Website SEO audit checklist for small businesses.

In Google Search Console, open the Pages report to see which pages are indexed and why others are not. Paste a page address into the URL Inspection box to see how Google last saw it. Searching site:yourdomain.com gives a rough idea, but it is not an exact count.

Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. A line reading Disallow: / under User-agent: * blocks the whole site. Also check that pages you want found do not carry a noindex tag; a site left in “discourage search engines” mode after launch is a common cause.

Open yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. It should list the pages you want found, and only those. Submit it under Sitemaps in Search Console.

• Every page has its own title that says what the page is about, not just your business name.
• Titles are short enough to read in full. Around 60 characters is a common rule of thumb; Google actually measures width, so it varies.
• Every page has a description written for a person deciding whether to click.
• Every page has one main heading, with subheadings in a logical order below it.

Try http://, https://, www and non-www versions of your home page. They should all end up on a single version. Otherwise search engines can treat them as separate copies of the same page.

Open the site on your own phone. Can you read the text without zooming, tap the menu and buttons easily, and find the phone number or contact form quickly?

Paste your address into Google's PageSpeed Insights. Large uncompressed images are the most common cause of slow pages. Search Console's Core Web Vitals report only appears once enough real visitors have used the site, so a newer site may not have one yet.

Click through your menu, footer and main buttons. Pages that return “not found” frustrate visitors and waste search engines' time.

From any page, can a visitor reach the contact details or form in one or two clicks? Submit the form yourself and check that the message arrives.

Your business name, address and phone number should read the same on the site, on your Google Business Profile (if you have one) and anywhere else you are listed. Any structured data on the site should describe what the page actually says.

Fix anything that stops pages being found first (items 1 to 3 and 5), then titles and headings, then speed and mobile use. Changes can take days or weeks to show in Search Console, and no checklist can promise a ranking.

If you would rather have the checks done for you, or the findings explained and fixed, see the website audit and technical SEO services.