Sample article from the content plan of seo.lordevo.com
This is a real, unedited sample written by our content writer for our own site, exactly as a customer would receive it (1446 words). Placeholders like [add your detail here] mark facts only the business can fill in. Back to the sample content plan.
Suggested meta title: What Is an SEO Audit? A Plain-English Guide | Lordevo · Meta description: Learn what an SEO audit checks, from indexing and links to speed and content, and how a prioritised fix plan helps you decide what to fix first. · Slug: what-is-an-seo-audit
What Is an SEO Audit? A Plain-English Explanation
An SEO audit checks your website the way a search engine sees it. It looks at whether Google can find your pages, read them and add them to its index, which is Google's list of pages it can show in search results. A good audit ends with a list of problems and a clear plan of what to fix first.
An SEO audit in one sentence
An SEO audit loads your pages like a search engine would, checks them against a set of rules, and tells you what's working, what's broken and how to fix it.
There are two common sizes:
- A one-page scan. It checks a single page, such as your home page, to spot obvious problems. Our free scan works this way. Bro, our AI SEO specialist, runs 20+ checks on one page in about a minute.
- A site-wide audit. It checks many pages and how they connect. Some problems only show up across the whole site, such as two pages with the same title, broken links between pages, or pages missing from your sitemap. Our Full SEO Audit crawls up to 50 pages with 60+ technical checks.
What an SEO audit looks at
Here are the check groups from our free scan, in everyday words.
Basics: HTTPS, redirects and status codes
- HTTPS: the secure version of your address (the padlock in the browser). The audit also checks that the old
http://address redirects, or sends visitors on, to thehttps://one. - Redirect chains: one address redirects to another, which redirects to yet another. Each extra step slows things down.
- Status code: a short code the server sends back, telling the browser whether the page loaded fine, moved, or wasn't found.
- Server response time, page size and compression: how fast your server answers, how heavy the page is, and whether it's squeezed down to load faster.
Content: titles, descriptions, headings and text
- Title and meta description length: the title and short summary that often show in Google results. Too long and they get cut off. Too short and they say little.
- H1 and heading order: the H1 is the main heading of the page. Headings should follow a sensible order, like chapters and sub-chapters.
- Image alt text: a short text description of each image, used by screen readers and search engines.
- Amount of text: pages with very little text can be hard for Google to understand.
Indexing: robots.txt, canonical tags and sitemap
These checks answer one big question: can Google find and index your pages?
- robots.txt: a small file that tells crawlers (search engine robots) which parts of your site they may visit.
- Robots meta and X-Robots-Tag: page-level instructions that can tell Google not to index a page. If one is set by mistake, the page can vanish from search.
- Canonical tag: points to the main version of a page. It helps when the same content can be reached at more than one address.
- XML sitemap: a list of your pages made for search engines.
- Structured data (JSON-LD): extra code that describes your content to search engines in a fixed format.
Mobile, speed and social sharing
- Viewport and language tags: the viewport tag helps your page fit a phone screen. The language tag tells search engines which language the page is in.
- Core Web Vitals: speed and stability measures used by Google. Our free scan gets these from Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Open Graph and X cards: tags that control how your page looks when it's shared on social media.
- Links and a broken-link sample: a check of some of the links on the page, to see if any are broken.
How the crawl works
Following your menu and sitemap
Bro follows redirects, reads the HTML (the code behind the page), checks robots.txt and the sitemap, and tests links.
In the Full SEO Audit, the crawl starts with your home page, then your menu and your sitemap, so the pages that matter most are checked first. Some sites build their content with JavaScript, in the browser. The audit renders those pages, so it sees the text a visitor would see.
Obeying robots.txt
A polite crawler respects your rules. If your robots.txt blocks a folder, Bro won't visit it. That respects your wishes and shows you what search engines are allowed to see.
A common mistake is a rule left over from building the site that blocks the whole site. An audit will catch this.
You can read more about how the scan and audit work.
What you get at the end
A score and health by category
Every check is marked pass, warning or fail. The free scan gives one page a score from 0 to 100.
The Full SEO Audit also gives a health score for each category: Indexability, Links, Content, Performance, Mobile, HTTPS and security, Structured data, Images, International, Social sharing and AI discoverability.
It also includes an indexability matrix. This is a table that shows the status, robots rules, canonical, sitemap and internal links for every page crawled.
A fix-first plan
The most useful part of an audit is the order of the fixes. The Full SEO Audit starts with an executive summary, a short overview that puts traffic risks first, then lists the top 10 fixes with the effort each one takes.
Why order the fixes by priority and effort?
- A page blocked from Google is more urgent than an image missing alt text.
- A quick, easy fix is worth doing now, even if it's small.
- A hard fix, like expanding thin pages, can be planned for later.
Want to see what this looks like? Here's a real SEO audit report of our own site, made by the same code that audits customer sites. It crawled 11 pages (limit 50) and found one issue type: thin content.
What an audit can't do
- It finds problems. It doesn't promise rankings. No honest audit can promise you a spot on Google. It shows what's getting in the way so you can fix it.
- Lab speed numbers are estimates. The Full SEO Audit measures speed in a test browser set up like a phone. These are lab estimates, not data from real visitors.
- Google's service is sometimes busy. The free scan gets speed data from Google PageSpeed Insights. If that free service is busy, that item may not show a result.
- It checks. It doesn't fix. You, or the person who looks after your website, make the changes. The audit tells you what to change and where.
- Limits apply. The free scan checks one page per scan, with up to 5 scans an hour. The Full SEO Audit covers up to 50 pages.
When to get one
Good times to run an audit:
- After a redesign, or after a move to a new website builder.
- After moving your site to HTTPS.
- When visitors from Google drop and you don't know why.
- Before you spend time or money on new content.
Not sure yet? Start with a free scan of one page. If it shows problems, or you want the whole site checked, the Full SEO Audit is the next step. It costs US$25, one-off. For ongoing checks, Monthly SEO Care costs US$35/month. We also offer website security checks. You'll find all of these on our pricing page.
FAQ
How long does an SEO audit take?
The free scan takes about a minute. The Full SEO Audit report usually arrives in your inbox within minutes, and always within 24 hours.
Do I need to install anything?
No. There's no setup and nothing to install. You paste your address and Bro does the checking. The free scan needs no sign-up.
Will an audit improve my rankings?
Not on its own, and we don't promise it will. An audit shows what may be holding your site back on Google. Fixing those problems is up to you, and results depend on many things outside any audit.
How many pages does an audit cover?
The free scan covers one page. The Full SEO Audit crawls up to 50 pages, starting with your home page, menu and sitemap.
What does it cost?
The free scan costs nothing. The Full SEO Audit is US$25, one-off. Monthly SEO Care is US$35/month.
Try it on your site
Run a free SEO check of your home page. It takes about a minute and gives you a score with plain-English fixes. When you want the whole site covered, order a Full SEO Audit. It checks up to 50 pages and gives you a fix-first plan.