A website can look fine and still fail in search. It happens in a quiet way. Pages load. The menu works. Leads still slow down. You check rankings and see the same pattern. Good pages sit on page two. Product pages vanish. Blog posts never move. You can spend weeks writing and tweaking, and search engines still skip the site.
An SEO audit fixes the guesswork.
It shows what search engines can crawl, what they index, and what they ignore. It also shows what wastes time, like broken links, messy redirects, and duplicate URLs that split signals.
This guide walks through how to do an SEO audit, and 11 technical checks that decide whether the site gets seen.
TLDR
If the site cannot get crawled, it cannot rank.
Start with these checks first.
- Open robots.txt and confirm it does not block important pages
- Check indexability and remove noindex from pages meant to rank
- Crawl the site and sort by 4xx, 5xx, and redirects
- Fix internal links that point to 301s and 404s
- Remove redirect chains so every URL lands in one step
- Confirm canonical tags point to the right main URL
- Clean up duplicate URL versions (www, http, trailing slash, parameters)
- Check mobile pages for missing content and links
- Review Core Web Vitals groups and fix the worst template first
- Confirm XML sitemap lists only 200, canonical URLs
- Re-crawl after fixes and confirm the issues actually disappeared
What is an SEO Audit?
It is checking a website to find ways to make it better for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, and others. During the audit, your goal is to look for technical problems, content issues, and link-related problems that might be affecting how well you perform on search engines.
Also Read: SEO Audit Pricing: How Much Does an SEO Audit Cost in 2026?
How to Do an SEO Audit for Free in 2026?
Pick an SEO Crawler
You need an SEO crawler, which can be on your PC or in the cloud. An SEO crawler will go to every page of your website and provide you with details about each one. Desktop and cloud-based crawlers each have their advantages and disadvantages, but you should only compare them when you have more experience.
If you’re new to SEO, it’s important to learn about running crawls. Screaming Frog is a tool you install on your computer. The free version can be used to check 500 web pages. After you finish, the results will be saved on your computer.
If you need a cloud-based crawler, we suggest trying OnCrawl. It gives you a free trial for 14 days (you don’t need a credit card) where you can crawl up to 1000 pages. If you want another choice, you can look at Content King. They’re nice enough to let you try it for free (no credit card needed).
Check Robots.txt File
This lets crawlers know which pages on your site can be visited. It helps prevent too many requests from slowing down your website. Google says this tool shouldn’t be used to block a website from appearing on Google.
However, we will see later that Bath&Body Works does use it to control how their pages are accessed and to keep some pages from showing up in results pages.
- Make sure your robots.txt file is working correctly. If it’s not, Google might not be able to explore your website, and that means your site won’t appear in search results.
- Make sure your file has a link to your XML Sitemap. Bath&Body Works has made these sitemaps:
You can see the complete Bath&Body Works robots.txt file here. If your website doesn’t have one, you can find out how to make a robots.txt file here. We’ll discuss allowing and not allowing things later in this post.
Check the Status of Your Index
Go to Google and search for “site:yoursitename.com”. You can see how many pages Google has found. Does this match the number of pages you have published? You need to make sure your pages don’t have a no-index tag.
No index means you don’t want that page to appear on search engines. Sometimes, you may not want a page to appear, but be careful of important pages that have a no-index tag.
We’re going to check Bath&Body Works next, and a crawler tool will show us the pages that have a no-index tag. With Google Search Console, you can also find pages that are not indexed in that dashboard.
Crawl Your Site
We will be looking through 500 pages of the Bath&Body Works website. After you download and install Screaming Frog, open the app. At the top, you’ll find a place to type in a website. Please enter your website, which is bathandbodyworks.com. Press start and wait till it completes.
Review the Response Codes
If you’re new to SEO, you might not know about technical mistakes. So, we’ll begin with a basic topic, response codes, and then move on to some more advanced issues.
- 1xx status codes are messages that give information
- 2xx codes mean everything worked well
- 3xx redirection codes are ways to send someone to a different web page
- 4xx codes are errors that happen when something goes wrong on the user’s side
- 5xx codes are any messages that mean the server has an error and couldn’t load the page
The codes we really want to find are 404s. If you come across 404 errors, you should fix them. They impact how Google searches your site and how users experience it. You can see the response codes by clicking on the “response codes” tab at the top or by clicking on the “overview” tab on the right side.
We prefer to go to the response codes tab and arrange the status codes from the highest to the lowest. In the crawl we did of 500 pages, we found that Bath&Body Works has one 404 page.
