A complete SEO audit is the foundation of any sustainable SEO strategy. Here's the 10-step method we use at H1Site to audit a website professionally.

Step 1: Crawl the Site with Screaming Frog

Launch Screaming Frog SEO Spider and crawl your entire site. You'll get a complete inventory: URLs, HTTP codes, title and meta tags, H1-H6, image alt attributes, redirects, broken links. Export the data to CSV for analysis.

Step 2: Basic Technical Checks

HTTPS active on 100% of pages, valid certificate.
Sitemap.xml accessible, up-to-date, submitted to Google Search Console.
robots.txt consistent — no important page blocked.
No unintended noindex tag on strategic pages.
Clean, short, lowercase URLs with keywords.
Clean 301 redirects, no chains or loops.

Step 3: On-Page Audit

For each important page, check:

Unique title tag, 50-60 characters, with main keyword at the start.
Engaging meta description, 150-160 characters.
Single H1 tag, clear and descriptive.
Logical H2-H6 hierarchy.
Alt attributes on all images.
Friendly URL with keyword.

Step 4: Content Quality

Identify thin content (less than 300 words), outdated, or duplicate content. Evaluate if each page addresses a clear search intent (informational, navigational, transactional). Mark pages to rewrite, merge, or delete.

Step 5: Internal Linking

Your most important pages (services, flagship products) should receive the most internal links. Check the click depth from the homepage — ideally 3 clicks max. Spot orphan pages (no incoming links) and contextual link opportunities in your blog articles.

Step 6: Backlink Profile

With Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz, analyze:

Total number of referring domains.
Backlink quality (DR/DA, authority, relevance).
Anchor distribution (avoid over-optimization).
Toxic links to disavow.
Comparison with direct competitors.

Step 7: Core Web Vitals

With Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse, measure:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): less than 2.5s.
INP (Interaction to Next Paint): less than 200ms.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): less than 0.1.

Document the results and identify priority optimizations (images, third-party scripts, hosting, lazy loading).

Step 8: Mobile-Friendliness

Google indexes mobile-first. Test each important page with the Mobile-Friendly Test, and verify:

Readable text without zooming.
Buttons and links sufficiently spaced (touch targets of at least 48px).
No horizontal scrolling.
Fast loading speed on 4G.

Step 9: Structured Data (schema.org)

Verify the presence and validity of JSON-LD tags based on your industry:

Organization / LocalBusiness: on the homepage.
Article / BlogPosting: on articles.
Product / Offer: on product pages.
FAQPage: on pages with FAQs.
BreadcrumbList: on all pages.

Validate each tag with Google's Rich Results Test.

Step 10: Competitive Analysis

Identify your top 3-5 organic competitors and compare:

Keywords they rank for that you don't.
Quality backlinks they have.
Content types that perform in your industry.
Their site structure and navigation.
On-page strategies (content length, rich media, schema).

Essential Tools List

Screaming Frog: complete crawl.
Google Search Console + Analytics 4: official Google data.
Ahrefs / SEMrush / Moz: backlinks and competition.
PageSpeed Insights / Lighthouse: performance.
Rich Results Test: schema validation.
TeckBlaze: all-in-one automated SEO audit.

Conclusion

A complete 10-step SEO audit takes an experienced consultant 15 to 30 hours on average. If you want to save time while getting a professional audit, TeckBlaze automates most of these steps and generates an actionable report in minutes. Discover TeckBlaze here.

Do a complete SEO audit: step-by-step guide