Understand an SEO audit

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is a structured analysis that identifies what prevents a website from being properly crawled, indexed, understood and chosen by search engines. It covers technical aspects, content, structure, performance and, increasingly, how AI assistants and generative search engines are able to cite the site. Its purpose is not to produce a score, but a reasoned diagnosis and a prioritised action plan.

A good audit always distinguishes between observed findings, hypotheses and recommendations. It states the tools and data used, when the checks were carried out and the limits of the analysis. This transparency lets you verify the conclusions, pass them on to a developer or copywriter, and later measure the effect of the changes. An audit does not guarantee any ranking: it removes obstacles and clarifies opportunities, but positions also depend on competitors and on search engines’ own choices.

When should you carry out an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is particularly useful before a redesign, after an unexplained drop in visibility, before investing in content or when you take over a website whose history you do not know. It then serves as a reference point for the decisions that follow. Whatever the trigger, go in with a clear question: an audit commissioned without one tends to produce a long list of observations that is hard to act on.

• Before a redesign or migration, to know which pages and signals to protect.
• After a drop in traffic, to tell a technical problem apart from a change in demand.
• Before investing in content, to avoid producing pages that compete with each other.
• When changing provider, to establish a shared picture of where things stand.
• Periodically, to catch errors that build up over successive updates.

If you are unsure whether to fix or rebuild your website, the audit provides the factual input described in our fix or redesign guide.

What does an SEO audit include, and what deliverables should you expect?

A complete SEO audit delivers, at the very least, a summary of the main findings, a detailed list of issues with the URLs concerned and a prioritised action plan. The format matters less than traceability: every recommendation should be linked to a verifiable observation.

• An executive summary that management can read, outlining risks and opportunities.
• An inventory of the pages analysed, with their indexing status.
• Technical findings grouped by page template rather than page by page.
• An analysis of content and of the search intents covered or missing.
• Performance measurements, distinguishing lab data from field data.
• An action plan with priority, estimated effort, owner and verification method.
• A list of limitations: data not accessible, pages excluded, period observed.

Before commissioning an audit, define its scope: whole site or one section, the languages concerned, access provided to Google Search Console and analytics, and the main objective. An audit carried out ahead of a migration does not emphasise the same points as one intended to relaunch a content strategy. Also ask whether a presentation session is planned: walking the team who will carry out the fixes through the priorities avoids a great many misunderstandings.

An audit remains a snapshot taken on a given date. Keep it as a baseline to measure progress and to compare against the next review.

Checking crawlability and indexability

The first step of an audit is to confirm that search engines can reach the important pages and are allowed to index them. The audit checks HTTP status codes, the robots.txt file, meta robots directives, canonical tags, XML sitemaps and language variants (hreflang). A page can be perfectly accessible to a visitor while sending the wrong signal to a search engine.

Findings should therefore quote the responses and tags actually observed, page by page or by template. “Indexing problem” is not actionable; “the service pages return a noindex tag left over from staging” is. The page indexing report in Google Search Console complements the crawl by showing what Google has actually chosen to index or exclude.

• 200 responses, 301 redirects, 404 errors and 5xx errors on important URLs.
• Robots.txt rules that block useful resources or sections.
• Noindex or canonical tags that contradict the page’s purpose.
• A sitemap limited to canonical, indexable URLs.
• HTTP/HTTPS and www/non-www versions consolidated to a single address.

Reviewing site structure and content

The content audit checks that every important page clearly answers a search intent and stands apart from the site’s other pages. Title tags, meta descriptions, H1 headings, click depth, internal linking, duplicates and page intent are reviewed together, because they work as a system.

Word count alone is not enough to judge a page: its role, its specificity, its evidence and the answer it gives to the search matter more. Google Search Central recommends helpful, reliable, people-first content, so the audit also looks at trust signals such as the author, sources, update date and accuracy of the information.

• Pages targeting the same intent and competing with each other.
• Important pages more than three clicks from the home page, or poorly linked.
• Titles that are truncated, duplicated or unrelated to the content.
• Thin, outdated or mass-produced content with no added value.
• Vague internal link anchors such as “click here”.

Measuring page experience and performance

The performance audit assesses loading speed, responsiveness and visual stability, distinguishing between lab tests and field data. Lab tests show a reproducible scenario that is useful for diagnosis; field data describes the experience of real users on their own devices and connections.

According to web.dev, Core Web Vitals are considered good when LCP (display of the main content) is 2.5 seconds or less, INP (responsiveness to interactions) is 200 milliseconds or less and CLS (visual stability) is 0.1 or less. These values should be read at the 75th percentile when field data exists. For a small site without enough traffic, field data is often unavailable: the audit should then state that limitation clearly and rely on repeated lab tests instead.