During our search, we didn’t find any 302 response codes (which are temporary redirects). If we had found any, we would check the redirect to see if it should be made permanent.
Also known as changing the 302 redirect to a 301 redirect. If you have Google Search Console, you can find 404 pages there. Click on “Indexing” on the left side, and you will see a list of problems.
Check Internal Links for Errors
If you have 301s, 302s, or 404s, make sure that good pages don’t link to them.
Redirecting internal links
The website nike.com/fr/w/hommes-runing-chaussures-37v7jznik1zy7ok gives a 301 code. It takes you to nike.com/fr/w/hommes-running-chaussures-37v7jznik1zy7ok. But hold on, why does this matter?
From both users and Googlebot’s point of view, they go to page X and then get sent to page Y, which takes extra time. How can we solve this? In the Inlinks section of Screaming Frog, we can see this page has more than 50 internal links. Some of these links come from important pages like the homepage and other category pages.
Changing every single link will take a lot of time. But if we scroll to the right, we can find out what words are used for the internal link. For the Women Outlet Shoes, it is “shoes”. Now it’s much simpler to locate this internal link.
We just have to visit a page that connects to this page and find a spot where “shoes” is mentioned and linked. We discovered it. It’s under “extra 50% off outlet” > “shoes”.
To solve this problem, we will simply swap the links.
Redirecting internal links to 4XX codes
After looking at the redirects that got internal links, we want to check if our 404 pages also get any internal links. It’s not a good idea to send Google, Bing, or possible customers to a page that doesn’t work.
We can see the website https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/g/body-care has over 50 links inside it with the anchor text Andrè Saraova written on them. It’s on the navigation again. In this situation, it’s a good idea to take this link out of the navigation.
The URL is showing a 404 error, and we have already agreed to redirect people to the kids category instead. If there are a lot of 404 errors, it would be a good idea to change the links so that users and crawlers like Googlebot, Bingbot, or Yandexbot go to a page that works (a page with a 200 response).
Check for Redirect Chains
Redirect chains look like this:
- Page A leads to Page B
- Page B leads to Page C
- Page C leads to Page D
- Page D leads to Page E
- The sequence stops and you are on Page E
The user had to wait for their browser to show all the redirects, and Googlebot had to go through a long process. To fix redirect chains, we will change the redirect for each URL so that it goes straight to the final destination.
- Page A will go straight to Page E
- Page B will go straight to Page E
- Page C will go straight to Page E
In Screaming Frog, you can easily see redirect chains. Click on ‘Reports’, then ‘Redirects’, and finally ‘Redirect Chains’ to see the chains and loops. If there are any, an Excel file will be created.
Also Read: Which one is better, canonical or 301?
Review Canonical Tags
If you’re new to SEO, you might want to stop reading here, but don’t worry. This part might be a bit long, but it’s very important.
- Picture Peter Griffin wearing a t-shirt that says “I am Peter Griffin”.
- Picture Peter Griffin with 3 clones of himself.
- All the clones are wearing t-shirts that show who the real Peter Griffin is.
That’s how canonical tags function. A canonical tag (rel=canonical) is a way to inform crawlers that a certain webpage URL is the main version of that page. The tag shows which version of a page you want people to see in results pages.
If a page doesn’t link to another page, it’s a good idea to add a canonical tag that refers back to itself. Canonical tags help fix issues with duplicate content. Now, let’s take a look at Bath&Body Works.
How to look for problems with canonical tags?
In Screaming Frog, click on “Canonicals” in the navigation. Then, look on the right side for “Overview”. We see that every page has all the tags it needs and only one tag each, which is a good thing.
If any pages are missing their main tags, we would fix them to point to themselves or to a similar page, like in the example below. Next, we will check the “canonicalized” URLs to see if we really need the tag.
Let’s check out: https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/c/hand-soaps-sanitizers/foaming-hand-soap
- This page has a canonical tag that leads to https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/g/hand-soaps-sanitizers.
- This page also has a robots tag that allows it to be included in search results and lets crawlers follow the links on it.
- This means that when the Google bot checks the page, it learns that bathandbodyworks is the main focus.
If we could use Google Search Console, we could check both URLs to understand what’s happening and see if Google is following our instructions. We could also see how many visitors each page gets and what words are helping it show up in results pages.
But we don’t have that. We will use another SEO tool to check again. For your SEO audit, we highly suggest using Google Search Console. If you can’t access it, or if you’re doing the audit for a job application or as a side task, you might want to consider paying for a month of one of the SEO tools.
Ubersuggest lets you do 3 free searches every day. After you make an account, go to Traffic Estimation and then click on Traffic Overview. Enter your website link and choose your country.
