SEO

How to carry out a basic SEO audit of your website: a practical guide without technical knowledge

You do not need to be an SEO expert to detect the most important problems holding back your rankings. This guide explains how to do a basic SEO audit with free tools and what to do with what you find.

Why carry out an SEO audit before any other action

An SEO audit is the prior diagnosis that reveals why your website is not ranking as it should. Without this diagnosis, it is easy to invest time and money in actions that do not address the real problem. It is like taking painkillers for a headache when the problem is an infection that requires antibiotics: the symptom may improve temporarily, but the underlying problem persists.

The most common SEO problems a basic audit can reveal are: pages not indexed due to configuration errors, duplicate content that confuses Google, slow loading speed that penalises rankings, missing basic tags (title, description, H1), broken links that harm user experience and site structure, and technical problems with the robots.txt file or sitemap.

A basic SEO audit does not require paid tools. With Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4 and Screaming Frog (free version up to 500 URLs) you can get a clear picture of the SEO status of any small or medium-sized website.

Step 1: Google Search Console — visibility and indexing errors

Google Search Console (GSC) is the most important tool for basic SEO because it shows exactly how Google sees and interacts with your website. If you do not have it configured, it is the first thing you should do before anything else. Configuration is free and takes less than 15 minutes.

In GSC, the first thing to review is the 'Coverage' (or 'Indexing' in the more recent interface) report. It shows how many pages of your website are indexed in Google and how many have errors. Pages with 'Error' status are pages Google cannot index for some technical reason: 404 errors, incorrect redirects, pages blocked by robots.txt, or server errors.

The 'Performance' report shows the queries (keywords) for which your website appears in Google, the number of impressions and clicks, and the average position. Filter by pages to see which pages bring the most traffic and for which terms they rank. This report is essential for understanding your starting position and identifying improvement opportunities.

Also review the 'Experience' → 'Core Web Vitals' report. It shows whether your website passes or fails Google's performance metrics (LCP, INP, CLS). Pages that fail these metrics may be penalised in rankings compared to equivalent pages that do pass them.

Step 2: crawling your website with Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a desktop programme that crawls your website the same way Google does and returns a detailed report of all the technical elements. The free version analyses up to 500 URLs, enough for most small and medium-sized websites.

When you enter your website URL and run the crawl, Screaming Frog will give you information about: pages with 404 errors (content not found), redirects (301, 302), pages with duplicate or too long/short titles or meta descriptions, pages without an H1 tag or with more than one H1, images without alternative text (alt text), and pages with thin content.

Prioritise 404 errors and duplicate titles. 404 errors must be corrected or redirected to equivalent pages. Duplicate titles confuse Google about which page is most relevant for a query and must be differentiated with unique content on each page.

Step 3: loading speed with PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) analyses the speed of any URL and gives a score from 0 to 100 separately for mobile and desktop. It also lists the specific problems that are reducing the score and estimates how much time would be saved by resolving them.

For SEO, the most important score is the mobile one, since Google uses a mobile-first index: it values mobile performance over desktop. A score above 80 on mobile is the minimum target. Below 50 indicates serious problems that are likely affecting rankings.

The most common problems that lower the score are: uncompressed oversized images (70% of cases), JavaScript that blocks rendering, lack of browser caching, and web fonts that load synchronously. Many of these problems are resolved with an optimisation plugin like WP Rocket or with the correct CDN configuration.

Step 4: content and keyword review

An important part of the SEO audit is checking whether the content of the main pages is optimised for relevant keywords. This does not mean keyword stuffing (repeating the keyword endlessly), but ensuring that pages address the topics your potential clients are searching for in a natural and comprehensive way.

For each important service or product page, check: Does the title tag include the main keyword? Is the H1 descriptive and different from the title (although they can match)? Does the page content answer the questions someone searching for that service might have? Does it have at least 300–500 words of relevant content?

A frequent error on SME websites is having service pages with only 50–100 words of content. Google interprets these pages as thin content and ranks them poorly. Expanding the content of the most important pages with genuinely useful information for the user is one of the actions with the best SEO return.

How to prioritise audit improvements

A basic SEO audit can reveal dozens of problems. The most common error when receiving one is trying to address everything at once, which leads to scattered work and poor results. Correct prioritisation is done according to two criteria: potential impact on traffic and ease of implementation.

High priority, easy to implement: Fix 404 errors, add meta descriptions to pages that lack them, compress oversized images, activate basic redirects. These actions can be implemented in 1–2 days and have a direct impact.

High priority, greater effort: Expand content on thin content pages, improve loading speed (if complex technical changes are required), resolve serious indexing problems. These actions take more time but have the greatest impact in the medium term.

Secondary priority: Systematically optimise images for keywords, improve internal linking, etc. These actions improve performance but are not urgent if you have already resolved the main problems.