SEO Audit Checklist: 22 Checks to Score Your Site

Kwebby's SEO Audit Checklist gives you 22 checks in five groups, and 12 of them carry a High priority tag. The checks follow the order of a real audit: record a baseline, crawl the site, confirm what Google indexes, clean up status codes and redirects, then review speed, content and logs. Each check turns an audit question into a pass or fail you can tick, and a live score shows how healthy the site is.

This guide explains how to run an audit with the checklist, what each group tests and which free Kwebby tool or Google report produces the evidence.

Key Takeaways

• The Kwebby SEO Audit Checklist has 22 checks in five groups: Baseline & Crawl Setup (4), Indexation & Canonicals (5), Status Codes & Redirects (5), Performance & Page Experience (3) and On-Page, Content & Logs (5).
• Twelve checks are High priority, eight are Medium and two are Low, so the tags give you a ready-made fix order.
• Start with data. Google Search Console's Performance and Page indexing reports give you the baseline every later fix is measured against.
• Indexing comes before content. A page Google does not index cannot rank, however good the copy.
• Core Web Vitals now use INP, not FID. Good scores are LCP up to 2.5 seconds, INP up to 200 milliseconds and CLS up to 0.1.
• Your ticks are saved in your browser, so you can run the audit over several sessions. The Reset button clears them for the next audit.

What the Kwebby SEO Audit Checklist Covers

The Kwebby SEO Audit Checklist is a free, interactive list of 22 checks that test crawling, indexing, canonicals, status codes, redirects, Core Web Vitals, on-page tags, structured data, content quality and server logs. Each check carries a High, Medium or Low tag, and many link straight to the free Kwebby tool that tests them. It sits in Kwebby's SEO Checklists hub.

How to Run an SEO Audit With the Checklist

Run the audit in six passes: set the scope, record a baseline, score the checks, rank the failures, fix them and retest.

1. Set the scope. List the templates that matter, usually the homepage, category or service pages, product pages and articles. Test one URL per template, then confirm the pattern across the crawl.
2. Record a baseline. In Google Search Console, the Performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. The Page indexing report shows which URLs are indexed and why others are not.
3. Score the checks. Open the linked tool or report for each item and tick the box only when the site passes. The Score percentage and the "0 / 22 Complete" counter update as you go, and your ticks stay saved in this browser.
4. Rank the failures. Fix High items first, then Medium, then Low. Within a tag, fix the quickest item first.
5. Fix and note the date. Keep a short log of what changed and when, so a traffic shift can be traced to a cause.
6. Retest. Run the failed checks again and compare the new data with the baseline. Press Reset before the next full audit.

The Checklist Sections Explained

Each group answers one audit question. Here is what to look for and where to find the evidence.

Baseline & Crawl Setup (4 checks)

This group asks whether you know the starting point and can see the whole site. Three of its four checks are High priority.

• Record a Search Console baseline (High). Export the Performance and Page indexing data before you change anything.
• Crawl the whole site (High). A desktop crawler lists every URL with its status code, title, canonical and click depth. For a quick pass on single URLs, the Website Reviewer checks SSL, speed, compression, meta tags, security headers, robots.txt and the sitemap.
• Review robots.txt rules (High). Confirm no important section, CSS or JavaScript file is disallowed. The robots.txt report in Search Console shows the file Google fetched and any errors. Rebuild a broken file with the Robots.txt Generator.
• Compare the XML sitemap with indexable URLs (Medium). The sitemap should list only canonical URLs that return 200. The XML Sitemap Generator builds a clean file when yours is out of date.

Indexation & Canonicals (5 checks)

This group asks whether Google indexes the right version of each page.

