SEO Audit Checklist: A Step-by-Step Guide to On-Page, Technical and Ecommerce Checks
Oct 30, 2026 · 24 min read
Each check explained on its own, sourced to Google's documentation and the 2025 Web Almanac. Written for the head of SEO who runs one structured audit every quarter and has to report what it found.

An SEO audit checklist is a fixed set of checks you run against a site to find what stops search engines from crawling, indexing, and correctly reading its pages. A useful one covers technical health, on-page elements, and the templates that carry most of your URLs, then turns the findings into ranked fixes with owners.
Any site crawler will hand you a long list of warnings. The audit is the part a tool cannot do: choosing which templates to check, and deciding which findings matter enough to fix this quarter.
This guide explains each check individually: what it is, why it matters, how to verify it, and what a pass looks like. The final sections add the checks for AI crawlers that Answer Engine Optimization depends on, and a way to rank what you find.
The downloadable SEO audit checklist turns this guide into a working sheet, with a pass condition and source for all 24 checks.
Key Takeaways
- Scope by template, not by URL: one broken template repeats the same fault on every page built from it. Check each page type and fix the template once.
- A 404 is often the right answer: Google's crawler documentation says URLs returning 4xx codes drop out of the index, which is what you want for a page that is gone. The defect is the internal link still pointing at it.
- Few checks are documented ranking factors: Google says Core Web Vitals "are used by our ranking systems" and that other page experience aspects "don't directly help your website rank higher." Most checks protect crawling, indexing, and how results display.
- Presence is rarely the failure: the 2025 Web Almanac found title tags on 98.6% of desktop pages. Duplicates, boilerplate, and contradictions between signals are what an audit catches.
- The report decides the audit's value: a finding without an impact rating, an effort estimate, and an owner stays on the list for another quarter.
What Is an SEO Audit, and When Should You Run One?
An SEO audit is a structured review of whether search engines can reach, index, and read a site's pages, and whether those pages match what searchers want. It ends in a report of ranked fixes, not a score.
Your audit tool already gives you hundreds of checks. That list is an input, not the audit. The real work is scoping the crawl and prioritizing what it finds.
Full Audit, Spot Check or Migration Audit
- Full audit: every section of this checklist, run once a quarter against every template.
- Spot check: one section, run after a release changes a template. A new pricing page layout gets the technical and on-page checks only.
- Migration audit: run before and after a domain, CMS, or URL change. Google's redirects guidance lists moving "your site to a new domain" as a main reason to redirect, so the redirect map is the core of this audit.
A Quarterly Cadence and the Triggers That Break It
A quarter suits most B2B sites because templates change on release cycles, not daily. That is this guide's reasoning, not a Google rule.
Run an unscheduled audit when one of these happens:
- A site migration, CMS change, or framework upgrade.
- A drop in Search Console clicks or indexed pages you cannot explain.
- A new template ships, such as a comparison hub or a marketplace category.
Before You Start: Tools, Data Access and Scope
Audits stall on access more often than on analysis. Collect logins and template owners before the first crawl, or half the findings arrive without anyone able to act on them.
Access You Need on Day One
- Search Console: full access to the domain property, for the Page indexing, HTTPS, and Core Web Vitals reports and the URL Inspection tool.
- Analytics: read access, so you can see which templates carry traffic and conversions.
- CMS and template owners: a named person who knows which template renders which URL and can change it.
- Server logs, if you can get them: they show what Googlebot actually requested, including URLs your crawler never finds.
- A site crawler: whichever one your team already licenses. Google's free PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse cover single-page performance checks.
Scope: Which Templates, Not Which URLs
List your templates first. A B2B site with thousands of URLs usually runs on a short list: home, product, pricing, blog post, docs article, comparison page, and listing pages if you run a marketplace.
Pick two or three URLs per template, plus your highest-traffic pages, and record every finding against its template. One template fix then closes the issue on every URL built from it.
Technical SEO Checklist: Crawlability, Indexing, Speed and Structure
This technical SEO checklist covers whether Google can reach, fetch, and index your pages. Run it in order: a page that returns an error never reaches the later checks, so status codes come first.
HTTP Status Codes: 200, 4xx and 5xx
What it is: the three-digit code a server returns with every response. 200 means success, 3xx a redirect, 4xx a client error, and 5xx a server error.
Why it matters in an audit: Google's guide to HTTP status codes says content from a 2xx response "may be considered for indexing," while "Google doesn't use the content from URLs that return 4xx status codes." 5xx and 429 errors "prompt Google's crawlers to temporarily slow down with crawling," and URLs that keep failing are eventually dropped from the index.
