How to Do an SEO Audit Yourself Without Hiring a Consultant

A professional SEO consultant can cost Rp 5–20 million a month, which is a lot for a small or mid-sized business. Yet many SEO problems are ones you can find yourself before deciding whether you need outside help. Doing your own SEO audit saves money, and it is also the best way to understand what is really happening on your website. This guide shows you how to do an SEO audit step by step, from technical SEO to backlinks, using free tools you can open today. For a stronger foundation, read our complete SEO guide before you start.

Key points in this article

• You can run an SEO audit for free with Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and Screaming Frog (free version).
• 53% of mobile visitors leave a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load (Google).
• An SEO audit covers six main areas: technical, on-page, speed, mobile, backlinks and rankings.
• Auditing every 3–6 months helps you catch ranking drops before they become hard to fix.
• Record your findings in a simple spreadsheet so fixes can be prioritised and tracked.

Further reading

• What Is SEO: A Complete Guide for Beginners
• A Complete Guide to Google Search Console for Beginners
• Link Building Strategies That Work for Indonesian Websites

What is an SEO audit and why should you do one regularly?

An SEO audit is a systematic check of every part of your website (its technical setup, content and links) to find whatever stops Google from crawling, understanding and ranking your pages. Without regular audits, small issues such as a page set to noindex or a broken link can grow into a significant drop in rankings.

Why regularly? Google updates its algorithm hundreds of times a year. Each major update, such as a Core Update or the Helpful Content Update, can quietly shift ranking factors. Auditing every 3–6 months keeps your website in line with current standards, so you are not reacting after your rankings have already fallen.

Some of the SEO problems that often turn up in an audit are important pages accidentally set to noindex, poor mobile speed and duplicate meta titles. None of these is visible when you look at the site from the outside. Only a thorough audit will find them.

Key point: Regular SEO audits matter because Google handles more than 8.5 billion searches a day (Internet Live Stats, 2024), and the algorithm behind them changes hundreds of times a year. Without routine audits, your website can fall behind the latest ranking standards without you noticing.

Free SEO audit tools

You do not need software costing hundreds of dollars to run a useful SEO audit. The five free tools below cover most of what a small to mid-sized website needs. The free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider, for example, crawls up to 500 URLs at no cost.

• Google Search Console: data straight from Google on indexing, queries, Core Web Vitals, manual actions and coverage errors. Set it up before you run any audit.
• Google PageSpeed Insights: measures page speed and Core Web Vitals on mobile and desktop, with specific recommendations for fixes.
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider (Free): a desktop crawler that works through your website's URLs and reports broken links, missing meta tags, duplicate content and redirect chains.
• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (Free): the free version of Ahrefs, which gives you backlink data, crawled pages and technical errors for websites you have verified you own.
• Lighthouse: the audit built into Chrome DevTools, which tests speed, accessibility and basic SEO, including in mobile mode. It replaces Google's Mobile-Friendly Test, which was retired in December 2023.

Many website owners go straight to premium tools before they have made full use of Google Search Console. Yet Search Console's data is far more accurate than any third-party tool, because it comes directly from Google rather than from estimates.

Step 1: Technical SEO audit (crawlability, indexability, HTTPS, sitemap)

Technical SEO is the foundation. If Google cannot crawl or index your pages, all your work on content and backlinks is wasted. According to Ahrefs (2023), 90.63% of web pages get no organic traffic at all, and one of the main causes is indexability problems that the site owner is not aware of.

1. Check your robots.txt file: open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and make sure there is no Disallow: / directive blocking the whole site from Google's crawler. It is a simple mistake but a serious one, and it often happens after a server migration.
2. Check HTTPS: open your website and look for the padlock icon in the browser. Make sure every page uses HTTPS, not HTTP. Google has used HTTPS as a ranking signal since 2014.
3. Verify your XML sitemap: open yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml and make sure the file exists and lists all your important pages. Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console under “Sitemaps”.
4. Crawl the site with Screaming Frog: run Screaming Frog, enter your website URL and let it crawl every page. Look at the “Status Code” column and filter for 404 (page not found) and 301/302 (redirect).
5. Check the coverage report in Search Console: go to Google Search Console > “Pages” (or “Coverage”). Look at the “Error” and “Excluded” tabs to find pages that could not be indexed and the reasons why.

What to look for: broken links (404), redirect chains longer than 2 hops, important pages with a noindex tag, and canonicals that wrongly point to another page.

Key point: Ahrefs (2023) found that 90.63% of web pages get no organic traffic from Google at all. Pages blocked by robots.txt or carrying a noindex tag almost certainly fall into this group, as do pages that nothing else on the site links to, which crawlers struggle to find.

