What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit is a check of everything that decides whether search engines can reach your pages, understand them and show them to people searching. It looks at whether pages can be fetched and indexed, whether each page says clearly what it is about, and what is broken. It ends in a list of fixes, most important first. An audit tells you what is wrong on your site. It does not, on its own, tell you why a ranking changed.
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What an SEO audit checks
Google groups what makes a page eligible to appear and perform well in its results into three parts: technical requirements (what Google needs from a page to show it), spam policies, and key best practices.[1] An audit walks the same ground, in roughly this order.
| Area | What is checked | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Access and indexing | robots.txt, the sitemap, status codes, redirects, canonical tags, pages marked noindex | A page search engines cannot fetch, or are told not to index, cannot rank at all |
| Each page | Title, meta description, headings, structured data, image text, duplicate pages | These tell search engines and people what the page is about |
| Links | Links inside the site, links to pages that are gone, pages nothing links to | Links are how crawlers find pages and how people move through the site |
| Speed and phones | Load time and Core Web Vitals, how pages work on a phone | Slow or broken pages lose the visits they win |
| Content and intent | Does a page exist for each search that matters, and does it match what the results show people want? | A well-built page aimed at the wrong question ranks nowhere |
On duplicate pages, Google's starter guide notes that duplicate content is not a violation of its spam policies, but it can be a bad experience and search engines may waste crawling on URLs you do not care about.[2]
What an SEO audit cannot tell you
- Whether a page is in Google's index. Only Google can say. Search Console's URL Inspection tool gives information about Google's indexed version of a page and tests whether a URL might be indexable.[3] A crawl, and a sitemap, are not proof.
- That fixing everything will rank you. Google says that a page meeting all its requirements and best practices still is not guaranteed to be crawled, indexed or served.[1]
- When a fix will show. Google's starter guide says some changes might take effect in a few hours, and others could take several months.[2]
- Why a ranking moved. Search engines do not disclose causes. An audit shows what is on your site, not what a competitor or an update did.
How to run an SEO audit, step by step
- Check access first. Read robots.txt and the sitemap. Open the pages that matter and note any that answer with an error, redirect more than once, or say noindex.
- Check the index. In Search Console, inspect your most important pages with URL Inspection. Google's starter guide also suggests searching Google for your site with the site: operator as a quick look.[2]
- Check each important page. One clear title and one main heading that agree, a meta description written for people, and text that answers the search the page is meant for.
- Check links. Fix links to pages that are gone, and give pages that matter links from your strongest pages.
- Check speed on real visits. Lab scores help, but what real visitors experience is the reading that counts.
- Write the fixes in order. First what stops pages being fetched or indexed, then the pages that bring sales or enquiries, then the rest.
Then audit again after you ship. The fixes that held should be gone from the list, and anything new should show.
What the free Convertlyft SEO audit checks
The free SEO audit is a real crawl of one website, run by ConvertlyftBot, with no account:
- Your homepage, audited in full: titles, descriptions, headings, canonicals, structured data, and the accessibility checks that need no browser.
- Your robots.txt and sitemap, read and counted, so you can see how much of your site is declared.
- Up to 15 more pages from your sitemap (16 in all), actually opened: status, redirects, and the to-dos on each.
You get a score out of 100 with its four parts, the issues to fix first with example pages, and a link to the result you can share. It obeys your robots.txt.
What the free scan does not check
- Pages that only take shape once JavaScript runs: the free scan does not run scripts, and marks such a page instead of calling it thin.
- Broken links: link checking is off on the free scan.
- Colour contrast and the accessibility checks that need a page loaded in a browser.
A check that could not look reports nothing rather than a clean pass, and the result lists each one by name. Two related free checks read the same kind of crawl for AI: what AI agents can read on your site and the WebMCP checker.
A one-off audit, or an audit that keeps watching
A one-off audit is a snapshot. Inside Convertlyft, the crawl runs on the schedule you pick (daily, weekly or monthly), or when you press Run crawl now. It crawls much more of your site, loads pages in a real browser where they need it, and keeps the to-dos in one place: what the crawl confirms fixed, what came back, and what changed since last time. Rankings and your Search Console searches sit beside the visits they bring. To plan the page for one search, see what goes in an SEO content brief.
Questions
What is an SEO audit?
A check of everything that decides whether search engines can reach your pages, understand them and show them: access and indexing, each page's title, headings and description, links, speed, and whether each page matches its search. It ends in a list of fixes, most important first.
How often should I run an SEO audit?
After any redesign, move to a new address or platform, or big batch of new pages, and on a regular schedule in between. Inside Convertlyft the crawl runs daily, weekly or monthly, on the schedule you pick.
Can ChatGPT do an SEO audit?
An AI assistant can only judge what it can read. Connected to a tool that fetches your pages, it can run one: add https://mcp.convertlyft.com/mcp to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor and it can run Convertlyft's free SEO scan with no account.
How much does an SEO audit cost?
Convertlyft's free SEO audit costs nothing and needs no account: it reads up to 16 pages of one site. Bigger crawls of your site, run on a schedule, come with a Convertlyft account, which starts free; plans are on the pricing page.
Will an SEO audit improve my rankings?
Not by itself. An audit finds what stops pages being reached, read or shown. Fixing those makes the pages eligible to rank; it does not promise a position, and Google says some changes take several months to show.
Sources
- Google Search Central, “Google Search Essentials”, developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials, as of 31 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, “SEO Starter Guide”, developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide, as of 31 October 2026.
- Search Console Help, “URL Inspection tool”, support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9012289, as of 31 October 2026.
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