After looking at both URLs, we found that /foaming-hand-soap/ doesn’t show up in results pages for any keywords, but /hand-soaps-sanitizers/ does. In this situation, our canonical tag is not a problem.
Now check the other pages. While you are looking into things, you might see that both the main version and the master are showing up for keywords and producing content. So now what? we need to handle duplicate content.
How to handle duplicate content?
A canonical tag helps handle duplicate content, but we are here to discuss what to do if it doesn’t work. You need to figure out why the main page is getting visitors, there could be many reasons for this. For example:
- Server misconfigurations: your website might have different versions, like one with “www” and one without it, or one that uses HTTP and another that uses HTTPS
- URLs with a slash at the end and without a slash at the end
- There are many options to choose from
If your duplicate content isn’t due to parameters and filters, a good way to fix it is by using a 301 redirect to send users from the less preferred version of your page to the version you like better.
For example, if your server is set up incorrectly, you need to make sure that either the “www” address or the non-“www” one of your website redirects to the version you want people to see.
Even though Google is following the main link for hand-soaps-sanitizers, we don’t understand why they have the foaming-hand-soap page. This can be redirected to /hand-soaps-sanitizers/. If our duplicate content is due to parameters and filters, we need to find another solution.
How to handle duplicate content from filters and sorting?
One of the best ways is to use a canonical tag, but there’s something else you can try too. Let’s work on your robots.txt file. On https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/g/all-candles, you can sort and filter items using different options.
In the Bath&Body Works robots.txt, they are telling Googlebot not to visit that page. They have added the following to their robots.txt file.
Disallow: /*?*v_size*
This means preventing Google from accessing any page that has a size filter and also using a canonical tag on:
https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/g/all-candles?filters=%26refine%3Dc_olfactiveSpace%3DBotanicals%2520%2526%2520Blooms which points to https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/g/all-candles
It fixes Bath&Body Works’ problem of having the same content shown more than once. If you have an online store, this method could work really well for you.
Finding the Right Keywords
You want to make sure your pages focus on the right words, and all parts of your page should match those words, which includes:
- The web address
- Title tag
- Meta description
- Headers
- Content on the page
You should also consider the language spoken in the country you’re in. For example, in the UK, the word “trainers” is searched three times more than “sneakers.” In Canada, people search for sneakers a lot more. It makes sense to focus on the word “trainers” in the UK and the word “sneakers” in Canada.
Using Keywords in URLs
Make sure your URLs are short, clear, and include a keyword. For example, we can see the link https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/c/laundry-care/all-laundry is about laundry products.
Tips for Creating Good Page Titles
Add an important keyword, and make sure your page title is under 60 characters. “Men’s Vests| Bath&Body Works” is a good title, and “Women’s Tennis Shoes | Bath&Body Works” is also nice.
Duplicate Page Titles
Click on the tab “page titles” to see the problems. Bath&Body Works has 45 page titles that are the same. These are handled with special tags and a file, so they aren’t causing problems. If they were causing problems, we would try to fix it using our duplicate content plan mentioned earlier.
Missing Page Titles
This is simple: if your page doesn’t have a title, you should add a title that fits the page.
More than 60 Characters
Long page titles will get cut off on mobile devices, so keep your titles shorter than 60 characters.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions should be up to 160 characters. They are used to get people to click on your link when they see it in results pages. Make it interesting enough so the user will want to click on it. For example,
Discover great prices on Bath&Body Works bath soaps and scented candles online at all Bath&Body Works outlets. Get free shipping if you spend over $50, and you can return items for free.
Headers
Use only one H1 tag on each page, and make sure it includes an important keyword. For example, on the Men-Bags page, the main title is MEN · BAGS. A simpler title would be Men’s Bags.
Simon’s Canada came in first place for the search “Men’s Bags,” and that is their top result. In your content, you should use different headers. You can have more than one H2 header, H3s and H4s.
Headers make your content clearer and more focused. For example, a good H2 header could be “Buy Men’s Bags on Sale”. H2, H3, and H4 headings are really important when you write long content like blog posts.
On-Page Content
Don’t overload your content with keywords just to include them. Always aim to speak in a way that feels normal. For example, how often did we use the term SEO audit in this article. Not very often, right.
We added it to the URL, the main heading (H1), the subheadings (H2), and mentioned it a few times where it made sense. Google likes content that is made for people, not for getting noticed by search engines.
This information comes from Google, and we can say it’s true because we have years of experience in SEO. You need to compare the information on your pages to what your competitors have.
