How to Do a Basic SEO Audit Yourself

You don't need expensive tools or years of experience to catch the biggest problems on your website. A basic SEO audit is really just a series of honest checks any owner can run in an afternoon. Here's a straightforward one that surfaces most common issues.

1. Check that Google can find your pages

Search "site:yourdomain.com" in Google. It shows roughly which of your pages are indexed. If important pages are missing, Google can't rank what it can't see — a sign of a technical or crawl problem worth fixing first.

2. Test your speed and mobile experience

Pull your homepage and a key service page up on your phone. Is it fast, readable, and easy to tap? Then run a free page speed test. Slow, clunky mobile pages lose both visitors and rankings, and this is one of the most common issues on local sites.

3. Review titles and meta descriptions

Every page should have a unique, descriptive title and meta description that includes what you do and where. Duplicate or missing titles confuse search engines and cost you clicks. Skim your main pages and fix any that are blank, duplicated, or vague.

4. Check your Google Business Profile

For a local business, your profile is half the battle. Confirm the category, hours, address, and phone are accurate and match your website, that you have recent reviews, and that the profile looks active. Inconsistencies here quietly suppress your local visibility.

5. Look for thin or missing content

Do your main services each have a real page that actually explains them? Pages that are nearly empty, or services with no page at all, are missed opportunities. Google ranks pages it understands; give each important service enough genuine content to be understood.

6. Confirm your contact info is everywhere and consistent

Your name, address, and phone should appear on your site and match your profile and directory listings exactly. Inconsistencies erode the trust that local rankings depend on.

This audit won't catch everything a professional review would, but it surfaces the issues that hold most sites back. Fix what you find here, and you've done more than most of your competitors have.