Website SEO Audit Checklist: 8 Checks You Can Run Yourself

A website SEO audit checklist is a short list of checks you run on your own public pages to see whether search engines can find them and whether each page describes itself well. This website SEO checklist has 8 checks, in the order we would run them. It doesn't promise a ranking, because Google's own guide says there are no secrets that automatically rank a site first.

AI builders make a site that looks finished fast. They don't always make one a search engine can read. Every claim about Google below comes from Google's own documentation, dated.

How do these checks line up with our six dimensions?

We score every app on six areas: Clarity and Promise; Craft and Design Integrity; Trust and Legitimacy; Flow and Usability; Mobile and Access; and Conversion and The Ask. A checklist like this one touches 3 of them, from the search side.

• Headlines are Clarity and Promise: does the page say what this is, in one sentence? Your title and description are the search-side version of the same question.
• Links that go nowhere are Flow and Usability: what happens when a visitor hits a dead end.
• Phone use is Mobile and Access: is the primary action visible on a real phone screen?

Keep those 3 questions in mind as you go. A search result is the first place a visitor meets your promise.

What can an SEO audit checklist promise?

SEO means search engine optimization: helping search engines understand your pages and helping people decide to click. Google's SEO Starter Guide says there are no secrets that will automatically rank a site first, and no guarantee a particular site will be added to its index. Changes can take anywhere from a few hours to several months to show, and it suggests waiting a few weeks before judging (Google SEO Starter Guide, updated 10 December 2025, read 8 October 2026).

So the honest goal is smaller: remove what blocks the pages, then make each page easy to understand. Set aside an afternoon for a small site (that's our estimate, not Google's).

Can Google see your pages at all?

Type site: and your address into Google with no space, like site:yourname.com. The starter guide says that if results point to your site, you're in the index. If nothing appears, look for a noindex tag (a request to leave a page out of results) or a robots.txt file (a list of where crawlers may go) that blocks your pages. The full check is in our website launch checklist.

Does every page have a title a visitor would click?

Open each important page and read only the browser tab. We'd start here because the title is also your first promise in a search result. Could a first-time visitor tell what the page is? Google's guidance asks for a title that is descriptive and concise, names "Home" as a vague one to avoid, and warns against repeating the same text on every page (title links guidance, updated 10 December 2025, read 8 October 2026). How Google builds and may rewrite titles is covered in our Lovable SEO guide.

Do the description and headline agree?

The meta description is a short summary written into the page's hidden code. Google says it builds snippets mostly from the page itself and uses your description when it describes the page better. It asks for a unique one per page, and at the very least for your home page and most important pages (snippet guidance, updated 20 April 2026, read 8 October 2026).

Now read the description, the tab, and the first headline together. If they point 3 different ways, a visitor who clicked on one promise lands on another. Google's starter guide adds that heading order doesn't matter to Google Search, though it helps screen readers, so check order for people.

Are your links real links?

Click every link in your menu and footer. A link to nowhere is a dead end for a visitor. A link built the wrong way can be invisible to Google, which says it generally follows a link only when it is an anchor element with an href address, and can't reliably read script-driven ones (link best practices, updated 10 December 2025, read 8 October 2026). You can't tell by looking, so ask your builder whether menu and gallery links are normal links.

You can check the words yourself. The same page calls "click here" and "read more" too generic, and suggests reading your link texts out of context to see if each makes sense. Try it on your footer.

What do your images say?

Alt text is a short description attached to an image. Google's starter guide asks for descriptive alt text and for images placed near text that explains them. The links page adds that when an image is the link, Google uses its alt text as the link text, so a blank one leaves that link unlabeled. Describe what is in the picture in plain words, not a string of keywords.

Do you need a sitemap?

A sitemap is a file listing the pages you care about. Google's documentation says a site of about 500 pages or fewer, well linked inside, might not need one, while a new site with few outside links might. A sitemap doesn't guarantee every page gets crawled (Google's sitemaps overview, updated 10 December 2025, read 8 October 2026). If your builder made one, open it and look for pages that shouldn't be there, like drafts.

The starter guide also says the same content under several addresses is not a spam violation, but it can be a bad user experience and waste crawling. Aim for one address per page.

Is the page secure, quick, and usable on a phone?

Google's page experience guidance gives a self-check list: good Core Web Vitals (Google's measures of how a page loads and behaves), secure delivery over HTTPS, good display on mobile, no excessive ads or intrusive pop-ups, and main content that is easy to tell apart. It says there is no single page experience signal, and that chasing a perfect score only for SEO may not be the best use of your time (Google's page experience page, updated 22 September 2026, read 8 October 2026).

Do the human version. Open your home page on a real phone over mobile data. Can you see the main action without scrolling or pinching? Does anything shift while the page loads?

What does your shared link look like?

Paste your address into a message and look at the preview on your phone. Google's title guidance lists the Open Graph title (the text set for link previews) as one source for titles, so it's worth getting right. Where the preview image comes from is covered in our Lovable SEO guide.

What does a checklist run look like for a real kind of site?

Hypothetical example: A wedding photographer has a small portfolio site. They run the checks, write down what they find, and sort it by what blocks the most. The order is ours, a judgment call, not Google's.

The noindex tag comes first because nothing else on that page matters while it is hidden. Titles come next because they are quick to change and show up everywhere. The photographer republishes, then waits a few weeks before judging, as Google suggests.

What does our audit read, and where does this checklist fit?

Ours is an AI audit, so no person reads your app. It reads the rendered page plus desktop and mobile screenshots, clicks through your public pages, and gives you a score out of 100 with ranked fixes. The report's recorded evidence includes pages crawled, links checked, broken links, buttons clicked, and dead buttons. It is not a speed or SEO scan; it checks whether you read as slop. This guide is a manual checklist you run yourself.

So the 2 do different jobs. This checklist is about whether search engines can find and describe your pages. The audit is about what a customer sees and does once they arrive. The audit reads public pages only, and it is not a security review or a full accessibility audit.

Run this checklist first, then read our website content audit for the words. The vibe coding checklist covers whether the app itself is ready to share.