How to Do an SEO Audit Yourself: A Step-by-Step Guide for Small Business Owners

Your website is live. You've got pages, a contact form, maybe a blog. But the phone isn't ringing and the leads aren't coming in from Google. Something is off — you just don't know what.

An SEO audit tells you exactly what's wrong. It's a systematic check of your website's search engine health: what's working, what's broken, and what's holding you back from ranking higher. The good news is that you can do one yourself. The honest news is that it takes time, attention, and a willingness to get into the weeds.

This guide walks you through how to do an SEO audit yourself in 10 practical steps. No jargon-heavy theory. No expensive tools required. Just the things that actually matter for a small business website.

Why an SEO Audit Matters for Your Business

Think of your website like a physical shop. If the front door is jammed, the signs are faded, and half the lights don't work, customers walk past. An SEO audit is the equivalent of walking through your shop with fresh eyes and a checklist.

For small businesses specifically, the stakes are higher than you might think:

• Invisible problems cost real money. A single misconfigured page can prevent Google from showing your site for the exact searches your customers are making.
• Small fixes often produce big results. Fixing a missing title tag or a broken link can sometimes move you from page 2 to page 1 — where 90% of clicks happen.
• Your competitors aren't standing still. If they're auditing and optimising their sites while you aren't, the gap only grows.

An audit isn't something you do once and forget. But even a single thorough audit can uncover issues that have been quietly costing you traffic for months or years.

How to Do an SEO Audit Yourself: 10 Steps

Set aside 3–5 hours for your first audit. You'll need a computer, a Google account, and some patience. Here's the process, start to finish.

Step 1: Check What Google Actually Sees

Start with Google Search Console (GSC). If you haven't set it up yet, do that first — it's free and essential. GSC shows you exactly how Google views your site.

Once you're in, check three things:

• Coverage report: How many of your pages are indexed? Are any excluded or showing errors?
• Performance report: Which keywords bring you traffic? What's your average position?
• Manual actions: Has Google penalised your site for anything? (Hopefully this is empty.)

If GSC shows that only 5 of your 30 pages are indexed, that's a major red flag — and something you'd never know without checking.

Step 2: Test Your Site Speed

Slow sites lose visitors and rank lower. Run your homepage and two or three key pages through Google PageSpeed Insights.

Focus on the Core Web Vitals scores:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How fast does the main content load? Under 2.5 seconds is good.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): How quickly does the page respond when someone clicks or taps? Under 200 milliseconds is the target.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Does stuff jump around while the page loads? Lower is better — aim for under 0.1.

Common speed killers for small business sites: oversized images, too many plugins (if you're on WordPress), cheap hosting, and render-blocking scripts. Write down every red or orange flag the tool shows you.

Step 3: Make Sure Your Site Works on Mobile

More than half of all web traffic comes from phones. Google uses the mobile version of your site for ranking — not the desktop version. Open your website on your phone and check:

• Can you read all text without zooming?
• Are buttons and links easy to tap?
• Does anything overlap, get cut off, or look broken?
• Do all pages load and function correctly?

If anything looks off, it's hurting your rankings right now. Note the specific pages and issues.

Step 4: Review Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Every page on your site has a title tag (the blue link in Google search results) and a meta description (the text below it). These are the first thing potential customers see — and they directly affect whether someone clicks through to your site.

Go through each page and check:

• Does every page have a unique title tag? (No duplicates.)
• Are title tags under 60 characters so they don't get cut off?
• Does each page have a meta description under 155 characters?
• Do titles and descriptions include relevant keywords naturally?

A quick way to check: search site:yourdomain.com on Google. You'll see all your indexed pages with their titles and descriptions. Scan through them. If you see "Home" or "Page 1" as a title, that's a problem.

Step 5: Audit Your Heading Structure

Headings (H1, H2, H3) help both users and search engines understand the structure of your content. For each page:

• Is there exactly one H1 tag? (It should match the page topic.)
• Are H2s and H3s used logically as subheadings — not just to make text bigger?
• Do headings include relevant keywords where it makes sense?

You can check this using your browser's built-in developer tools (right-click → Inspect → search for "h1", "h2", etc.) or install a free browser extension like the SEO Meta in 1 Click Chrome extension.

Step 6: Find and Fix Broken Links

Broken links — links that lead to pages that no longer exist — are bad for users and bad for SEO. They waste Google's crawl budget and create dead ends for visitors.

