Go to “Reports” > “Acquisition” > “Traffic acquisition.”
Look for “Organic Search” as the primary channel group.
You can tweak the timeframe to see your organic traffic performance over a longer time period.
Before we move on to the next step, identify which pages on your site drive the most clicks from Google. Do this using the “Performance” report in Google Search Console.
And going to the “Pages” tab.
Understanding which pages perform best — and which pages need work — will help you prioritize your efforts during and after your SEO audit.
Now:
If your organic traffic is flat (or declining), don’t worry.
The goal in this step is just to establish benchmarks.
The entire point of this SEO audit is to improve your website’s performance.
Step #2: Run a Full Site Crawl
Running a website crawl is the most efficient way to gather lots of useful data about every page of your website.
You can gain insights about your website’s:
Crawlability
Loading speed
Internal linking
Structured data
On-page SEO
And more.
We’ll discuss a few of these areas in more detail throughout this guide. But performing a site crawl is a quick way to assess lots of aspects at once.
How do you do it?
There are a few different tools out there to help you perform a site crawl. One is Screaming Frog.
It’ll give you insights on aspects of your site like title tags, meta descriptions, and images. And it’ll help you identify broken links, understand your website’s architecture at a deep level, and much more.
It is a paid tool, but you can run an audit of 500 URLs for free.
Semrush is a full SEO suite that offers a great SEO site audit tool. Conveniently named Site Audit, it’s another option for crawling your site. As the name suggests, it is a comprehensive auditing tool, not just a crawler.
It’ll assess your site for more than 140 issues. Covering site performance issues, internal linking optimization, and even international SEO.
To run your site crawl, just enter your domain name and click “Start Audit.”
You’ll then need to configure your crawler settings. You can set crawl limits, choose different user agents, and schedule automatic site audits.
So you can stay on top of future issues before they hurt your organic search performance.
The “Overview” tab showcases your site’s overall health. Along with how many errors, warnings, and notices you have.
Click any of the linked numbers under these headers to learn more.
Go through and fix each of these issues to improve your website’s performance. You can also click “Why and how to fix it” or “Learn more” to get advice on solving the issue.
You can also use a tool like Semrush’s Rank Tracker to keep tabs on your target keywords and how they shift in the SERPs over time.
Step #4: Maximize Your Internal Links
Internal linking is one of the most underrated SEO strategies on the planet.
The question is:
How do you internal link the right way?
It’s simple:
Make sure you link to high-priority pages as much as possible.
But:
Don’t just link to what you think are the most important pages. Ideally, every page should have at least one relevant internal link pointing to it.
This helps avoid “orphaned pages.” Making it easier for search engines (and users) to find your content.
While there’s no hard number of internal links to include, aiming for 5+ per page is a good start. As long as they’re all relevant.
Often, you’ll find yourself including way more than this. For example, here’s a snippet of one of our other posts where we have three useful internal links all close together:
As long as the links are relevant and add value for the reader, they’re worth adding.
Adding internal links also minimizes your website’s crawl or click depth.
Essentially:
How many clicks it takes for a reader to get from your homepage to any given post or page on your site.
Ideally, keep your crawl depth to 3 clicks at most. At least for your most important content.
You can quickly find out if you have pages that are deeper than 3 clicks using the Semrush Site Audit tool.
Step #5: Optimize for UX Signals
Whether or not Google uses user experience (UX) signals (like clicks) in its rankings algorithms has long been a topic of discussion in the world of SEO.
The 2023 U.S. vs. Google antitrust trial revealed slides that suggest Google does indeed use clicks for ranking. At least for training their algorithms, if not specifically for ranking individual pages.
Many in the SEO industry have thought this was the case for a while, based on RankBrain. Which is part of Google’s overall ranking systems, and was introduced in 2015.
RankBrain measures how users interact with your site. To help the algorithms understand which pages meet search intent.
Which means:
To rank well in Google, you should optimize for UX signals.
In other words, your content needs to make users happy.
When you do, you can improve your rankings in search results.
For example:
A while back we noticed that this SEO campaign post on the site wasn’t ranking that well (note the date: it needed an update!).
It was hovering between the 10th and 15th spots for our target keyword: “SEO Campaign”.
And when we looked at the content, we realized why…
The content didn’t give people searching for “SEO campaign” what they wanted.
Instead of steps, they got a case study of ONE specific strategy:
Our post also had lots of outdated screenshots:
In short:
Because our content wasn’t optimized for UX signals (read: clicks and user satisfaction), Google buried it.
So we decided to overhaul the entire post.
