Prepare an SEO audit: the observations to gather

Start with the pages that help people understand your business: the home page, the services you actually offer, your contact information and the content that answers your clients’ questions. Give each one a role. A page can present an offer, explain a process or help prepare a request. That role gives you a point of comparison when you assess its content and its links.

Record each page’s exact address, its visible title and the person who can confirm its facts. Note recent changes: a redesign, a move, a change to an offer or a change of domain. If a drop in traffic seems to coincide with one of these events, keep that observation as a lead. A coincidence in timing does not, on its own, show what caused the change.

Gather the data your business already has authorized access to. Keep the name of the report, its filters and its period. An isolated screenshot can hide a comparison between different sets of data. If some data is missing, say so. You can still examine the pages, but you’ll need to separate that direct finding from a conclusion about their visibility in search results.

For a specific page, the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console (new tab) lets you examine indexing information, known crawling and the canonical URL selected. Google specifies that a URL reported as being in its index is not guaranteed to appear in results. Note the status shown and the date of the check without turning it into a general assessment of the site’s quality.

Finally, prepare the necessary access with the people responsible. An audit doesn’t require sharing passwords in an open document. Instead, describe the tools available, the owner of each account and how to authorize viewing. The Serafex SEO page helps you place this work; the scope of any engagement must be confirmed before you assume that an access or a fix is included.

Open each page from its address, then from the menu or a link on the site. Check whether you reach the expected content, a missing page or a login screen. Also note any visible redirects. For a short list of priority pages, this check already gives you usable facts: the address works, the destination has changed, the content requires an account or the link leads to the wrong place.

Distinguish public spaces from private ones. A preview reserved for the team may deliberately require authentication and exclude indexing. Don’t remove these protections just to make an SEO warning disappear. Record in the file which pages should be findable in search engines and which should stay restricted. The decision belongs to the business before it becomes a technical setting.

For the public pages concerned, have the crawling and indexing rules checked. Google states that a noindex rule must be readable by its crawler (new tab) to be taken into account; a block in robots.txt can prevent it from being read. These mechanisms therefore play different roles. Ask the technical lead to document their expected effect rather than changing several settings blindly.

Next, examine the address variants that show identical or similar content. The business should be able to explain which address it considers its reference. Google describes redirects, canonical hints and sitemaps (new tab) as signals used to choose a canonical URL. They must stay consistent with the site’s links; they are not a command that guarantees the search engine’s final choice.

In a fictional example, a menu leads to an old page while a new article uses its replacement address. The useful action is to examine the destinations, confirm the reference page and fix the link concerned. If the problem comes from a redesign, also see how to prepare old addresses in the guide to preparing a website redesign. Keep the planned changes in a table so you can check them once the work is done.

Reread each page without relying on what you already know about the business. Does the reader understand the topic, who it’s for and the next step? Can they tell an available service from a historical description? List the missing information before proposing additions. A better-written title doesn’t resolve a contradiction between an offer on display and its real availability.

Have the browser title, the page’s main heading and its content compared. They should describe the same topic. Google recommends descriptive, concise titles that are unique to each page (new tab), while explaining that the title shown in its results can be built from several sources. Ask for a specific fix if a title stays vague or presents an offer the page doesn’t explain.

Also look at the description planned for the page. It should summarize what the page is for without adding any promise. According to the documentation on snippets in Google results (new tab), the search engine can use the page’s content and, depending on the context, its meta description. Changing this field therefore doesn’t guarantee that every searcher will see exactly the text you proposed. Keep the page itself as the reference for the information presented.

Read the links within their paragraphs. Does their wording help predict what will open? An article linked to a service should explain why that service is relevant to the question at hand. A service page can, in turn, suggest the guide that helps prepare a request. Google’s SEO starter guide (new tab) recommends an understandable structure, useful content and links that give the reader context.

Add to your observations the problems you see on a phone: cut-off text, an inaccessible menu or an action that can’t be completed. Describe their effect on the visitor’s task without inferring a ranking penalty. For business information, use the plans and their availability as a checkpoint, then report any discrepancy to the person responsible. The audit should fix the consistency of the journey before adding sales arguments.

Write one sheet per problem with the page concerned, the finding, its evidence, the proposed fix and how to check it. Add the name of the person responsible and the information still needed. A recommendation such as “optimize the SEO” leaves the whole decision still to be made. A sheet that identifies a wrong link and its expected destination can be reviewed, then dealt with.

Order the actions according to their dependencies and their effects on how the site is used. If an essential public page doesn’t open, you need to understand that obstacle before reworking its description. If the offer isn’t confirmed, the person responsible must decide before a writer presents it. This order of work is a proposal for managing the project, not an automatic calculation of return.

Plan what will confirm each fix. After changing a link, open the page and follow that link. After a content change, have the facts reviewed by their owner. For an observation related to Google, use the appropriate report and distinguish the state known to the search engine from the current state of the site. Keep the date and the result of the check so you can understand the next steps.

Don’t replace these checks with a single score. A tool can flag something to examine without knowing your priorities, your offer or the reason for an access restriction. Ask what each alert means for the pages you selected at the start. If it has no relevant effect within that scope, record the reason for setting it aside instead of multiplying fixes with no goal.

Your preparation is complete when the priority pages, the available access, the findings and the people responsible are identified. Conclusions that are still uncertain should stay labelled as such. SEO guarantees neither a specific position nor the indexing of every page, as Google points out in its starter guide. You do, however, have a concrete file for deciding what work to commit to and for checking what was done.

On the Serafex side, to be clear: the SEO add-on plans are currently on hold and are not available for purchase. This file remains useful for discussing your pages, but preparing it confirms neither an order nor the start of a service. For an existing client, the plan and the services registered on the account remain the reference.

Let’s talk about the pages and observations to review.