SEO audit checklist: nine checks a site owner can run in an hour
An SEO audit checklist is a fixed list of checks that shows whether search engines can find, read and show a site's pages. The short version has nine checks: indexing in Search Console, robots.txt and the sitemap, titles and descriptions, the main heading, internal links, Core Web Vitals, the phone view, structured data and duplicate URLs. Each check has a clear picture of what good looks like.
A full technical audit takes days. This one takes an hour and catches the problems that hide pages outright. It needs Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and a browser.
Key ideas
- Start with indexing: a page that is blocked or not indexed cannot rank for anything.
- Every important page needs a unique, accurate title and one clear main heading.
- Good Core Web Vitals mean LCP within 2.5 s, INP of 200 ms or less and CLS of 0.1 or less.
- Duplicate URLs are not a penalty, but each page should have one preferred address.
Indexing, robots.txt and the sitemap (20 minutes)
Search for site:yourdomain.com. Google's starter guide puts it simply: if results point to your site, you are in the index. Then open the Page indexing report in Search Console. Google's help says not to expect every URL to be indexed. The goal is that the canonical version of each important page is indexed. Good looks like this: your key pages are in the indexed list, and every not-indexed page has a reason you expected.
Read the reasons. "URL blocked by robots.txt" means your robots.txt file stops crawling, so make sure no important section is listed there. "URL marked noindex" is fine only if you meant it. A sitemap, a file with all the URLs you care about, is optional for Google but worth submitting in Search Console. After a fix, use Validate fix; Google says validation can take about two weeks or longer.
Titles, descriptions, headings and links (15 minutes)
Open your ten most important pages. Google describes a good title as unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurate about its contents. A good meta description is short, unique to one page and covers its most relevant points. Two pages sharing one title fail this check.
Google says heading order does not matter for Search, and there is no ideal number of headings. One clear main heading per page is still the standard to aim for, because it tells the reader what the page is and keeps the outline readable for screen readers. For internal links, check that link text describes the page it points to. "Click here" tells neither people nor search engines anything.
Speed and the phone view (15 minutes)
Run the home page and one page of each main type through PageSpeed Insights, and open the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. web.dev sets the good thresholds: Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads for mobile and desktop separately.
Then open the same pages on a phone. Google says its crawler should ideally see a page the same way an average user does, so the phone view needs the same content as the desktop view, not a cut-down copy. Text should be readable without zooming and buttons easy to tap.
Structured data, duplicates and what to do next (10 minutes)
If the site uses structured data, check one page of each type for markup errors. Google says valid structured data makes pages eligible for special features in results; invalid markup earns nothing. For duplicates, Google says duplicate content is not a violation of its spam policies, but it will pick a canonical itself if you do not. Good looks like one address per page: other versions redirect to it, or carry a rel="canonical" link to it.
The free SEO launch checklist from the VITON13 SCHOOL library is a spreadsheet with 34 checks before launch and 15 for the first month. Each check names the tool to open and what to look for, with a status dropdown and progress counters, and it follows Google Search Central documentation read on 4 October 2026. The Website SEO course goes further: technical SEO, search intent, semantics, site architecture and content.
In everyday language
This audit is like a car's pre-trip check: lights, tyres, brakes. It does not tell you where to drive, but it stops you breaking down on the way.
Try it yourself
Download the free SEO launch checklist and run only its indexing and structure rows on your own site today. Open Search Console's Page indexing report alongside it.
Expected result
A short list: important pages that are not indexed, each with its reason, and any page with more than one working address. These are the rows to fix first.
Check your answer: Search Console shows 40 pages as "Duplicate without user-selected canonical". Is that a penalty?
No. Google chose another page as the canonical and says this is not an error. Check that it picked the address you want; if not, redirect the duplicates or point them to the right page with rel="canonical".
Questions
How often should I run an SEO audit checklist?
Run the full list after any redesign, migration or CMS change, and the indexing checks whenever traffic drops without an obvious reason. Fixes in Search Console take weeks to validate, so leave time between rounds.
Do meta keywords still matter?
No. Google's starter guide states that Google Search does not use the keywords meta tag. Spend the time on titles and descriptions instead.
Block out one hour this week and run the nine checks in order, indexing first. To keep the record and go deeper, use the free VITON13 SCHOOL SEO launch checklist; the Website SEO course covers what comes after.
Sources and further reading
- Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide ↗Sources checked:
- Search Console Help: Page indexing report ↗Sources checked:
- web.dev: Web Vitals ↗Sources checked: