The Complete SEO Audit
Ironically, this complete SEO audit is still a work-in-progress!
In the meantime, enjoy 55 fundamental checks I use in a complete SEO audit as a Dallas SEO consultant.
Site Type | Issue Type | Category | Sub-Category | Item |
---|---|---|---|---|
All Websites | Setup | Basic Information | Logins | Do you have proper login access to the analytics platform, Google Search Console, tag manager platform, CMS, et al.? |
All Websites | Setup | Basic Information | Domain | Check and record age of the domain. |
All Websites | Setup | Basic Information | Domain | Record domain expiration date. If expiry is in 1 year or less, notify site owner immediately. |
All Websites | Setup | Basic Information | Domain | Check the domain name- is it excessive in length, or is too close to an exact match domain? |
All Websites | Setup | Basic Information | Domain | Is the WHOIS registration public or private? There aren't necessarily SEO consequences here, but it can be helpful to have a private registration. |
All Websites | Setup | Risk Management | Algorithm Filters & Penalties | Have you checked the site's analytics against a penalty/filter/algorithm update tool like Panguin? |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Basic Access | Site pages return 200 or 301 status codes. 302's, 307's, and 4XX status codes are avoided. |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Basic Access | Page(s) can be accessed with JavaScript, CSS disabled (option: disable cookies too) |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Indexation | Manual site: search returns number of results appropriate to size of site |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Indexation | Manual site: search returns the home page of the site as the first result |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Indexation | Page(s) return a cached copy from Google with a date of 2 weeks ago or younger |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Indexation | Text-only versions of cached pages properly render all page content. |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Indexation | Search for brand and brand terms display appropriate pages |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Robots.txt | Robots.txt file blocks all user agents from sensitive or personal files |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Sitemaps | XML Sitemaps employed |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Sitemaps | HTML Sitemaps Employed |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Sitemaps | HTML Sitemap URLs match target page canonical URLs |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Sitemaps | HTML Sitemap URLs all return 200 status codes |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Sitemaps | XML Sitemap URLs all return 200 status codes |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Sitemaps | XML Sitemap URLs match target page canonical URLs |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Sitemaps | Image files included in sitemap |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Sitemaps | Video files included in sitemap |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Accessibility | Sitemaps | Hreflang sitemaps (or tags employed) employed |
All Websites | Technical SEO | URL | Canonical | A single canonical tag employed |
All Websites | Technical SEO | URL | Canonical | Canonicals match final page URLs |
All Websites | Technical SEO | URL | Canonical | Session parameters aren't canonicalized |
All Websites | Technical SEO | URL | Canonical | M dot pages marked as rel alternate |
All Websites | Technical SEO | URL | Rewrites | URLs are rewritten to SEO-friendly URLs instead of page id numbers |
All Websites | Technical SEO | URL | Rewrites | Protocol is forced to rewrite either to http(s):// only or http(s)://www |
All Websites | Technical SEO | URL | Rewrites | Trailing slash automatically resolves |
All Websites | Technical SEO | URL | Rewrites | Case automatically rewritten to lowercase |
All Websites | Technical SEO | URL | Redirects | 301 redirects are used instead of 302 or 307 |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Speed | Resource Size | HTML minified |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Speed | Resource Size | CSS Minified |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Speed | Resource Size | JS minified |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Speed | Resource Size | Large resource calls externalized, and combined into as few calls as possible |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Speed | Other Resources | Small resources (scripts and style sheets) are called inline |
All Websites | Technical SEO | Speed | Other Resources | If possible, scripts are placed before closing |