A DIY SEO audit in one hour

A DIY SEO audit in one hour won't uncover everything, but it will catch the problems that most often keep a small business website off page one: pages Google can't index, missing or duplicated titles, slow mobile pages, a neglected Google Business Profile and service pages that don't say enough. You need a timer, a notepad and a few free tools.

Split the hour into six blocks of ten minutes. Don't fix anything while you audit; just write down what you find. At the end you'll sort the notes into a short list of fixes.

Before you start (2 minutes)

Open four tabs: your website, Google Search Console for your site, PageSpeed Insights and your Google Business Profile. Have your phone at hand. Write the three searches you most want to rank for at the top of your notepad, such as "dog groomer Boise", "mobile dog grooming", "cat grooming near me".

Block 1 (minutes 0 to 10): Is Google seeing your site?

• Search site:yourdomain.com. Roughly how many pages appear? Does that match the number of real pages on your site?
• In Search Console, open the Pages report. Note the number of indexed pages and the main reasons listed under "Why pages aren't indexed".
• Check the Manual actions and Security issues reports. Both should say no issues detected.
• Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and make sure it doesn't block the whole site.
• Confirm a sitemap is submitted and was read recently.

If the site isn't indexed at all, stop here. That is the only fix that matters right now, and why your website isn't showing up on Google lists the usual causes.

Block 2 (minutes 10 to 20): Titles and headings

Search site:yourdomain.com again and scan the blue titles Google shows for each page. Ask:

• Does every important page have its own title, not "Home" or your business name repeated?
• Do service pages name the service and, where relevant, the city?
• Are titles cut off mid-word because they're too long?

Then open your top five pages and check that each has one clear main heading that says what the page is about. A home page whose main heading is "Welcome!" is a missed chance.

Block 3 (minutes 20 to 30): Content that answers searches

Take your three target searches. For each one, find the page on your site that should rank for it. Write down:

• Does a dedicated page exist, or is the service buried in a list?
• Does the page explain what's included, who it's for, the area served, price guidance and next steps?
• Is it at least a few hundred words of useful text, not just photos and a slogan?
• Would you call this business if you landed on this page?

Then search each phrase on Google and open the top two competitor pages. Compare honestly. This is often where the real gap shows up.

Block 4 (minutes 30 to 40): Mobile and speed

Open your site on your phone, over mobile data, not Wi-Fi.

• Does the page show useful content quickly, or a spinner and a giant image?
• Can you find the phone number and tap it to call within a couple of seconds?
• Do pop-ups block the content?
• Is the text readable without zooming?

Run your home page and one service page through PageSpeed Insights. Note the Core Web Vitals results for mobile. Don't chase a perfect score; look for red flags like very slow loading of the main content or elements that jump around.

Block 5 (minutes 40 to 50): Local signals

• Is your Google Business Profile complete: primary category, services, hours, photos, description?
• Do your business name, address and phone match exactly on the profile, the website footer, Yelp, Apple Maps and Bing?
• How many reviews do you have compared with the top three businesses in the map results for your main search? How recent are they?
• Does your site have structured data? Paste a page into Google's Rich Results Test to see if LocalBusiness markup is detected.

Block 6 (minutes 50 to 60): Search Console performance

Open the Performance report for the last three months and compare with the previous period.

• Which queries bring the most clicks? Are they the ones you care about?
• Which queries have many impressions but few clicks? Better titles and descriptions can help these quickly.
• Which pages lost clicks? Did anything change on them?

Turning notes into a fix list

Now sort what you found into three groups:

Most owners end up with two or three quick wins and one or two projects. The quick wins often take an evening. The projects are where a plan, and sometimes help, makes the difference.

A worked example

Say a dog groomer in Boise runs the hour and ends up with these notes: Block 1 shows 9 of 14 pages indexed; Block 2 shows four pages titled just with the business name; Block 3 shows that "mobile dog grooming" has no page of its own, only a line on the home page; Block 4 reveals a 4 MB photo on the home page; Block 5 finds an old phone number on Yelp; Block 6 shows "cat grooming" getting impressions but almost no clicks.

Sorted, that becomes: this week, rewrite four titles, compress the home page photo and fix Yelp. This quarter, build a mobile grooming page and a cat grooming page, then check in Search Console whether the five missing pages get indexed once they're linked from the menu. That's a realistic, finite list, and it came from sixty minutes of looking.

When an hour isn't enough

If your hour turned up many blockers, or nothing obvious while rankings still lag, it's time for a deeper look. My SEO audit covers the technical crawl, content, competitors, local rankings and links, and ends with a prioritized plan in plain English. For the technical side alone, the technical SEO checklist goes further than this hour can, and the local SEO checklist is the right follow-up if most of your issues showed up in Block 5.