How to check it: crawl two or three URLs per template and export the status of every URL found. In Search Console, open the Page indexing report and read the rows for server errors and not-found pages.
What good looks like: every URL you link internally or list in a sitemap returns 200.
Common failures and the fix:
- Intermittent 5xx errors under load: take the URLs and timestamps to engineering. Google slows crawling for as long as they persist.
- 429 responses from a bot-protection layer: Google treats a 429 "as a signal that the server is overloaded." Review the CDN or firewall rules that throttle crawlers.
404 Errors and Soft 404s
What it is: a 404 means not found, and a 410 means gone. A soft 404 is a page that returns 200 while its content says "not found" or shows almost nothing.
Why it matters in an audit: Google's status-code guide treats every 4xx code except 429 the same way, so 404 and 410 lead to the same result for Google's crawlers. Indexed URLs that start returning 4xx are removed, and Search Console's Page indexing report help says "404 responses are not necessarily a problem, if the page has been removed without any replacement." A soft 404 hides that signal: when a 2xx page's content suggests "an empty page or an error message, Search Console will show a soft 404 error."
How to check it: read the not-found and soft 404 rows in the Page indexing report. Export every internal link that points at a 4xx URL. Request a made-up address such as /this-page-does-not-exist and confirm the server answers 404, not 200.
What good looks like: removed pages return 404 or 410, no internal link points at one, and unknown URLs return a real 404.
Common failures and the fix:
- Internal links to deleted pages: repoint each link to the live equivalent, or remove it.
- A "not found" template served with a 200: change the server response for that template to 404.
- A deleted page with a true successor: redirect it permanently instead, as the next check describes.
301 Redirects, Temporary Redirects and Redirect Chains
What it is: a redirect sends a request for one URL to another. Permanent redirects use 301 or 308; temporary ones use 302, 303, or 307. A chain passes through several hops before it lands, and a loop never lands.
Why it matters in an audit: Google's redirects guidance says permanent redirects "Show the new redirect target in search results" and temporary ones "Show the source page in search results." Google's status-code guide calls a 301 a "strong signal that the redirect target should be processed" and a 302 a "weak" one. Google's crawlers "follow up to 10 redirect hops" by default, and "a server side redirect has the highest chance of being interpreted correctly by Google."
How to check it: export every redirect your crawler finds with its hop count and final status. When you check a moved page in Search Console, inspect the final URL directly, because Google's status-code guide notes that its Inspection Tools don't follow redirects.
What good looks like: every moved page uses one server-side permanent redirect straight to its closest equivalent, and internal links point at the final URL.
Common failures and the fix:
- A 302 left on a permanent move: change it to a 301 or 308.
- Chains built up over several migrations: point every old URL straight at the final target.
- Bulk redirects to the homepage: map each URL to its real equivalent, or let it return 404 when none exists.
HTTPS and Mixed Content
What it is: HTTPS encrypts the connection between browser and server using a TLS certificate. Mixed content is an HTTPS page that loads scripts, styles, or other resources over plain HTTP.
Why it matters in an audit: Google's page experience guidance asks site owners, "Are your pages served in a secure fashion?" Its canonical guidance says Google prefers HTTPS pages as canonical unless "The HTTPS page has an invalid SSL certificate," "contains insecure dependencies (other than images)," "redirects users to or through an HTTP page," or carries a canonical link to the HTTP page.
How to check it: open Search Console's HTTPS report. Request the http:// version of one URL per template and confirm a single redirect to HTTPS. Check the browser's security panel for mixed-content warnings, and confirm the certificate covers every host variant you serve.
What good looks like: every HTTP URL redirects once to HTTPS, the certificate is valid for every host, and no page loads insecure dependencies. The 2025 Web Almanac found HTTPS on 91.7% of desktop pages, so a failure here puts you behind the baseline.
Common failures and the fix:
- HTTPS-to-HTTP redirects or a bad certificate: fix these first. Google says they "cause Google to prefer HTTP very strongly. Implementing HSTS cannot override this strong preference."
- HTTP URLs left in the sitemap or hreflang annotations: replace them with the HTTPS versions.
- No HSTS header: Google lists "Implement HSTS" among the actions that reinforce its HTTPS preference.
HTTP Response Headers That Affect Indexing
What it is: the lines a server sends before the HTML. Three matter in an audit: the status line, the X-Robots-Tag header, and a Link header carrying rel="canonical".