Step 2: On-page SEO audit (titles, meta descriptions, headings, content)

On-page SEO is the direct signal you send Google about what each page covers. Your title and meta description are also the first things people see in the search results, so they help decide whether your page gets the click. They are also the easiest part to fix yourself.

1. Check every page's meta title: in Screaming Frog, open the “Page Titles” tab. Look for titles that are duplicated, too short (under 30 characters), too long (over 60 characters) or missing the target keyword. Export them to a spreadsheet so you can track them.
2. Audit your meta descriptions: in Screaming Frog, open the “Meta Description” tab. The ideal length is 150–160 characters. Empty or duplicate meta descriptions make people less likely to click on your search result.
3. Check the heading structure (H1–H6): every page should have exactly one H1 containing the main keyword, with H2s and H3s used to structure the content. Screaming Frog's “H1” tab shows pages with an empty H1 or more than one.
4. Audit image alt text: Screaming Frog's “Images” tab lists every image that is missing alt text. Alt text helps Google understand the context of an image and makes your website more accessible.
5. Assess content quality: open the pages that target competitive keywords and compare them with the top 3 results on Google. Is your content more complete and more specific, and does it answer the searcher's question better?

In online shops, duplicate meta titles often turn up on product category pages whose titles were never set one by one.

Step 3: Website speed audit (Core Web Vitals)

Website speed shapes how comfortable your site is to use, and it is also a direct ranking factor. Google data shows that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Since June 2021, Core Web Vitals have officially been part of the page experience signals that affect your position on Google.

1. Run Google PageSpeed Insights: go to pagespeed.web.dev and enter the URL of your home page and of one article or product page. Test the mobile version first, because Google uses mobile-first indexing.
2. Understand the three Core Web Vitals: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is the time it takes the largest element to load, with a target under 2.5 seconds. INP (Interaction to Next Paint, which replaced FID in March 2024) measures how quickly the page responds to clicks, with a target under 200ms. CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures visual stability, with a target under 0.1.
3. Check the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console: Google Search Console > “Core Web Vitals” shows aggregated data from your website's real users (field data) rather than lab simulations. It gives a truer picture of what your visitors actually experience.
4. Find out what is slowing you down: PageSpeed Insights lists specific “Opportunities” and “Diagnostics”, such as uncompressed images, render-blocking resources or slow server response times. Focus on the items with the biggest estimated savings.

The most common speed problems on Indonesian websites are large PNG images that have not been converted to WebP, premium WordPress themes running dozens of plugins, and slow shared hosting. The quickest fix with the biggest impact is usually image compression, which you can do for free with Squoosh.app.

Step 4: Mobile-friendliness audit

According to Statcounter, more than half of global web traffic now comes from mobile devices. Google has used mobile-first indexing in full since 2023, which means the mobile version of your website is the one Google assesses for ranking. A website that does not work well on mobile loses visitors and also loses its position in search results.

1. Test with Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights: Google retired the Mobile-Friendly Test in December 2023. Instead, go to pagespeed.web.dev or open the Lighthouse tab in Chrome DevTools, then test the page in mobile mode. The results show how the page looks on a phone screen and what needs fixing.
2. Check mobile Core Web Vitals in Search Console: the Mobile Usability report in Search Console was also retired in December 2023. The Core Web Vitals report is still there and separates mobile data from desktop, so you can see which pages are slow on real visitors' phones.
3. Test it yourself on your smartphone: open the website on your own phone and move around it like an ordinary visitor. Is the menu easy to reach? Can you tap the call-to-action buttons with a finger? Is the text large enough to read without zooming in?

Check loading speed on a 4G connection as well, not only on Wi-Fi. Many Indonesian websites feel fast on the office Wi-Fi but slow on mobile networks. PageSpeed Insights automatically simulates realistic mobile network conditions.

Step 5: Backlink profile audit

Backlinks remain one of Google's strongest ranking factors. Backlinko's analysis of 11.8 million Google search results found that pages in position 1 have, on average, 3.8 times more backlinks than pages in positions 2–10. Numbers are only part of the picture, though: the quality and relevance of your backlinks matter far more.

1. Use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: sign up for free at ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools and verify that you own your website. The “Backlinks” menu shows every domain linking to your site, along with its Domain Rating (DR) and the anchor text used.
2. Identify high-quality backlinks: look for backlinks from domains with a high DR (60+), from domains relevant to your website's topic, and with natural anchor text rather than anchors stuffed with keywords.
3. Find toxic backlinks: look for suspicious patterns such as hundreds of backlinks from the same domain, the same exact-match keyword repeated as anchor text, or links from spam sites and PBNs. Backlinks like these can trigger a Google penalty.
4. Compare yourself with competitors: enter your strongest competitor's URL in Ahrefs' free tools and see which domains link to them but not to you. That gives you a concrete starting point for your next round of link building.