For instance, if all the top results on the first page have more than 2000 words with detailed information, you probably won’t rank well if your content only has 300 words. Let’s check out this page: https://www.bathandbodyworks.com/g/gifts.
When we look up “women’s gift guide,” we find mostly magazines in the results. This means it will be very difficult for Bath&Body Works to show up on the first page for this keyword. The page needs some big changes.
searchvolume.io is a tool that lets you do a few free searches. The only issue is that the data comes from the USA, but we can still use it to see trends.
- Women’s gift guide = 2.4
- Gift ideas for women = 74
- Gifts for women = 110
Now we can make some choices.
Suggested URL: /gifts-for-women
Suggested Page Title: 50 Great Gifts for Women 2025 | Bath&Body Works
Suggested Meta Description: Check out great gift ideas for women this holiday season. Get half off certain styles using code “HOLIDAY”, from trendy looks to everyday basics.
Suggested H1: 50 Great Gifts for Women in 2025
We notice that all the magazines have lists in their articles. Bath&Body Works has made a page that shows different types of products. We would change this into a list of 50 items. These could be 50 of their best-selling items or products they want to sell quickly.
We will also write a short introduction of about 150 to 200 words about giving gifts to men during the holidays. This introduction will also allow us to connect to other important parts of Bath&Body Works’ website.
After the introduction, we will list 50 products. The page will now better fit what the user is looking for and is more likely to show up in results pages for that keyword, based on what other results are showing.
Off-Page SEO
This refers to actions you can take outside your own website to improve its ranking in results pages. This includes things like getting backlinks from other websites, engaging on social media, and building your online reputation.
The goal is to increase your site’s visibility and authority. Pages with good backlinks usually rank higher than those that don’t have them. Getting backlinks is known as link building, and it can be tricky.
If you do it incorrectly, you might get punished by Google. That’s why we won’t teach you about building links. Instead, we will show you how to compare your website with your competitors. Off-page SEO is important enough to have its own article, but here are some key points you should know:
Domain Authority (DA): It is a score that shows how likely you are to rank high on results pages. A higher score means the site is more trusted and has a better chance of showing up at the top of results pages.
Domain Rating (DR): It is a score that shows how strong a website is compared to others.
Authority Score (AS): It is a way to measure how trustworthy or influential a website is.
These are all fake numbers created by SEO tools. But they can show you how your website is doing. To follow our rule of only suggesting free tools, you can check Domain Authority here. Moz lets you search for free 3 times each day.
Just type in your website address, and you’ll get a score. Click this link to see the numbers for Bath&Body Works. You should check how your website is doing compared to some main competitors to understand your position.
Review XML Sitemap
XML sitemaps are lists of web pages you want Google to visit. They help crawlers understand what your website has and how to find it. Here are some usual places:
- https://www.website.com/sitemap.xml
- https://www.website.com/sitemap1.xml
- https://www.website.com/sitemap_index.xml
Make sure your sitemap has links that work properly and show a 200 status code. You need to locate your XML sitemap, use a crawler to go through it, and then change the URLs.
What Can You Gain From an SEO Audit?
Better Website Performance
An SEO audit finds and fixes problems on your website that can make it slow and harm how users feel when they visit. This includes issues like broken links, slow loading pages, bad mobile setup, and crawl mistakes.
Google looks at how well a webpage works and how fast it loads when deciding where to rank it. So, fixing these problems can help your site show up higher in results pages. Also, a quicker website makes users happier, lowers the number of people who leave quickly, and makes people stay on your site longer.
Fixing the issues makes the website work better and faster. A thorough check can show issues you didn’t know about, like duplicate pages, unnecessary code, or slow redirects. From a business perspective, doing better usually means getting more sales, more people interacting, and more visitors coming back.
Improving technical performance isn’t just about making search engines happy; it’s also about making the experience faster and easier for users. This helps build loyalty and makes people do what you want them to do.
Improved Search Engine Positions
SEO audits can help you get higher placements in results pages. The audit looks at parts of a webpage, like title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and how keywords are used, to make sure they follow good guidelines.
It also checks your backlinks, internal links, and website layout to find problems that are stopping your site from doing well. A good SEO audit doesn’t just point out issues; it also gives practical fixes. By using these, you might get better rankings as time goes on.
This means more people will see it, click on it, and in the end, more visitors will come. Doing SEO audits regularly helps you stay ahead of your competitors and keeps your website in good shape with Google’s changing rules.
Higher rankings lead to more people knowing your brand, getting more interest from potential customers, and the chance to earn more money. You have to work consistently to maintain the ranking.
Enhanced User Experience
User experience is very important for SEO today, and an audit can help point out where your website may need improvement. Google now rates websites by how easy they are to use.