• Images that are too heavy or have no declared dimensions.
• Third-party scripts that block rendering or interactions.
• Fonts and banners that shift the layout.
• Mobile experience tested on a realistic device, not only on a desktop computer.

Performance is not just about speed. The audit can also flag usability obstacles affecting the same visitors: text too small on mobile, buttons too close together, intrusive pop-ups hiding the content, insufficient contrast or forms that are hard to fill in. These issues often fall under accessibility and improve the experience for everyone. Each performance recommendation should state the likely technical cause, the page template concerned and how to verify the improvement after the fix, ideally using the same measurement method.

Checking structured data

Structured data must faithfully describe what the page shows. JSON-LD helps search engines identify an organisation, a service, an article, a breadcrumb trail or an FAQ, but valid syntax does not guarantee a rich result: Google decides what to display according to its own criteria.

Types, identifiers, breadcrumbs, authors and dates must stay consistent with the page and with the site’s main entity. An organisation described with a different address from one page to the next, marked-up reviews that do not appear on screen or artificial update dates weaken trust instead of strengthening it. Structured data is best treated as a way of clarifying content that is already clear on the page, not as a shortcut to better visibility.

• Markup that passes Google’s Rich Results Test.
• Marked-up information visible on the page.
• A unique, consistent identifier for the organisation across the whole site.
• Contact details identical on the site and in the Google Business Profile.

Assessing local visibility and visibility in AI-generated answers

For a business serving a specific area, the audit also checks the consistency of local signals and how likely the content is to be picked up in generated answers. A small business active in Geneva or Lausanne often depends as much on its Google Business Profile as on its service pages.

On the local side, the audit checks that the name, address and phone number are consistent across the website, the Business Profile and the main directories, and that there are pages genuinely describing the area you serve. On the GEO side (generative engine optimisation), it examines whether pages answer questions directly and verifiably, whether the business entity is clearly identified, and whether the relevant crawlers are allowed or blocked in line with your own decisions.

• A complete Business Profile with the right category and up-to-date opening hours.
• Paragraphs that answer the question in their first sentence.
• Sources, author and date visible for factual information.
• Access rules for AI crawlers that are documented and deliberate.

How to read an SEO audit report

Read an audit report by starting with the findings that affect your high-value pages, not with the overall score displayed by a tool. Automated tools often flag hundreds of warnings, many of which have little or no impact; only a few actually explain a visibility problem.

• Does each finding list the URLs concerned and the evidence observed?
• Is the severity justified by a concrete impact?
• Are the recommendations precise enough to be acted on?
• Does the report state which data it could not access?
• Are the strengths worth preserving also mentioned?

Be wary of reports that promise a ranking or a traffic volume, or that recommend sweeping changes with no order of priority. A useful report is often shorter than a raw export, precisely because it has done the sorting for you. It is also worth checking that the auditor has looked at the site through your business goals: a page that brings in quote requests deserves more attention than one that merely attracts visits.

Turning the audit report into an action plan

An audit is only valuable if it leads to an ordered plan, with owners and a way of verifying each action. A high priority should reflect a significant risk or opportunity, not simply a tool’s score: a strategic page set to noindex comes before a hundred missing alt texts.

The plan sets out the order of actions, their dependencies, the estimated effort, the verification method and anything that requires access to Search Console, analytics or sales data. It separates technical fixes, which are often quick, from content work that takes longer. If the audit comes ahead of a change of URLs, it feeds directly into the preparation described in our SEO migration guide.

• Urgent: indexing blockers, server errors, broken redirects.
• Important: structure, competing content, mobile performance.
• Improvement: enhancements, secondary internal linking, additional structured data.

Implementation can be handled by your own team or entrusted to a provider. At Navanem, an SEO audit can be followed by ongoing SEO support; the SEO & local visibility package starts from CHF 290/month excluding VAT, with the final price set in a detailed quote. Our other packages are listed on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

How long does an SEO audit take? It depends on the size of the site, the number of page templates and the access available. A small business website can be audited more quickly than a multilingual site or an online store with a large product catalogue.

Do I need to give access to Google Search Console? It is strongly recommended. Without that data, the audit relies solely on an external crawl and estimates, and it should say so clearly.

Is a free online audit enough? It can reveal obvious errors, but it does not prioritise according to your goals and does not assess your content or what each page is meant to achieve.

How often should an SEO audit be repeated? After every significant change to the site, and at regular intervals for a site that changes often. Between two audits, tracking a few key metrics is usually enough.