When conducting an SEO audit, examine the page-level elements of your website. Here are several areas to check and ways to assess them.
1. Crawl Your Website
Crawl the site with Screaming Frog.
Check the following to ensure these elements are current and aligned with your SEO strategy:
- The keyword appears in the title tag.
- The title tag starts with the keyword.
- The keyword appears in the description tag.
- The keyword appears in the H1.
- The keyword is the most frequently used phrase in the document.
2. E-A-T: Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness
Google updates its quality rater guidelines each year.
These concern Google's human raters and their assessment of page strength and quality, rather than the search algorithms themselves.
The framework is Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T).
Expertise
You need to make an expert-level contribution in your chosen field. Seoinc.com makes this point:
Expertise matters less for humour or celebrity websites but is vital for medical, financial and legal sites. Any site can demonstrate expertise if the content is accurate and useful.
Authoritativeness
This can come from your own expertise or your writers'. On a community or forum page, the quality of the discussion builds authority.
Trustworthiness
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites requesting credit card information. Everything should help users feel safe. Start by installing SSL immediately, as at least 70% of first-page results use it; this is one of Google's ranking signals.
Google Places Great Emphasis on E-A-T
Good E-A-T is essential for medical, legal and financial websites. Advice helping people make important decisions can also make a site YMYL. If you sell products online, you probably fall into this category.
We personally believe most websites can be considered YMYL. A ballpoint pen retailer might argue it does not influence major life decisions, but accepting credit card transactions requires trust and therefore almost certainly makes it YMYL.
Again, we believe many sites qualify. Almost every subject has recognised experts. Even when your topic is not obviously YMYL, I recommend paying attention to Google E-A-T.
E-A-T has become more important in Google's latest algorithms.
Technical SEO must also meet the required standard. E-A-T alone cannot improve performance if the technical foundations are lacking.
3. Headlines
Headlines are a discipline of their own in SEO and can influence content performance.
You need to integrate keywords for SEO.
Headlines should suit social audiences and website visitors while serving SEO through keyword integration.
This is not a five-minute task.
Check three points on each page:
- Are headlines natural and conversational?
- These tend to work well socially. Thoughtful keyword integration adds quality and resonance.
- Write with engagement and brand reputation in mind.
- Create discussion and curiosity on social media.
- Use the AIDA sales principle—Attention, Interest, Decision, Action—to judge whether the headline meets the standard and deserves its place on the site.
Realistically, not every subject lends itself to inherently compelling headlines.
Dry or less engaging topics need a different approach. You cannot be everything to everyone, but creative methods can still make content in less exciting industries exceptional.
Use these points to audit headlines that will stand the test of time and can be improved later.
4. SEO Copywriting
SEO copywriting is integral to the process, yet some people skip the optimisation side.
They assume writing is enough: publish it, and visitors will come.
Unfortunately, writing is only half the battle.
The other half involves tangible SEO properties that help Google recognise sufficiently high-quality content.
Remember freshness. It matters in SEO, especially for time-sensitive searches, but not equally for every piece of content.
Here are common writing factors to address during an audit:
Text Structure
Structure matters as much as optimisation.
Consider it from two perspectives: information and code.
In code, use standard semantic HTML: H1, H2 and H3 for heading levels, and P tags for paragraphs.
Informationally, follow a logical structure consistent with the subject. Do not introduce unrelated topics without a meaningful connection. Context is essential.
Keyword Integration
Keywords matter, but avoid keyword cannibalisation.
Adding six hundred variations of your focus terms will not make a high-quality article.
Integrate keywords and phrases naturally where they make sense.
Images
Images are another important structural element.
If an image can strategically support the content, consider using it. Remember image optimisation and site speed.
High-Quality Content
Quality is essential for any SEO page. Good writing makes the content understandable and communicates points concisely.
Do not expect readers to know the subject as well as you do. Ensure every piece being audited remains clear to them.
Explain every topic, bullet point and heading clearly.
Use 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or more paragraphs if necessary. The earlier points—keywords, structure and images—should all contribute to this quality.
Lists, Bullet Points, Bold Keywords and Emphasis
Checklists, bullets and bold text belong in well-optimised content.
Lists provide a clear hierarchy and can explain a subject in more detail. Properly structured, they are easy to understand and convey useful information concisely.
Do not add lists merely to have them.
Make sure each list strengthens rather than dilutes the site's subject.
Outbound and Internal Links
Content should link to external sources and related internal pages.
Done correctly, this improves understanding and provides reliable sources for other writers in the industry.
Links can also create opportunities through writers using Google Alerts to discover new articles on a topic.
5. Keyword Cannibalisation
This may be a bigger problem than you think.
When several pages target the same keyword, cannibalisation can occur. Two pages try to rank for the same term and Google must choose between them.
If your keywords are too similar, optimisation may deliver limited SEO value.
Conversion rate: If one page converts better, why spend time on others with the same goal? Focus on one rather than a weaker-converting version targeting the same traffic.
Content quality: Pages targeting the same keyword usually concern the same topic, risking duplicate, low-quality or copied content and reducing opportunities for referrals and links.
Internal anchor text: Targeting several pages on one topic prevents you from concentrating anchor-text value on a single page.
External links: These increase a keyword-targeted page's SEO value. Multiple pages targeting the same keyword divide those links among different landing pages.
6. User Engagement and Experience
Engagement is important to page quality in modern SEO and involves features that must work properly.
User experience affects SEO. Ignoring UX improvements eventually leaves a website behind its competitors.
38% of people prefer not to engage with an unattractive website or layout.
Although not a direct ranking factor, good design and higher-quality content bring indirect, intangible benefits through better experience and engagement.
They are intangible because they cannot be tied to one direct Google ranking factor.
We cannot simply say, “We changed this keyword and immediately improved clicks on the button beside it.”
The relationship is uncertain, creating a reporting puzzle for many SEO specialists.
How can engagement metrics be reliably linked to SEO work so you choose a strategy that delivers results?
Quality includes design and content. Together they encourage people to purchase your product or service.
Different quality levels influence engagement.
A standalone landing page, for example, may have just two expected metrics: dwell time and the eventual CTA click.
- Live chat
- Call us: telephone number
- Subscribe to our newsletter
- Listen to our podcasts
More complex sites with several CTA types require attention. Inventory and audit them to ensure suitable engagement opportunities.
7. Identify Custom Tracking URLs
Review the main URLs crawled by Screaming Frog. Use its search function to find URLs containing “utm”.
If linked from your site, they should appear in the crawl.
UTM parameters are unique identifiers. SEO specialists use them to create unique URLs for campaign conversion components a site owner wants to track.
You can also find UTM pages in Google Analytics, where they appear in traffic reports for landing page URLs.
Go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Source / Medium. Your UTM URLs should appear there.
8. Check for Abnormally High Bounce Rates in Google Analytics
An unusually high bounce rate—65% or more—points to slow pages, weak design, low-quality content or other engagement problems.
Your topics may also fail to engage users.
9. Check User Reviews
Reviews are another engagement measure for assessing SEO effectiveness.
If the site provides strong engagement, people are more likely to buy.
If that positive experience extends through the business, they will probably leave positive reviews.
Reviews also contain website feedback, indicating how well the site is—or is not—performing.
This is not a direct, decisive factor, although there are always exceptions. :)
For a more detailed audit and ongoing monitoring, tools can complement manual work and help you use time effectively.
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