An SEO audit (sometimes called a website audit) is a structured review of everything that decides whether the right people find your site: technical health, on-page signals, content, links from other sites, local presence and, now, visibility in AI search. At #10 we run it as a checklist where every item has an owner, because a finding nobody owns doesn’t get fixed. The result is a short, ranked list of work, not a score.
Most teams already have some version of an audit. It might be a crawler export, a monthly report from a previous agency, or a free SEO checker someone ran after traffic dipped. Those are useful inputs, and auditing tools are part of how we work too. What they usually lack is judgment about which findings matter, and a name next to each fix.
This checklist covers the whole audit. The technical layer gets one section here and a full guide of its own: The Technical SEO Audit: What to Check, in What Order walks through crawling, indexing, rendering, redirects, speed and structured data in priority order.
What a full SEO audit covers
We split the work into six layers plus measurement. Each answers a different question, and each tends to land with a different person on your team.
| Layer | The question it answers | Usual owner |
|---|---|---|
| Technical | Can search engines crawl, index and render the pages? | Developer |
| On-page | Does each page say clearly what it’s about? | SEO lead, content editor |
| Content | Do you have the right pages for what buyers search? | Content editor, marketing |
| Links | Do other sites vouch for you, and is anything risky? | SEO lead, marketing |
| Local | Can nearby buyers find your locations? | Marketing, operations |
| AI search | Do ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI answers mention you? | SEO lead, content editor |
Measurement sits underneath all of them, because search engine optimization is only worth the effort if you can see what it returns. If conversion tracking is broken, every other finding is harder to prioritize, because you can’t tell which pages earn revenue or leads.
An SEO audit is different from an SEO strategy. The audit tells you what’s wrong and what’s missing today. The strategy decides which audiences and topics to go after next. A good audit report feeds the strategy, but it shouldn’t pretend to be one.
Before you start: access and a baseline
An audit run without data is guesswork. Before checking anything, we collect:
- Google Search Console for the full domain, with at least 16 months of performance data so seasonal patterns are visible.
- Analytics (usually GA4) with working conversion tracking for sales, leads or both.
- The platform admin (Shopify or WordPress) so we can see how the site is actually built rather than guessing from the outside.
- A list of the pages and products that matter most to the business, from the people who sell them. Search tools rank pages by traffic; your team knows which ones pay the bills.
- Any history: past migrations, redesigns, agency changes, manual actions or traffic drops with dates.
We then record a baseline: clicks, impressions and average position for priority pages and queries, plus conversions from organic search. Without that, nobody can tell six months later whether the work made a difference.
The SEO audit checklist, layer by layer
Each table below pairs a check with what good looks like. The last column names who usually owns the fix. Your owners may differ. The point is that every row has one.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO issues get the most rows in most fix lists, so we keep it brief here and cover it properly in the technical SEO audit guide.
| Check | What good looks like | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Crawl access | robots.txt allows important sections; few 5xx errors | Developer |
| Indexing | Priority pages indexed; junk pages excluded | Developer, SEO lead |
| Rendering | Main content and links present without JavaScript | Developer |
| Redirects and links | 301s, no chains, no orphan pages | Developer, SEO lead |
| Core Web Vitals | Templates pass on phones, from field data | Developer |
| Structured data | Valid, accurate, one source per page | Developer |
On-page SEO
On-page SEO is how each page describes itself, through its title, its headings and the links between your own pages. It’s where small edits can optimize click-through rate from the search engine results page quickly, and where internal linking does most of its work.
| Check | What good looks like | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Title tags | Unique, specific, lead with what the page offers | SEO lead |
| Meta descriptions | Written for the searcher, not stuffed with keywords | Content editor |
| Headings | One clear H1; H2s that reflect the page’s sections | Content editor |
| URLs | Short, readable, stable over time | Developer, SEO lead |
| Internal links | Important pages linked from related pages, with descriptive anchor text | Content editor |
| Images | Descriptive file names and alt text on product and content images | Content editor |
One check here earns its keep more than the others. We look in Search Console for pages that already rank in positions 2 to 30 with many impressions and few clicks, sometimes called striking distance. For an industrial LED distributor we work with, mining that range and rewriting titles and meta descriptions on high-impression, low-click pages is a standing part of the program. It costs little compared with new content because the pages already rank.
Content
Content is where the audit moves from “is it working” to “is it the right thing”. We map existing pages to the keywords and questions buyers use, then look for gaps and overlaps. Some pages no longer earn their place at all.
| Check | What good looks like | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Search intent | Each priority keyword has one page built for it | SEO lead |
| Cannibalization | No two pages competing for the same query | SEO lead, content editor |
| Thin or outdated pages | Updated, merged or retired with a redirect | Content editor |
| Topic gaps | Buyer questions you can answer but don’t | Marketing, content editor |
| Expertise and authorship | Real authors, real specifics, sources where claims need them | Marketing |
This is the part of SEO efforts that tools are worst at. A crawler can count words on a page; it can’t tell you that your best-selling product line has no page answering the question buyers ask before they order.
Cannibalization is common on sites that have published for years. For the LED distributor, two URLs had grown up targeting the same buyer question. We redirected the weaker one into the more complete article and corrected internal links across more than 40 pages so the site stopped splitting its own signals.
Links
Links from other sites still matter for rankings, and a few bad patterns can still cause trouble. This part of the audit is about both.
| Check | What good looks like | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Backlink profile | Links from relevant, real sites; no paid link networks | SEO lead |
| Risky patterns | Nothing that could lead to a manual action | SEO lead |
| Lost links | Old URLs with links redirect to the right new page | Developer |
| Mentions and partners | Suppliers, distributors and press link where they mention you | Marketing |
We don’t recommend mass disavowing links as a routine audit step. Google’s own guidance is that most sites never need the disavow tool. If links have caused a manual action, that’s a different job, covered in our guide to Google penalty and core-update recovery.
Local SEO
Local only applies if you have physical locations buyers visit: a tasting room, a showroom, a retail store, a campus. If you don’t, skip this layer.
| Check | What good looks like | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Claimed, complete, correct hours and categories | Marketing, operations |
| Name, address, phone | Identical across the site, profile and major directories | Operations |
| Location pages | One page per location with real details | Content editor |
| Reviews | Recent, answered, and part of someone’s week | Operations |
AI search visibility
This layer didn’t exist in most audits a few years ago. Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews the same questions they used to type into a search box, and those systems decide which sources to quote rather than which pages to rank. An audit that ignores this is checking half the shelf.
| Check | What good looks like | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| AI crawler access | robots.txt allows the AI crawlers you want to be read by | Developer |
| Answerable pages | Key pages open with a plain, direct answer | Content editor |
| Facts in structure | Specs, prices and comparisons in tables and markup | Content editor, developer |
| Prompt testing | Buyer questions run across engines, results logged | SEO lead |
| Third-party sources | Listed and accurate where engines look for you | Marketing |
For the LED distributor, we retrofitted existing technical articles with citable lead paragraphs, spec tables with units and FAQ blocks, and set up weekly citation monitoring across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Gemini. For a premium California olive oil and wine brand, we track AI visibility month by month. Our AI visibility tracker shows what that report looks like with sample data, and AI search visibility audits covers the method in more depth.
Measurement
| Check | What good looks like | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Search Console | Verified for the whole domain, sitemaps submitted | SEO lead |
| Analytics | Organic conversions tracked and trusted by finance | Marketing |
| Reporting | One report that ties SEO performance to revenue or leads | SEO lead |
Who owns what, and why it matters
Most SEO audits fail after delivery, not during. The report is good, the meeting goes well, and then the findings sit in a shared drive because every item belongs to “the team”.