Why it matters in an audit: Google's robots meta tag specification says "Any rule that can be used in a robots meta tag can also be specified as an X-Robots-Tag." A noindex in a header removes a page from search even when its HTML looks clean. Google also supports a canonical in the HTTP header, including for non-HTML files such as PDFs, and recommends that you "choose one of these and go with that" rather than sending both.
How to check it: open the browser's network panel on one URL per template and read the response headers. Repeat for PDFs and other downloadable files. Headers never appear in the page source, so a source-only review misses them; the 2025 Web Almanac found X-Robots-Tag on just 0.6% of desktop sites.
What good looks like: no noindex header on any page you want indexed, and any header canonical agrees with the HTML canonical.
Common failures and the fix:
- A staging noindex header carried into production: remove it at the server or CDN, then resubmit the sitemap. Google's URL Inspection help says a sitemap is "your best choice" for getting many updated pages recrawled.
- A noindex on a URL that robots.txt also blocks: Google says these rules can be followed "only if crawlers are allowed to access the pages that include these settings." Unblock the URL so the rule can be read.
- Header and HTML canonicals that disagree: keep one method and delete the other.
Canonical Tags and Duplicate URLs
What it is: a rel="canonical" link names the preferred URL among duplicates, such as versions with tracking parameters, a trailing slash, or a different host.
Why it matters in an audit: Google lists its canonical methods "in order of how strongly they can influence canonicalization": redirects first, then rel="canonical" links ("A strong signal"), then sitemap inclusion ("A weak signal"). Declaring a canonical consolidates signals such as links into one URL. Google generally crawls the canonical page more often and duplicate versions less often.
How to check it: compare each page's declared canonical with its own URL in a crawler export. For priority pages, URL Inspection in Search Console shows the canonical you declared next to the one Google selected. Compare the raw HTML with the rendered page, because JavaScript can change the tag.
What good looks like: every indexable page carries a self-referencing canonical with an absolute URL, duplicates point at the preferred version, and the sitemap lists the same URLs.
Common failures and the fix:
- A canonical rewritten by JavaScript after render: Google asks you to "make sure that JavaScript doesn't change the canonical link element." The 2025 Web Almanac measured this change on 2.71% of desktop sites.
- robots.txt used to hide duplicates: Google says "Don't use the robots.txt file for canonicalization purposes." Use a canonical or a redirect.
- Relative canonical paths: switch to absolute URLs, which Google recommends.
Robots.txt and XML Sitemaps
What it is: robots.txt tells crawlers which paths they may request, and an XML sitemap lists the URLs you want crawled.
Why it matters in an audit: the 2025 Web Almanac found robots.txt returning 200 on 84.9% of sites and 404 on 13.3% of desktop sites. One wrong Disallow line can block an entire template.
How to check it: open /robots.txt. If the file exists, confirm it returns 200 and blocks no template you want crawled. A 404 is also valid when the site intends to set no crawl restrictions. Confirm the sitemap is submitted in Search Console and lists only canonical, HTTPS URLs that return 200. Rules for AI user agents have their own guide: robots.txt for AI crawlers.
What good looks like: no priority path disallowed, and no redirected, broken, or duplicate URL in the sitemap.
Page Speed and Core Web Vitals
What it is: three field metrics from real users. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures loading, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures interactivity, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability.
Why it matters in an audit: this is one of the few checks Google explicitly connects to ranking. Its page experience guidance says “Core Web Vitals are used by our ranking systems,” while warning that good results do not guarantee top rankings. The Web Vitals thresholds are LCP within 2.5 seconds, INP of 200 milliseconds or less, and CLS of 0.1 or less. Google assesses them at the 75th percentile, separately for mobile and desktop.
How to check it: start with Search Console's Core Web Vitals report, which groups URLs by status using real-user field data. Run PageSpeed Insights on one URL per template, then use Lighthouse to diagnose a failing page.
What good looks like: all three metrics in the good range at the 75th percentile, on mobile and desktop, for every template that carries traffic.
Common failures and the fix:
- Slow LCP on mobile: the most persistent of the three. The 2025 Web Almanac says LCP "continues to lag near 55–60% on mobile." Look first at hero image size and server response time.
- Layout shift from late-loading elements: reserve space for images, embeds, and banners before they load.
Mobile Display
What it is: whether a page renders, reads, and works on a phone.
Why it matters in an audit: Google's page experience self-assessment asks, "Does your content display well on mobile devices?" and "Do your pages avoid using intrusive interstitials?" Google points to Lighthouse, which "can help you identify a range of improvements to make related to page experience, including mobile usability."
