SEO is something that most companies prefer to acknowledge in a roundabout fashion. They take it into account when creating content or designs, but otherwise consider it a second-string priority. To some extent, this is because so many things factor into SEO that making it a focus without a careful plan is a recipe for scope creep and wasted effort.

But it’s important to run a comprehensive SEO audit from time to time (no matter the size of your business overall) if you rely significantly on organic traffic. Otherwise, you may well end up spending time and money on new campaigns that ultimately prove ineffective because your website has some basic underlying technical issues.

Let’s take a look at what a comprehensive SEO audit has to include so you can simply check things off when yours gets underway

Confirming indexed pages

The very first thing you need to check in an SEO audit is how many pages of the site are currently indexed. You can achieve this in various ways, but the simplest is to carry out a Google search using the inurl: parameter with your basic domain name. Otherwise, venture into Google Search Console to check your Index Coverage Status report.

If you want a page to rank but it isn’t even being indexed, that’s a problem to address immediately. You might need more internal links, a sitemap, or a revised robots.txt file. There may also be an issue with duplication, but we’ll get to that later. Form a list of all indexed pages and move ahead.

Reviewing analytics

Before you continue with the audit, it will be useful to get an idea of how the site has been performing by heading into Google Analytics (or whichever analytics suite you have configured). Generally browse the information, looking for notable spikes or dips in performance as well as any metrics that stand out. Which pages have been receiving the most views and retaining attention most effectively? Does anything massively surprise you?

Knowing which pages are proving most significant to the site’s overall performance, you can direct your attention accordingly throughout the remaining steps. This is particularly important if you’re dealing with a massive site with hundreds or even thousands of pages, because you’re very unlikely to have the time and resources needed to take an in-depth look at each one.

Checking canonicals

Each important page needs to have a distinct identity to avoid dividing and weakening search traffic, and this is accomplished in cases of similar content through canonical tags. The canonical tag points to the primary (canonical) version of a page and tells search crawlers that any other page sharing its content should defer to it in rankings.

Canonicals are also important for handling URL variations for homepages. A website could be www.samplesite.co.uk, or samplesite.co.uk, or https://www.samplesite.co.uk, or one of various other configurations. Each page should default to one version, the canonical URL, with all the others sent to it through 301 redirects. Fail to set that up and you could have your www and non-www URLs competing for the same rankings.

Checking URL structure

URL structure is significant for people and crawlers alike, because it provides essential context about the internal framework of a website. A solid URL structure will be readable and logical, making it clear where the current page stands in relation to all the others. The typical website will use whichever URL structure is default to the CMS. Just about any modern CMS will use a structure suitable for SEO, but a site that has been around for a while might have something more convoluted.

If your URLs aren’t including relevant keywords and clearly nesting categories (an individual toaster on an eCommerce site should be at something like /products/toasters/toaster1.html, and not simply a seemingly-random string), then look for a way to update the URL presets, and make manual changes if needed.

For a good example of how to implement a URL structure for numerous listings, take a look at the Exchange marketplace: each store category has a neat and easy-to-parse URL that also works well for SEO (the internal links help, too). Another good example is Etsy, the marketplace for creative crafting work: the URL for the page in the screenshot below is as follows: