How to Do an SEO Audit: A 9-Step DIY Walkthrough | SEO AEO Specialist SEO & AEO Specialist

Before you start

You need three things: Google Search Console verified for the site, access to PageSpeed Insights (free), and a crawler. Do not skip Search Console. It shows indexing, Core Web Vitals, and mobile issues directly from Google's perspective, which no third-party tool can fully replicate.

Set a rule now: gather everything first, fix nothing yet. A prioritized fix list beats reactive tweaking every time.

Step 1: Confirm crawlability

Search engines still discover most URLs through internal links and sitemaps, so this comes first. Check:

• robots.txt is not accidentally blocking important sections

• An XML sitemap exists, is current, and is submitted in Search Console

• Important pages are reachable within a few clicks from the homepage

• No orphan pages (pages with no internal links pointing to them)

Step 2: Check indexing

A page that is blocked, duplicated, or canonically confused will not rank even if it is excellent. In Search Console's Pages report, look at what is indexed versus excluded and why. Then confirm:

• Canonical tags point to the URL you actually want ranked

• No accidental noindex on pages you want indexed

• HTTPS is enforced sitewide with no mixed-content warnings

Step 3: Audit site architecture

Run your crawler and look for structural drag:

• Redirect chains, especially multi-hop redirects that quietly slow crawlers and users

• Broken internal links (404s)

• Deep pages buried five-plus clicks from the homepage

• Duplicate or thin content clusters

Step 4: Review on-page SEO

For your priority pages, check each element:

Step 5: Assess content quality

Does each page fully answer the query it targets, or does it circle the topic? Look for outdated stats, missing sections a searcher would expect, and pages that could be merged. Thin pages competing for the same query cannibalize each other; consolidate them.

Step 6: Measure Core Web Vitals

Use field data, not lab scores. In Search Console's Core Web Vitals report, check against the thresholds Google rewards at the 75th percentile:

• LCP under 2.5 seconds

• INP under 200 milliseconds

• CLS under 0.1

Use PageSpeed Insights on individual slow pages to find the specific cause, but never treat a one-off Lighthouse score as your ranking signal. Google ranks on real-user CrUX data over a 28-day window.

Step 7: Validate structured data

Structured data is no longer a nice-to-have applied last. It is close to infrastructure, because it is increasingly how AI systems decide what to cite in generated answers, not just how Google renders rich results. Validate your schema, fix errors, and add relevant types (Article, FAQPage, Product, Organization) where they fit honestly.

Step 8: Check AI answer readiness (AEO)

This is the step most DIY guides still omit. AI answers now intercept clicks, so being cited matters. For each priority page:

• Does it answer the target query in the first paragraph? Answer-first structure gets extracted more easily.

• Is it fresh? Around 83% of AI citations for commercial queries came from pages updated within 12 months, and pages not refreshed roughly quarterly are about 3x more likely to lose citations.

• Is it citable? Clear facts, sources, and a visible update date help.

Since about 38% of AI Overview citations come from top-10 pages, your core SEO work feeds AEO too. They compound.

Step 9: Review backlinks

Finally, look at your link profile. You are checking for a healthy spread of relevant, authoritative referring domains and flagging any obviously toxic or spammy links. You do not need to obsess here; a few strong, relevant links beat hundreds of junk ones.

Turn findings into a plan

Now the real work. Put every finding into one list and score each by impact and effort:

1. Critical — blocks indexing or crawling, breaks HTTPS, kills structured data

2. High — Core Web Vitals failures, missing titles on money pages, thin content on priority queries

3. Medium — internal linking gaps, freshness updates, schema additions

4. Low — cosmetic and long-tail cleanup

Explain what is wrong, why it matters, and how to fix it. A ten-item list where every item has a severity and a fix beats a ninety-item dump every time.

Cadence

Do a full audit at least every six months, and always before and after a migration, CMS upgrade, or domain change. Between full audits, monitor crawl stats, Core Web Vitals, and index coverage monthly.

FAQ