This means not just how good the information is, but also how simple it is to move around the site, how fast it loads, and how well it works on different devices. The audit looks at how easy it is to navigate your website, how easy the content is to read, and how well the design works on different devices.
For instance, a complicated menu or annoying pop-up ads might be driving visitors away without you knowing. The audit helps you solve problems and make it easier for visitors to use.
A positive experience on your website makes people want to stay longer, look at more pages, and take action, like buying something, filling out a form, or signing up for your newsletter.
Ways to Optimize Content
SEO audits check your website’s content to show you what is working well and what is not. This means looking at how often keywords are used, finding old or weak pages, and pointing out any duplicate or low-quality content that might be hurting your rankings.
The audit can show chances to find new keywords or improve content to match what users are looking for. You might be on the second page for important terms, a small change could move you to the first page.
You can find topics that your competitors talk about but you don’t. This helps plan new content and improve what’s already there. Improving your existing content is a cheap way to increase organic traffic because it makes use of what you already have.
When your content is easy to understand, important, and organized, it helps your website rank better and makes people trust your brand more. This means they are more likely to interact with you.
Competitive Edge
An SEO audit shows you how well your website is doing and compares it to your competitors. They show you what keywords your competitors are using, where they get their backlinks, and what content is helping them succeed.
You can find both dangers and chances. If a competitor has old content that’s doing well, you can take advantage of that by making something better. Or maybe they are getting links from places you haven’t used yet.
With this knowledge, you can change your plan to do better than them. Keeping up with regular checks helps you react quickly to changes in how algorithms work or shifts in what people want in the market.
In a busy online world, a good SEO plan, based on information from a thorough check-up, can help you stand out. It’s not just about keeping up; it’s about moving ahead and staying ahead for a long time.
Wrapping Up
An SEO audit is not just for technical issues; it’s a helpful way to find problems, discover ways to grow, and stay ahead. An audit helps make your website work better, rank higher in results pages, improve user experience, and improve your content plan.
It gives you useful suggestions that can greatly increase your visibility online. It doesn’t matter if your website is new or a few years old; SEO problems can happen over time. Regular checks help make sure your site follows the best practices for search engines.
Today, businesses that don’t pay attention to SEO audits could get left behind in a tough market. But people who accept these ideas get a better sense of their strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to create smarter and more effective marketing plans.
If you want more people to visit your website, get more sales, or make your site better for visitors, doing an SEO audit is the first step to achieving long-term success online. You can try doing an audit on your own, learn the basics and once you grow your business, you can work with an expert to do the audit.
FAQs
How often should I audit my website’s SEO?
It’s best to do a complete SEO check every 3 to 6 months, depending on how big and complicated your website is. For small websites or ones that don’t update much, checking them two times a year might be enough. If your website changes often, adds new content regularly, or has had fewer visitors, doing audits more often is helpful. Whenever Google makes a big update to its search system, it’s a good time to check how well your website is doing in search results.
Can I audit my website for SEO on my own?
Yes, you can do a simple SEO audit by yourself, especially if you know how to use SEO tools. Many of the tools help identify common problems like broken links, how fast pages load, if they work well on mobile devices, and how well keywords are doing. For a better understanding, especially of technical SEO and how you compare to competitors, it’s usually a good idea to get help from a skilled SEO expert. DIY is a good beginning, but expert checks are even better.
How long does it take to do an SEO audit?
How long an SEO audit takes depends on how big and complex your website is. A simple check for a small website can take a few hours, but a detailed check for a big online store might take several days. Things that can change how long it takes include how many pages there are, how detailed the audit is, and if manual checks are required. Some tools can help do parts of the work automatically, but figuring out what the results mean and making a plan takes more time.
Will an SEO audit quickly improve my rankings?
No, an SEO audit won’t fix your rankings by itself, but it will help you find out what needs to be fixed to make them better. Think of the audit as a check-up, not a treatment. After you make the suggested changes, like adjusting page titles, fixing errors, speeding up your pages, or rewriting low-quality content, you will start to notice improvements over time. SEO takes time to show results, and how fast and well you respond to the audit’s findings will affect your success.
What should I do after auditing my website for SEO?
After finishing the SEO review, the next step is to list the important changes to make and start putting them into action. Begin by tackling important technical problems, such as repairing broken links, making your site faster, and ensuring it works well on mobile devices. Next, focus on on-page parts like making titles better, improving the content, and adjusting your keyword choices. Make a plan for what to share that fills in the missing parts, and think about rejecting bad backlinks if necessary.
