build a website full of high-quality, relevant content.

Check Your Website’s Architecture

Your website’s architecture is basically the structure of your links and pages. Your goal here is a simple, clean structure that allows users to move seamlessly through your website. On the other hand, poor architecture involves a lot of links and pages that are difficult to reach, as there isn’t a straightforward path. So, to boost your SEO, include checking and managing your website’s architecture on your website audit checklist, making the changes necessary to keep it clean and straightforward.

Make Sure You’re Mobile-Friendly

There is no denying just how vital mobile-friendliness is for websites. Most website users are on mobile, which means not optimising for mobile means actively alienating a large portion of your audience. That’s why a significant part of your on page SEO audit checklist should involve ensuring each page is mobile friendly, which there are testing tools for (it also helps to check your own site on your mobile).

Sort Indexing Issues

An essential part of any SEO technical audit checklist is sorting out any indexing problems your website may have. To do this, do a Google Search Console SEO audit and look at your Index Coverage, which will show you which pages are valid, which pages have warnings, and which pages have errors. Your goal here is to ensure all pages end up in the valid category (or the excluded category). To go more in-depth, you can use a tool like Screaming Frog to check your URL structure – keeping your structure clean and consistent via a Screaming Frog internal linkInternal links are links that connect different pages on your website. They help users navigate your site and make it easier to find information, audit is key to valid indexing. This is crucial for technical SEO audits and should be on your checklist for 2024 and beyond.

Website Audit Checklist: In Summary

Our SEO site audit checklist provides a list that encompasses a wide range of SEO issues. By going through them one by one, you will target the most common problems to ensure your ranking can keep rising. Generally, it’s best to perform one of these comprehensive SEO audits at least once a year.

Sometimes, it’s best to leave it to the experts. At Click Intelligence, we offer SEO consultancy to many different clients, all of whom have various audiences and goals. We can help you create an SEO strategy that works for you. From enterprise SEO to white label SEO, we have the services you need to take your SEO to the next level, so get in touch today!