How to run an SEO audit: the complete 2026 checklist

An audit is only useful if it is ordered by impact. There is no point polishing meta descriptions on pages Google cannot even index. Work top down through the six areas below, and you will find the things that actually move visibility before the cosmetic ones.

1. Crawlability and indexing

This is the gate. If a page cannot be crawled and indexed, nothing else matters. Check that important pages are not blocked in robots.txt, are not carrying an accidental noindex tag, return a healthy 200 status, and point their canonical tag at themselves rather than somewhere else. Confirm an XML sitemap exists, lists your real pages and is referenced in robots.txt. Google Search Console is the source of truth here, showing you exactly which pages are indexed and why others are not.

2. Technical health and rendering

Next, can the page be experienced and read well. Check Core Web Vitals (loading, interactivity and visual stability) with PageSpeed Insights, confirm the site is on HTTPS with no mixed-content warnings, and check it works on mobile, since Google indexes the mobile version. Then the check most audits skip: does your content render for crawlers that do not run JavaScript. If your content only appears after a script runs, AI crawlers may see nothing. We cover that in is your website invisible to AI.

3. On-page and content

Now the page itself. Each one wants a unique, descriptive title and meta description of sensible length, a single clear H1, and content that genuinely answers the query rather than padding. Watch for thin pages, duplicate titles and descriptions across the site, and content that has not been touched since publication. Quality and helpfulness matter more than word count, but very thin pages rarely earn their place.

4. Structure and internal links

Check that your pages link to each other sensibly, that important pages are not orphaned with no internal links pointing to them, and that anchor text describes where it goes rather than saying "click here". A clear hub-and-spoke structure, where pillar pages link to supporting articles and back again, helps both readers and crawlers understand what your site is about.

5. Structured data

Structured data (schema) helps engines understand your content and can make you eligible for rich results. Check that key pages carry valid markup for their type, such as Organization, Article, Breadcrumb or Product, and that the markup is complete and matches what is visible on the page. Presence is not enough; invalid or incomplete schema earns nothing.

6. AEO readiness

The newest layer, and the one most tools still ignore. Alongside the traditional checks, look at whether your pages are ready to be cited by AI answer engines: a direct answer near the top, clear structure, visible authorship and dates, and content that survives without JavaScript. For the full picture, start with what is AEO and how to get cited by AI answer engines.

Turning findings into fixes

An audit that produces two hundred undifferentiated warnings is not much use. Group issues sensibly, fix template-level problems once rather than page by page, and rank everything by impact: indexing and rendering first, then content and structure, then the polish. That ordering is exactly how Rank Roadie presents an audit, scoring each page for SEO and AEO and handing back a prioritised, plain-English fix list. If it matters, you can add a human expert Soundcheck before you act on it. Run a free one-page audit to see your site through that lens.