Specifically, we:
Replaced the case study with a step-by-step guide
Included more actionable tips for beginner and intermediate SEOs
Added examples from several different industries
Lots more
In the end, we had a piece of up-to-date content that was a PERFECT fit for someone searching for “SEO campaign”:
Sure enough, because our content is designed to make Google searchers happy, the page quickly went from #15 to the #4 spot in Google.
Step #6: Optimize for AI Overviews and Featured Snippets
Featured snippets and AI Overviews sit above (or alongside) the “classic” blue links.
Here’s how to audit and optimize for both:
Find queries that trigger snippets or AI Overviews: Search your priority keywords in an incognito window and note where Google shows a featured snippet, AI Overview, or both. Focus first on terms where you already rank in the Top 5–10 but aren’t yet the primary answer or cited source.
Add “answer blocks” under question-based headings: For each target query, add an H2 or H3 that mirrors how people search (e.g., “What is technical SEO?” or “How do you do a site audit?”). Immediately under that heading, write a concise 40–60 word answer in plain language. This format is proven to help with traditional featured snippets and fits the way AI Overviews summarize content.
Use clean structure: lists, steps, and tables where they make sense: Break processes into numbered steps or short bullet lists, and use simple tables for comparisons. Clear, scannable structure makes it easy for Google to lift a paragraph, list, or table for a snippet – and helps AI Overviews grab the right chunk of your content for their summary.
Reinforce quality and authority on the page: Make sure key pages show clear authorship, expertise, and helpful extras: author bios, references to reputable sources, original data, and concrete examples. Google’s AI features lean on the same “helpful, reliable, people-first content” signals as regular search, so stronger E-E-A-T makes it more likely your page will be quoted or linked.
Support your Q&A content with relevant schema: Where it fits naturally, add structured data like FAQPage, HowTo, or QAPage around your existing Q&A blocks. It’s not a magic switch for AI Overviews, but it does help search engines correctly interpret your questions, answers, and step-by-step instructions — which can feed both snippets and AI-generated summaries.
Keep everything crawlable and indexable: None of this works if Google can’t easily access and understand your content. Double-check that important pages are indexable, load reliably on mobile, and aren’t blocked by robots.txt or noindex tags. AI features are built on top of the same index and quality systems as regular search, so basic technical hygiene still matters.
If you systematically apply these checks to your highest-value pages, you’re not just chasing “position zero” — you’re giving both featured snippets and AI Overviews exactly what they need to feature your site when they answer your audience’s questions.
Step #7: Check Page Rendering
Rendering is one of the stages of the overall process Google uses to analyze your page content. To determine whether it should be indexed and, if so, where it should rank.
Rendering occurs after the crawling stage:
This involves Google rendering the page as a user would see it. By executing your JavaScript.
This is a programming language used to enhance webpages and add functionality. Beyond the HTML.
If there are issues with your JavaScript, Google (and potentially your users) won’t be able to see your pages properly. This could be a broken reviews section. Or interactive buttons that don’t work.
Check how Google renders your pages using Google Search Console. Specifically, using the “URL Inspection Tool.”
Just test a page and then click the “View Tested Page” button. You’ll see a screenshot on the right-hand side that shows how Google “sees” your rendered page.
Look for differences between that and how your page should appear.
Tip: The Semrush Site Audit tool can quickly highlight any issues with your site’s JavaScript.
For now, here are some tips to improve your site’s mobile friendliness:
Use a responsive design: Essentially, make sure your site functions properly on mobile devices. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, many themes are built to be responsive out of the box.
Create mobile-friendly content: Use short sentences and paragraphs for better readability on smaller screens. And ensure all your CTAs are clear and buttons or menus are easy to tap and navigate.
Use high-quality images: Ensure all graphics and photos look crisp and clear on mobile. Avoid using lots of text-heavy images, as they may be hard to read on smaller screens.
Step #9: Check Google Is Indexing Your Site Correctly
Did you know it’s possible to have different versions of your site indexed in Google?
It’s true.
For example, here are 4 different versions of the same site:
And in 2018 they rolled out a new update that made speed even MORE important. As now mobile page speed would be used too.
So this is nothing new. And it’s something you need to prioritize as part of your SEO audit checklist.
But Google is also continuously adapting how they assess your site’s speed. Like the introduction of the INP Core Web Vital in 2024, which measures how fast your website responds to user interactions.
This test will also show you how you’re performing in terms of your Core Web Vitals.
These are three metrics that cover how fast your site loads, how responsive it is to user interactions, and whether there are any unexpected layout shifts as your page loads.