We assign an owner to every row, using roles your organization actually has:
| Owner | Typically handles | Common gap |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Templates, redirects, speed, markup | No time budgeted for SEO tickets |
| SEO lead | Priorities, keyword mapping, tracking | Nobody has this role, so it falls to marketing |
| Content editor | Copy, headings, internal links, updates | Edits pages but can’t change templates |
| Marketing | Topics, partners, local profiles | Owns the goal, not the tasks |
| Operations | Locations, reviews, product data | Never told SEO depends on them |
If one role is missing, the audit should say so plainly. A fix list with ten developer tickets and no developer time is a plan to do nothing.
Turning findings into a ranked audit report
A good SEO audit report reads like a work plan, and it should be easy to compare with the SEO reports you get each month afterward. Ours lists each issue with its priority, the affected pages or template, a sentence on why it matters, the change to make and the owner.
Priority comes from impact and effort. Impact asks how many important pages the issue touches and whether it blocks visibility outright or only weakens it. Effort asks whether it’s a setting, a template change or a content project. A template-level indexing problem goes to the top. Missing alt text on blog images goes near the bottom, even though a tool may count thousands of instances.
We group findings by template wherever possible. A Shopify product template or a WordPress post template repeats across every page that uses it, so one fix there is worth hundreds of single-page edits.
This is also how our own relationship with the olive oil and wine brand started. In 2014 the engagement opened with an SEO audit and a separate technical audit of the brand’s previous store, with findings like temporary redirects that should have been permanent, duplicate title tags, missing breadcrumb markup and keyword gaps on key product pages, each with an estimate attached. That audit became the first scope of work rather than a document on a shelf.
Free SEO audit tools versus a full audit
Free SEO tools are worth using, and you don’t need a free trial of a paid suite to start. Google Search Console (once called Webmaster Tools) is free and is the single best source of truth for how Google sees your site. Lighthouse, the Rich Results Test and a site audit tool like a desktop crawler will catch a lot of common SEO issues and technical issues on their own.
Our instant site audit is one of those free online tools. Paste a URL and it checks one page the way a crawler does, covering titles, canonicals, robots.txt, the sitemap, structured data, AI crawler access and mobile speed, then picks the three fixes we’d make first. It can’t see your Search Console data, your analytics, your links or the rest of the site.
That’s the difference. A website SEO checker looks at what’s on a page. A full SEO analysis looks at how the whole site performs, against what your buyers search for, with your own data, and decides what to do first. If you want to perform an SEO audit yourself, use the checklist above with Search Console open next to it. If you want someone else to own it, that’s the work our SEO programs start with.
Questions people ask about an SEO audit
How long does an SEO audit take?
A technical audit alone takes two to three weeks for most Shopify and WordPress sites. A full audit across all six layers usually takes a little longer, mainly because content and AI visibility checks depend on agreeing the priority keywords and buyer questions first.
How much does an SEO audit cost?
It depends on the size of the site and how many layers you need. Our technical SEO audit has a published starting price, and if you go on to an SEO program, the audit is folded into the first month rather than billed twice.
What should an ecommerce SEO audit include beyond the basics?
Collection and category structure, product page templates, faceted navigation, duplicate product URLs, structured data for products and offers, and the apps that add scripts and markup to every page. On Shopify, theme and app conflicts are a frequent source of duplicate or broken markup.
Should an SEO audit include AI search?
Yes. AI answers now sit in front of many search results, and the checks overlap heavily with good SEO: clear answers, clean structure, accurate markup. The extra work is testing real buyer questions in each engine and recording who gets named.
How often should we run an SEO audit?
A full audit once a year is reasonable for most sites, plus a focused audit before any redesign or migration and after any unexplained traffic drop. Search Console checks should happen monthly, as part of normal operation.
Can we run an SEO audit in-house?
Yes, if someone has the time and access. The checklist above is the same one we use. Where an outside team helps is in judgment and overall SEO priorities: deciding which of 400 findings matter, and writing tickets your developers can act on.
Where to start
Run the instant site audit on your most important page to see what a crawler sees. Then open Search Console and work through the technical checks in the technical SEO audit guide, since everything else depends on them. If you’d rather hand the whole audit to a team that will also own the fixes, look at our SEO programs or talk to #10 about where your site stands.
