An SEO agency calls and says your website has "87 critical errors". They offer to fix everything for a monthly fee. You have no way to tell if the problem is real, or how serious it is.
You can find out yourself in about an hour. A basic website SEO audit uses three free tools from Google: Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and the Rich Results Test. This checklist shows what to open, what to look at, and which problems actually matter for a small business site.
Quick answer
What is a website SEO audit?
A website SEO audit is a health check of how Google finds, stores and shows your pages. It answers three questions.
Can Google reach your pages? Has it added them to its index, the big list of pages Google can show in results? And is anything stopping people from using them on a phone?
Google describes Search in three stages: crawling, indexing and serving. Crawling is Google's program downloading your pages. Indexing is Google reading and storing them, and serving is showing them when someone searches.
Technical SEO audit vs content audit
A technical SEO audit looks at the machinery: errors, blocked pages, speed and mobile problems. A content audit looks at what the pages say. This checklist covers the technical side, because that is where a business owner can spot real problems with free tools.
Step 1: Is your website on Google at all?
Type site: followed by your domain into Google, for example site:yourshop.com. Google's own starter guide says that if you see results pointing to your site, you are in the index. If you see nothing, stop here and fix this first.
A missing site usually means one of three things. The site is very new, something on the site tells Google not to store it, or Google has not found any links to it yet.
Step 2: Set up Google Search Console
Search Console is Google's free dashboard for website owners. It is the only place that shows what Google itself saw on your site.
- Go to Google Search Console and sign in with a Google account that belongs to the business, not to your developer.
- Choose "Domain" as the property type. This covers every version of your address, with and without www.
- Verify ownership by adding a DNS record (a small text entry) at the company where you bought your domain. A domain property can only be verified this way.
- If DNS feels too hard, a "URL prefix" property can be verified with an HTML file, a meta tag, Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager.
- Wait a few days for data to fill in before you judge anything.
A small tip that saves trouble later: keep Search Console under your own email ID. If you hire an SEO person, add them as a user. Google's own hiring advice says not to give an SEO write access to Search Console during the first audit.
Step 3: Check the page indexing report
Open Indexing, then Pages. This page indexing report shows how many of your pages are indexed and lists the reasons the rest are not. Google's help page says plainly: "Don't expect every URL on your site to be indexed."
So do not panic at a big "Not indexed" number. Look only at whether your important pages are missing.
What the common reasons mean
| Reason in the report | What it means in plain words | Should you worry? |
| Excluded by noindex tag | A setting on the page tells Google not to show it | Yes, if it is a page you want customers to find |
| Blocked by robots.txt | A rules file on your site tells Google not to visit that address | Yes, if it is an important page |
| Not found (404) | The page no longer exists | Only if other pages or ads still point to it |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical | Google found two near-identical pages and picked one | Usually no, if the right one is indexed |
| Crawled, currently not indexed | Google visited but chose not to store it yet | Check if the page has enough useful content |
| Server error (5xx) | Your hosting (the rented computer your site lives on) failed when Google visited | Yes, ask your developer |
A common mistake shows up here. A developer sometimes leaves a "noindex" setting on from the test version of the site. Everything looks fine to you, but Google is told to keep every page out.
Check one page with URL Inspection
Paste any page address into the search bar at the top of Search Console. URL Inspection tells you if that page is on Google and, if not, why. After a fix, you can click "Request indexing".
Google warns that requesting does not mean the page will be added, and there is a daily limit on requests. It says indexing "typically takes only a day or so, but can take much longer in some cases".
Step 4: Check your sitemap and robots.txt
A sitemap is a file that lists the pages you want Google to know about. In Search Console, open Sitemaps and check that one is submitted and shows no errors. Google calls a sitemap "merely a hint", so it helps Google find pages but does not force anything.
Robots.txt is a small file that tells Google's crawler which addresses it may visit. Google says it is mainly used to avoid overloading your site. It is not a way to hide a page from Google; for that, Google says to use noindex or a password.
If your whole site disappeared from Google after a redesign, ask your developer to show you the robots.txt file and the noindex settings first. These two are behind many sudden drops.
Step 5: Test speed and mobile on PageSpeed Insights
Google says it "uses the mobile version of a site's content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking". So the mobile result matters more than how the site looks on your office computer.
Open PageSpeed Insights, paste your home page address and look at the Mobile tab. You will see two kinds of results.
| Section | Where the numbers come from | What "good" looks like |
| Real-user data (Core Web Vitals) | Real Chrome visitors over the previous 28 days | LCP within 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds, CLS under 0.1 |
| Lab score (Performance) | One test run in a simulated phone | 90 or above is good, 50 to 89 needs work, below 50 is poor |
LCP is how fast the main content appears. INP is how fast the page reacts to a tap, and CLS is how much the page jumps while loading. Small sites often have no real-user data yet, so use the lab score as a rough guide.
Google says good Core Web Vitals align with what its ranking systems reward. It does not say that a perfect speed score will move you up by itself.
Run a free SEO audit on your top five pages
Test your home page, your main service or product page, your contact page and two pages that bring enquiries. Write the scores down with the date. If someone later says they fixed your speed, ask for the same test on the same pages.
If your audit shows a site that is slow on phones, blocked from Google or broken in many places, it may be cheaper to rebuild than to patch. That is the work behind The Beyond Horizon's website development service for Indian businesses. Whoever builds it, ask for the domain and Search Console to be in your name.
Step 6: Check structured data with the Rich Results Test
Structured data is extra code that labels things on a page. Examples are a product price, an event date or a review. Google uses it for special results, like star ratings under a listing.
Paste your page address or code into the Rich Results Test. It tests as a smartphone by default and lists errors.
Google notes that a clean result does not mean your page will appear with those extras. Skip this step if your site has no such content.
Step 7: Check what people search to find you
In Search Console, open Performance. It shows clicks, impressions (how often your site appeared in results), click-through rate and average position. The default view covers the past three months.
Look at the Queries tab. If every search that brings clicks is your own business name, Google is not yet showing you to new customers. That is useful to know before you spend on SEO.
SEO audit checklist you can print
Print this table and tick each row.
| Check | Free tool | Pass if |
| Site appears on Google | Google search with site: | Your pages show up |
| Search Console set up in your name | Search Console | You are the owner, not your developer |
| Important pages indexed | Pages report, URL Inspection | Home, service and contact pages are indexed |
| No accidental noindex or robots.txt block | Pages report | No important page listed under these reasons |
| Sitemap submitted | Sitemaps report | Status shows success |
| Mobile speed | PageSpeed Insights | Lab score 50 or above, and improving |
| Page titles | Your own browser tab | Each page has its own clear title |
| Structured data, if used | Rich Results Test | No errors |
For titles, Google's starter guide says a good title is unique to the page and clearly describes it. Google also says it does not use the keywords meta tag, so ignore any report that complains about it.
What to ask before you pay for a technical SEO audit
A paid audit makes sense when your own checks show problems you cannot explain. Google's guide on hiring an SEO suggests asking for examples of past work, what results to expect and how long it will take. It also says to ask whether they will tell you every change they make to your site.
Be careful with anyone who promises a top spot. Google's own guide says no one can promise a number one ranking, and Google does not accept payment to rank a site higher. Google also says changes can take effect in a few hours, while others take several months.
Closing note
Run this checklist once now and again every few months, or after any redesign. Most serious problems show up in the Pages report before you lose customers.
If your audit shows problems and you want someone to go through the report with you page by page, call or WhatsApp The Beyond Horizon on +91 75973 92744.