SEO · 11 min read · September 10, 2026
The SEO Website Audit Checklist We Run on Every New Client
Before we write a single page, we audit the site. This is the checklist, in the order we work through it, so you can spot the problems holding your rankings back.
By Ryan Pereyra, Founder & Agency Owner, RPM National
Can Google find and index your pages?
Check Google Search Console for pages excluded from the index, confirm your XML sitemap is submitted and current, and make sure robots.txt is not blocking anything important.
An indexing problem makes every other fix pointless, so it always comes first.
Is the site fast and stable on a phone?
Review Core Web Vitals for real users. Oversized images, heavy scripts and layout shifts from late-loading elements are the usual culprits. Compressing images alone often produces a noticeable improvement.
Does every page have one clear job?
Look for duplicate or missing title tags and meta descriptions, multiple pages competing for the same keyword and thin pages with little useful content. Consolidate or rewrite rather than leaving weak pages to drag the site down.
Do your internal links make sense?
Your most valuable service pages should be linked from the homepage, navigation and related blog posts. Orphaned pages with no internal links rarely rank, no matter how good they are.
Is your local and structured data correct?
Confirm your name, address and phone match everywhere, your Google Business Profile links to the right page and schema markup validates without errors. Small inconsistencies add up in competitive markets.
Ryan Pereyra’s take
Ryan Pereyra, founder of RPM National, has watched plenty of audits turn into 80-page PDFs that nobody acts on. At RPM, every audit ends with a short, ranked list: what to fix this week, this month and this quarter.
If an issue is not costing you traffic or leads, it goes to the bottom, no matter how technical it sounds.