Many Indonesian website owners concentrate on building new backlinks without ever checking whether old ones have broken (an expired domain, a deleted page). A backlink you once had that is now broken is “wasted SEO capital”, and asking the webmaster to update the link is often easier than earning a new backlink from scratch.

Key point: Backlinko found that pages ranking first on Google have, on average, 3.8 times more backlinks than pages in positions 2–10. That shows a link between the two, not necessarily a cause, so also check whether the sites linking to you are relevant to your business.

Step 6: Check your rankings in Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the only source of ranking data that comes straight from Google, with no estimates or sampling. Its “Performance” report shows which keywords bring visitors to your website, your average position, impressions and click-through rate, all in one free dashboard.

1. Open the Performance report: in Search Console, click “Performance > Search Results”. Turn on all the metrics: Total clicks, Total impressions, Average CTR and Average position. Set the date range to the last 3 months so the data is meaningful.
2. Find keywords in positions 4–15 (quick wins): open the “Queries” tab and sort by Position. Filter for keywords with an average position between 4 and 15. These are keywords that are close to page 1, or already on page 1 but outside the top 3. Optimising these pages can lift traffic quickly.
3. Check pages with a low CTR: open the “Pages” tab and sort by CTR, lowest first. Pages with plenty of impressions but a CTR below 2% need a better title and meta description to attract clicks.
4. Track ranking trends over time: use the “Compare” feature to set the last 3 months against the 3 months before. A sudden fall in impressions often points to an algorithmic penalty or a new indexing problem.

For a deeper look at keyword strategy, see our guide on how to do keyword research for SEO, especially the section on long-tail keywords, which often convert better.

How to write up your SEO audit report

Audit findings that are not written down almost never get fixed. An SEO audit report does not have to be complicated: a Google Sheet with the right columns is enough to track and prioritise fixes. The key is to record the issue, the affected pages, the priority and the status of the fix in one place.

1. Create a spreadsheet with 6 main columns: Category (Technical/On-Page/Speed/etc.), Issue Found, Affected URL/Page, Priority (High/Medium/Low), Recommended Action, and Status (Not Started/In Progress/Done).
2. Prioritise by impact and effort: use a simple matrix. High-impact issues that are easy to fix (for example, filling in an empty meta description) come first. High-impact issues that are complex (such as moving to new hosting) get scheduled with a timeline.
3. Sort your findings into three priority levels: High Priority covers issues that directly affect indexing and rankings (crawl errors, incorrect noindex tags, Core Web Vitals below the threshold). Medium Priority covers optimisations that improve CTR and engagement. Low Priority covers minor fixes that pay off over the long term.
4. Set a date for the next audit: write the date of your next audit at the top of the spreadsheet. For websites that publish new content regularly, a light technical audit every month and a full audit every 3 months is the ideal frequency.

A simple format like this is easy to share with the technical team, so everyone works through the fixes from the same list.

Key takeaways

A DIY SEO audit will not replace a professional consultant in every situation, but it is a smart first step before you commit any budget. With the free tools already available, you can find and fix most of the SEO problems holding your website back. Consistency matters most: an audit every quarter works far better than one big audit a year.

• Start with Google Search Console: it is free, accurate and comes straight from Google.
• Technical SEO comes first: make sure Google can crawl and index all your important pages.
• Websites that take more than 3 seconds to load lose 53% of mobile visitors, so speed is a priority rather than an option (Google).
• Record every finding in a spreadsheet and set your fix priorities before you start implementing.
• A routine audit every 3 months is more effective than one large audit a year.

Do you now know where your website's SEO problems are? The next step is to prioritise them and start fixing them one by one. You do not have to get everything perfect at once: small, regular fixes every week are easier to keep up than one big overhaul. To deepen your understanding of SEO as a whole, read our complete SEO guide, which covers the foundations of SEO strategy from the ground up. If you would rather have our team do the work, Webzoo also offers SEO services. Book a Consultation to talk through the state of your website.

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References

1. Ahrefs. (2023). Why 90.63% of Content Gets No Organic Search Traffic From Google. ahrefs.com/blog/organic-traffic/
2. Google. Find out how you stack up to new industry benchmarks for mobile page speed. Think with Google. thinkwithgoogle.com
3. Backlinko. We Analyzed 11.8 Million Google Search Results. backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking
4. Statcounter. (2024). Mobile vs Desktop vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide. gs.statcounter.com