How to check it: run Lighthouse in mobile mode on one URL per template, then load the same pages on a real phone. Compare the mobile and desktop versions for main content, headings, and internal links.
What good looks like: text reads without zooming, buttons work with a thumb, nothing covers the content on arrival, and mobile carries the same main content as desktop.
Common failures and the fix:
- Content dropped from the mobile template: restore it, so phone readers get the same page.
- A full-screen pop-up on arrival: replace it with a banner that leaves the content visible.
Site Structure and Crawl Depth
What it is: how pages link to each other, and how many clicks a page sits from the homepage.
Why it matters in an audit: Google advises site owners to "Design a site navigation structure and link between pages to help Google understand what is most important" in its ecommerce guidance, and the principle applies to any large site. Google publishes no click-depth limit, so set your own and audit against it.
How to check it: read your crawler's click-depth report for each priority template. Compare the URLs in your sitemap with the URLs the crawler found through links; anything in the sitemap but never linked is an orphan.
What good looks like: every priority page is reachable through ordinary HTML links within the depth your team set, and the sitemap holds no orphans.
Common failures and the fix:
- Pages reachable only through site search: link them from a category or hub page.
- Deep pagination hiding older items: follow Google's guide to pagination and incremental page loading, covered in the ecommerce section below.
Structured Data
One line in this audit: check that every template meant to carry markup has it and that it validates. The 2025 Web Almanac puts overall structured data usage at 50%. Which types to ship and how to validate them sit in the guide to schema markup for AI search.
On Page SEO Checklist: Titles, Headings, Content and Internal Links
This on page SEO checklist reads what each template says about itself. Technical checks prove Google can fetch the page; on-page checks prove the page describes itself clearly and consistently.
Title Tags
What it is: the <title> element in the page head. Google uses it, among other sources, to build the title link shown in results.
Why it matters in an audit: Google's title link guidance says to "Write descriptive and concise text for your <title> elements." It also says "there's no limit on how long a <title> element can be," though the displayed link is truncated "typically to fit the device width." It warns against keyword stuffing and "repeated or boilerplate text."
How to check it: export every title from your crawler and sort for duplicates and empties. For your top pages, compare the title you wrote with the title link Google actually shows.
What good looks like: a unique, descriptive title on every indexable page, with the brand added concisely, as Google advises. Do not audit against a character count; Google publishes none.
Common failures and the fix:
- Boilerplate titles across a template: Google's example is titling every page on a commerce site "Cheap products for sale." Build the title from the page's own name instead.
- Presence is not the problem: the 2025 Web Almanac found titles on 98.6% of desktop pages. Duplicates are what to hunt.
Meta Descriptions
What it is: the <meta name="description"> element, a short summary of the page.
Why it matters in an audit: Google's snippet guidance says "Snippets are primarily created from the page content itself," and that Google uses the meta description "if it might give users a more accurate description of the page than content taken directly from the page." There's no length limit, and descriptions made of "long strings of keywords" are "less likely to be displayed as a snippet."
How to check it: export descriptions from your crawler, then filter for missing and duplicate values on templates that earn search traffic.
What good looks like: a unique, plain-sentence description on every important page. The 2025 Web Almanac found descriptions on 67.7% of desktop pages, so gaps are common.
Common failures and the fix:
- One description repeated across a template: generate it from the page's own fields, such as product name and category.
- Keyword lists: rewrite them as one or two sentences a person would read.
Header Tags: H1 to H6
What it is: the heading elements that outline a page, from the H1 down through H2 and H3 sections.
Why it matters in an audit: Google lists "Heading elements, such as <h1> elements" among the sources it uses to build title links, so an H1 that contradicts the title gives Google two competing candidates. The 2025 Web Almanac found an H1 on 71% of desktop pages and a non-empty one on 66%.
How to check it: export each page's H1 from your crawler, then view the heading outline of one URL per template.
What good looks like: one visible H1 that matches the page's topic and agrees with its title, then H2s and H3s in a logical order. One H1 per page is a house convention for clarity; Google does not publish it as a rule.
Common failures and the fix:
- An empty H1 or a logo wrapped in one: move the H1 to the page's real title text.
- Headings used only for styling: switch them to styled paragraphs so the outline stays meaningful.
Content That Matches Search Intent
What it is: whether a page answers the query that brings people to it. Thin pages say too little to answer anything, and duplicate pages answer the same query twice.
Why it matters in an audit: no crawler can grade this, so a person has to. Duplicates also split signals, which Google's canonical guidance gives as a reason to consolidate them.
How to check it: in Search Console's Performance report, filter to one page and read its top queries. Read the page against them. Flag listing or tag pages with little unique text, and pairs of pages ranking for the same query.
What good looks like: each page’s main content answers its top queries, and no two pages duplicate the same search intent.
Common failures and the fix:
- Thin tag or archive pages: merge them into a stronger page, or set them to noindex.
- Near-duplicate pages: consolidate them with a redirect or a canonical. What to refresh, merge, or leave belongs to the content checks below.
Internal Links and Anchor Text
What it is: the links between your own pages, and the visible words each link uses.
Why it matters in an audit: Google's canonical guidance says "When linking within your site, link to the canonical URL rather than a duplicate URL." Its title link guidance lists "Text within links that point to the page" among its sources, so anchors describe their targets to Google as well as to readers.
How to check it: export internal links from your crawler and filter for targets that return 3xx or 4xx. Flag generic anchors such as "click here" and priority pages that receive few internal links.
What good looks like: every internal link points at a final, 200, canonical URL with an anchor that names what the reader will find.
Common failures and the fix:
- Links to redirected URLs after a migration: update each one to the final address.
- Generic anchors: rewrite them to describe the destination.
Image Alt Text
What it is: the alt attribute that describes an image in text.
Why it matters in an audit: Google's image SEO guidance says it uses alt text "along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image." Alt text also serves screen-reader users and works as anchor text when an image is a link.
How to check it: export images without alt text from your crawler and filter to content images: product shots, diagrams, and screenshots.
What good looks like: every informative image carries a short, accurate description. Decorative images can carry an empty alt="", which is standard accessibility practice.
Common failures and the fix:
- Missing alt on diagrams and product images: write one plain sentence describing what the image shows.
- Keyword-stuffed alt text: Google warns it "may cause your site to be seen as spam." Rewrite it as a description.
Ecommerce SEO Checklist: Category, Product and Marketplace Pages
For B2B teams, this ecommerce SEO checklist applies wherever a site lists many similar items: a marketplace, a partner directory, a template gallery, or a product catalog. Google's ecommerce best practices split the topic into sub-guides on URL structure, site structure, pagination, and structured data.
A hypothetical to keep in mind: a B2B marketplace lists 3,000 vendors, with filters for region, category, integration, and rating. Every filter combination can become its own URL, so the listing set behaves like a far larger site.
Category and Listing Pages
- Check: each category page has its own title, H1, and a short introduction, not the same text with a different name swapped in.
- Check: every item on the page is reachable through a crawlable HTML link, including items on later pages. Google's guide to pagination and incremental page loading notes that its crawlers "don't 'click' buttons," so infinite scroll and "load more" need plain <a href> links behind them.
- Pass: a crawler starting at the category page finds every item in it.
Product and Listing Detail Pages
- Check: each listing has unique main content. Variants of one item, such as plan tiers or regions, point a canonical at the main version.
- Check: ended listings return 404 or 410 when nothing replaces them, and redirect permanently when a successor exists.
- Check: listing templates carry the structured data Google's ecommerce sub-guide on structured data describes.
- Pass: no indexable listing duplicates another, and no ended listing returns 200 with an empty page.
Faceted Navigation on Large Listing Sets
Google's guide to faceted navigation says the most common implementation, based on URL parameters, "can generate infinite URL spaces." It names two costs: overcrawling, and "Slower discovery crawls," because crawl time goes to useless URLs instead of new ones.
- Check: which filter URLs Google crawls, using server logs or Search Console's Page indexing report.
- If filter pages do not need to rank: prevent crawling of those parameters, for example with robots.txt Disallow rules, as Google's guide shows. Google adds that a canonical to the main version "may, over time, decrease the crawl volume of non-canonical versions."
- If some filter pages should rank: follow the best practices Google lists for crawlable facet URLs, such as standard parameter separators.
- Pass: empty filter combinations return a 404. Google's own example: with no green fish in stock, "users as well as crawlers should receive a 'not found' error."
Content and Off-Site Checks
The last classic checks look beyond single pages: whether the site covers its topic, and what other sites say through links.
Coverage Gaps and Decayed Pages
Coverage gaps: list the questions buyers ask across the purchase and mark which ones the site answers. Mapping that coverage is the core of topical authority.
