SEO audits: How to conduct one that drives traffic growth [+ checklist]

"At its core, an SEO audit is a step-by-step review of your website's technical health, content quality, and search visibility. An SEO audit identifies technical, on-page, content, and link issues on a website. It helps SEO teams identify, prioritize, and fix the issues that block traffic, rankings, and, importantly, conversions. Businesses and SEO teams should create audits to identify opportunities that advance business goals and growth."

"A modern audit goes beyond identifying issues that further traditional blue-check rankings in Google Search. With AI search reshaping how users discover brands, marketers now need to evaluate entity signals, brand visibility in AI answers, and how well their content performs in generative engines. In this guide, you'll learn how to run an SEO audit that's helpful in today's search landscape. I've included clear steps, examples, and an SEO audit checklist to help SEO professionals at any skill level drive measurable traffic growth."

An SEO audit is a structured review of a website's technical health, content quality, and search visibility. Audits identify issues preventing pages from ranking, being crawled, or converting and turn findings into prioritized plans to support traffic growth and lead generation. Typical audit areas include metadata, headings, internal linking, URL structure, topic and keyword clusters, and AI search visibility. Audits are conducted regularly or by third-party consultants to provide fresh perspectives. A modern audit evaluates entity signals, brand presence in AI answers, and content performance in generative engines. A checklist covers crawlability, indexability, page speed, and on-page SEO.

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