• Review Page indexing reasons (High). Open each reason in the report and decide whether it is expected. The Google Index Checker gives a quick approximate count of indexed pages.
• Find unintended noindex tags and X-Robots-Tag headers (High). The HTTP Header Checker shows every response header, including X-Robots-Tag. The Meta Tags Analyzer shows the robots meta tag.
• Check canonical tags (High). Each indexable page should point its canonical at itself or at the preferred duplicate. The URL Inspection tool shows which canonical Google selected.
• Find duplicate and near-duplicate URLs (Medium). Look for parameter URLs, HTTP and HTTPS copies, www and non-www copies, trailing slash variants and thin tag pages.
• Validate hreflang (Low). Only for sites with language or regional versions. Google's localized versions guide says each version must list itself and every other version.

Status Codes & Redirects (5 checks)

This group asks whether every URL returns the right answer.

• Fix internal links to 4xx pages (High). The Broken Links Finder checks up to 100 links on a page and shows each status code.
• Check for 5xx server errors (High). The Crawl stats report in Search Console shows host status and response codes over time. The Website Down Checker tests a single URL now.
• Remove redirect chains and loops (Medium). Point internal links at the final URL and keep permanent moves to one 301 or 308 hop.
• Confirm one protocol and one host (High). The Redirect Checker traces every hop and tests the http, https, www and non-www versions of a URL.
• Find soft 404s (Medium). An empty page that returns 200 with a not found message is a soft 404. Return 404 or 410 for pages that no longer exist.

Performance & Page Experience (3 checks)

All three checks in this group are High priority.

• Review Core Web Vitals field data (High). The Core Web Vitals report groups URLs by status. Google rates LCP up to 2.5 seconds, INP up to 200 milliseconds and CLS up to 0.1 as good at the 75th percentile (web.dev). The Page Speed Checker runs PageSpeed Insights for one URL.
• Check the mobile version has the same content (High). Google uses mobile-first indexing, so text, links, structured data and meta tags must match on mobile. The Mobile Friendly Test returns mobile Lighthouse scores.
• Confirm HTTPS and no mixed content (High). The SSL Checker shows expiry date, issuer, protocol and cipher.

On-Page, Content & Logs (5 checks)

This group asks whether indexed pages deserve to rank and how Googlebot spends its time.

• Find missing, duplicate or vague titles and descriptions (Medium). Review them in your crawl export, then spot-check live pages with the Meta Tags Analyzer.
• Find orphan pages and weak internal links (Medium). A page in the sitemap with no internal links is an orphan. The Website Links Count Checker lists the internal links on any page.
• Validate structured data (Medium). Test key templates in Google's Rich Results Test and fix markup with the Schema Markup Generator. Google's structured data policies say markup must describe visible content.
• Flag thin or outdated content (Medium). Improve, merge with a redirect or remove pages that add little value. The Plagiarism Checker finds copied passages.
• Analyze server log files (Low). Logs show which URLs Googlebot really requests. Google explains how to verify Googlebot with a reverse DNS lookup, so fake bots do not skew the data.

Mistakes to Avoid

The biggest audit mistake is treating the score as the goal. A score is a progress marker. The goal is to fix the failures that hold back the pages that matter.

• Auditing without a baseline. Without Search Console data you cannot tell whether a fix worked.
• Using retired tools. Google retired its Mobile-Friendly Test and the robots.txt Tester. Use Lighthouse and the robots.txt report instead.
• Fixing in list order. Use the priority tags, not the order on the page.
• Auditing one page and calling it done. Test one URL per template, then confirm the pattern in the crawl.
• Ignoring indexing. A page that is not indexed cannot rank, however good the copy.
• Skipping the retest. Fixes break. Run the failed checks again.

Free Kwebby Tools for an SEO Audit

Start with the Website Reviewer for a pass or fail view of one URL. Then use a specialist tool for each failure.

Browse more in the Free SEO Tools hub.

Final Thoughts

An audit is only useful if it ends in fixes. Use Kwebby's SEO Audit Checklist to score the site, work the 12 High items first and retest to confirm the gain. For the broader on-page and content list, open the SEO Checklist. For a closer look at crawling and speed, open the Technical SEO Checklist.