Decayed pages: in Search Console, compare clicks and impressions per page across two equal periods and flag pages in steady decline. Deciding whether to refresh, merge, or leave each one is a separate job with its own audit template, covered in the guide to content refresh.
The Link Profile in One Pass
Open Search Console's Links report and read three lists: top linking sites, top linked pages, and top linking text.
- Check: external links that point at URLs now returning 404. Redirect each URL to its closest live equivalent.
- Check: linking text that has nothing to do with your business. Flag it for review, but do not treat it as proof of manipulation.
- Pass: your most-linked pages all return 200, and the anchors describe what you do.
Building better links, including how to get high quality backlinks from sites your buyers read, is a project of its own and sits outside this audit.
Add the AI Search Layer: Checks for AI Crawlers and Citations
A classic SEO audit can inspect backlinks, but it still centers on your domain. AI assistants add a second question: whether buyers encounter your brand in answers assembled from sources you do not control. The guide to what AEO and SEO share maps where the two disciplines diverge.
Can AI Crawlers Reach the Pages?
- Check: your robots.txt rules for each AI user agent match what you intend. Training crawlers and search crawlers are separate agents, covered in the guide to robots.txt for AI crawlers.
- Check: your CDN or firewall does not answer AI agents with 403 or 429 codes you never chose to send.
- Check: whether you publish an llms.txt file, and who owns it. Record it; do not treat it as a fix.
Do AI Answers Name You?
This is the half a site audit cannot see. A page can pass every check above while ChatGPT or Perplexity names three competitors and not you, drawing on review sites and threads you do not control. Testing that takes a fixed prompt set and a record of each answer; the method is in the guide on how to run an AI visibility audit.
How to Prioritize Findings and Report Them
An audit is judged by the decisions in its report, not by how many checks it ran. Rate every finding the same way, then sort.
Impact, Effort and Owner
- Impact: High if it blocks indexing of a template or affects pages that carry pipeline; Medium if it weakens how pages display or get crawled; Low otherwise.
- Effort: Low for a configuration or template change, High for a structural or platform change.
- Owner: one named team, never "SEO" alone, because most fixes ship through engineering or content.
| Example finding | Impact | Effort | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| noindex response header on the product template | High | Low | Engineering |
| Filter URLs crawled at scale on a listing set | High | High | Engineering |
| Internal links pointing at redirected URLs | Medium | Medium | Content and engineering |
| Mixed content on documentation pages | Medium | Low | Engineering |
| Duplicate meta descriptions on blog posts | Low | Low | Content |
Fix High impact and Low effort first, then schedule High impact and High effort work into the next release plan. Low impact findings wait until a template is already being changed.
What the Report Should Contain
- Scope: the templates checked, the sample URLs, the date range, and the data sources.
- Findings by template: each with its evidence, such as the URL, the status code, or a screenshot.
- A pass or fail line for every check in this guide, so the next quarter can compare.
- The ranked fix list: impact, effort, owner, and a target date per finding.
- What was not checked, and why.
- The re-check date for each fix after it ships.
A classic audit tells you whether the site is technically sound. It cannot tell you whether AI answers name the brand or which third-party sources shape those answers. Klarivo’s homepage states that split: "Most teams keep their SEO agency; AEO covers the half of discovery a website cannot influence." Klarivo is a managed AEO and Reddit service, and it runs that off-site program: communities, reviews, listicles, and the measurement loop that shows whether an answer moved.
Keep the audit with your SEO team and add the missing half. Klarivo Monitor tracks five engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Grok), reports top citation sources by domain and query-level mention rates, and updates on a schedule you control. To see how your brand appears across search and AI, get your free Search & AI visibility report. To talk through the gaps it finds, book a Klarivo discovery call.
FAQ
How long does an SEO audit take?
Google publishes no benchmark, and the honest answer depends mostly on access. Getting Search Console, analytics, and a template owner lined up can take longer than running the checks. Scoping by template keeps the checking time tied to the number of templates rather than the number of URLs.
Can I run an SEO audit for free?
Yes, for most checks. Search Console covers indexing, HTTPS, Core Web Vitals, URL Inspection, and links, while PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse test individual pages. What the free tools do not do is crawl your whole site link by link, so structure, duplicate, and internal-link checks go slower without a crawler.
How is an SEO audit different from an AI visibility audit?
An SEO audit checks whether search engines can crawl, index, and read your site. An AI visibility audit checks what AI answers say about your brand and which sources they draw on.
What should I fix first after an audit?
Anything that removes a whole template from search: a noindex header, a robots.txt block, or a server error. One fix there restores every URL built on that template.
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