Use a free tool like Dead Link Checker or Screaming Frog's free tier (crawls up to 500 URLs) to scan your entire site. Look for:

• 404 errors: Pages that don't exist anymore
• Redirect chains: Links that bounce through multiple redirects before reaching a destination
• Broken outbound links: Links to other websites that have moved or been deleted

Fix each one by updating the link, setting up a redirect, or removing the link entirely.

Step 7: Check Your Content Quality

Google rewards pages that genuinely help the reader. Go through your main pages and ask yourself honestly:

• Would a potential customer find this page useful?
• Does the content answer the question someone would have when landing here?
• Is there enough substance? (Pages with only a sentence or two are considered "thin content.")
• Is any content duplicated across multiple pages?

Pay special attention to your service and product pages. Many small business websites have generic, boilerplate descriptions that don't differentiate them from competitors. Detailed, specific content that speaks directly to your customer's problem will always outperform generic filler.

Step 8: Evaluate Your Internal Linking

Internal links — links from one page of your site to another — help Google discover your content and understand which pages are most important. Open your homepage and click around:

• Can you reach every important page within 3 clicks from the homepage?
• Do your blog posts link to relevant service pages?
• Do service pages link to related blog posts or other service pages?
• Is your navigation clear and logical?

Many small business sites are "flat" — the homepage links to a few top-level pages, but those pages are dead ends. Add contextual internal links wherever they make natural sense.

Step 9: Verify Your Local SEO Setup

If you serve local customers, this step is non-negotiable. Check the following:

• Google Business Profile: Is it claimed, complete, and up to date? Correct address, phone number, hours, categories?
• NAP consistency: Is your Name, Address, and Phone number identical across your website, Google Business Profile, and other directories (Yelp, Facebook, industry listings)?
• Local keywords: Do your pages mention your city, area, or region naturally within the content?
• Reviews: Do you have recent Google reviews? Are you responding to them?

Inconsistent business information across the web confuses Google and suppresses your local rankings. Even small differences — "Street" vs "St." vs "St" — can cause problems.

Step 10: Review Your HTTPS and Security Setup

This is a quick but important check. Google has confirmed that HTTPS is a ranking signal.

• Does your site load with https:// (not http://)?
• Does visiting the http:// version automatically redirect to https://?
• Is the SSL certificate valid and not expired? (Look for the padlock icon in your browser.)
• Are there any "mixed content" warnings — pages loading over HTTPS but including images or scripts over HTTP?

If your site is still on HTTP, fixing this should be your top priority. Most hosting providers offer free SSL certificates through Let's Encrypt.

Common Mistakes When Doing a DIY SEO Audit

Walking through these steps will give you a solid picture of your site's SEO health. But there are traps that catch first-timers:

• Only checking the homepage. SEO issues often live on inner pages — service pages, old blog posts, category pages. Audit your whole site, not just the front page.
• Ignoring Search Console data. GSC is the most underused free SEO tool available. If you only check one thing, make it this.
• Fixing everything at once. Prioritise. Fix critical technical issues first (broken pages, indexing problems, speed), then move to content and optimisation.
• Skipping the mobile check. "It looks fine on my laptop" isn't good enough. Google ranks based on the mobile version of your site.
• Treating it as a one-time event. New issues appear constantly — plugin updates, content changes, expired links. A single audit is a snapshot. You need ongoing monitoring.

When to Use a Tool Instead

If you've read this far, you've probably noticed something: doing a thorough SEO audit yourself is entirely possible, but it's also time-consuming. We're talking 3–5 hours for the first pass, plus the ongoing work of rechecking every month.

For a small business owner already juggling operations, sales, and customer service, spending half a day crawling through developer tools and spreadsheets might not be the best use of time.

That's where automated audit tools earn their keep. The right tool will:

• Run all 10 of these checks (and more) automatically
• Deliver results in plain language, not technical jargon
• Prioritise issues so you know what to fix first
• Monitor your site continuously so you catch new problems early
• Cost a fraction of what an SEO agency charges

The goal isn't to replace your understanding of SEO — it's to save you hours of manual work while giving you better, more consistent results.

A DIY audit teaches you what matters. An automated tool makes sure nothing gets missed. The best approach for most small businesses is to understand the fundamentals, then let a tool handle the heavy lifting.