How to Do a Basic SEO Audit of Your Own Site

A basic self-audit covers most of the fundamentals a paid SEO audit would flag, and it's genuinely achievable in an afternoon for a small business site — the goal isn't a comprehensive technical deep-dive, it's catching the common, high-impact issues that are worth fixing regardless of site size.

Step 1: Check indexing status

Search Console's Page Indexing report tells you how many pages are actually indexed versus not, and why — start here, since a page with great content that isn't indexed at all won't benefit from any other fix until the indexing problem itself is resolved.

Step 2: Review titles and meta descriptions

Scan your most important pages for missing, duplicate, or generic titles and meta descriptions — a title that's just the site name repeated on every page, or a missing description that's letting search engines auto-generate one, are both easy, high-impact fixes.

Step 3: Check for broken links and 404s

Search Console's coverage report and a basic link-checking pass over your main navigation catch broken internal links and unexpected 404s — both quick to find and quick to fix once identified.

Step 4: Test page speed on a few key pages

Check load time on your homepage and one or two other important pages, particularly on a simulated mobile connection — if images are visibly oversized or uncompressed, that's usually the fastest, highest-impact fix to make.

Step 5: Confirm sitemap and robots.txt are correct

Verify your sitemap actually lists your current pages (not stale or missing entries) and that robots.txt isn't accidentally blocking anything important — both are quick to check and easy to get subtly wrong without noticing.

Step 6: Look for easy internal linking wins

Identify a few newer or less-visited pages that would benefit from being linked from your higher-traffic content — this is the fastest fix on the whole list and one of the easiest to overlook entirely.