How to Do an SEO Audit: Practical Steps and Reddit Tips

Introduction — based on Reddit discussions

This guide synthesizes a long Reddit thread on how to do an SEO audit and turns the crowd-sourced experience into a structured, actionable playbook. Redditors shared what they actually do, what clients expect, recurring pitfalls, and tactical tips. Below you’ll find the common consensus, where people disagreed, practical step-by-step instructions, and a couple of expert insights that go beyond the thread.

High-level consensus from Reddit

Across the discussion, most practitioners agreed on a clear structure for an audit. The broad, repeated steps were:

Discovery and access (GSC, GA, hosting, CMS)
Technical crawl and indexability checks
On-page/content analysis
Backlink profile review
Analytics, tracking and conversion checks
Prioritization and a recommended roadmap

People emphasized the need to produce an actionable list, not a 200-page PDF of everything wrong. Common quick wins mentioned were fixing redirect chains, resolving canonical issues, correcting meta titles/descriptions, and addressing Core Web Vitals.

Where Redditors disagreed

Depth vs speed: Some favored a fast triage (2–4 hours) for quick wins; others insisted on a deep audit (several days) including log analysis and competitor benchmarking.
Templates vs bespoke audits: A few recommended strict templates for consistency. Others argued templates miss site specifics and encourage superficial reports.
Backlinks focus: Some professionals prioritized on-site technical fixes first; others said link acquisition and cleanup are often the biggest growth levers for established sites.
Deliverable style: Debate over a long written report vs a prioritized spreadsheet with playbook steps and time estimates.

Practical, step-by-step SEO audit process

Below is a consolidated workflow combining the most recommended actions from the thread with standard SEO best practices.

1. Discovery & access (30–120 minutes)

Collect logins: Google Search Console, Google Analytics / GA4, CMS, hosting, CDN, and backlink tools (Ahrefs/SEMrush).
Confirm domain preference (www vs non-www, HTTPS). Check domain settings in GSC.
Ask client about recent migrations, penalties, major site changes, and business priorities.

2. Crawl & technical checks (2–8 hours)

Run a full crawl with Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to detect 4xx/5xx errors, duplicate titles, missing metadata, and indexability issues.
Check robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and test important pages with live fetch in GSC.
Audit redirects: find redirect chains and loops. Aim to keep redirects to a minimum and point old URLs directly to final destinations.
Check canonical tags, hreflang (if international), pagination rels, and noindex/nofollow flags.
Use Lighthouse/PageSpeed Insights to evaluate Core Web Vitals and critical render-blocking resources.

3. Content and on-page (3–8 hours, depends on site size)

Identify thin and duplicate content. Prioritize high-traffic/transactional pages first.
Review title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and on-page keyword targeting. Look for cannibalization.
Evaluate internal linking: are priority pages linked from homepage or high-authority pages? Are breadcrumb and navigation structures logical?
Check structured data: schema for product, article, FAQ, breadcrumbs, and review markup where applicable.

4. Backlink and off-site review (2–6 hours)

Use Ahrefs/SEMrush/Majestic to analyze backlink profile quality, recent lost links, and toxic links.
Look for unnatural link spikes or decline. Identify high-value linking opportunities and citation issues for local businesses.
Recommend outreach or disavow only after careful analysis — many Redditors warned against premature disavowals.

5. Analytics, tracking & conversion checks (1–3 hours)

Ensure GA / GA4 and GSC are properly configured and linked. Verify goals, events, and ecommerce tracking.
Validate that important landing pages have UTM tagging for campaigns and that Search Console impressions/clicks match GA sessions reasonably.
Set baseline KPIs: organic sessions, clicks, impressions, CTR, conversions, and revenue per channel.

6. Prioritization and reporting (2–6 hours)

Create a prioritized list using an Impact vs Effort matrix. Label items as Quick Wins, Medium, or Long-term projects.
Include clear owners, time estimates, and expected outcomes. Reddit users repeatedly stressed the need for clear next steps.
Provide before/after measurement plan and recommend A/B testing when proposing significant UX/content changes.

Specific tactical tips from Redditors

Do a log file analysis to see how crawlers traverse the site — prioritize pages crawled the most that have issues.
In GSC, use Performance + Pages + Compare to isolate pages with impressions but low CTR — experiment with titles and meta descriptions.
Focus on top landing pages for wins rather than chasing keywords for low-traffic pages.
Check for hidden canonical or meta robots tags inserted by plugins during migrations.
Audit image sizes and lazy loading; several users said resizing and serving WebP can yield major speed improvements.

Expert Insight: How to prioritize fixes (beyond Reddit)

Convert your findings into a RICE-style prioritization quickly: Rank items by Reach (how many pages/users affected), Impact (expected uplift), Confidence (how sure you are about outcome), and Effort (engineering hours). Multiply Reach x Impact x Confidence and divide by Effort to score tasks. This creates an objective prioritized roadmap that clients and stakeholders can agree on.

Expert Insight: Measuring ROI and running tests

Don’t assume that improved rankings automatically prove success. Tackle the highest-impact fixes first, then monitor these KPIs: organic sessions, goal completions, conversion rate, revenue per user, and page-level bounce/engagement metrics. Use A/B tests for content or CTAs where possible. For technical fixes (like speed), run a time-based comparison with annotations in Google Analytics and track % change over 28/90 days to account for ranking lag.

Deliverables Redditors valued

From the thread, the deliverables that earned the most trust were concise and practical:

A prioritized spreadsheet with URL, issue, impact, effort, owner, and status.
Short executive summary highlighting 3–5 high-impact wins and estimated uplift.
Technical appendix with crawls, screenshots, and raw exports for engineers.
A 30/60/90-day implementation roadmap and measurable KPIs.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Overloading the client with low-priority items — keep the audit actionable and prioritized.
Ignoring analytics setup — without proper tracking, you can’t measure success.
Recommending excessive disavows — audit link intent and timeframes first.
Not coordinating with dev/IT — some fixes require releases; include realistic timelines and QA steps.

Quick checklist you can use now

Confirm GSC & GA access
Run Screaming Frog crawl
Check robots.txt and sitemap.xml
Identify top 10 landing pages and run PageSpeed Insights
Review title/meta for top pages and CTR opportunities
Scan backlink profile for toxic links and major lost referring domains
Create a prioritized action spreadsheet with owners and deadlines

Final Takeaway

Doing an SEO audit is less about creating a massive report and more about diagnosing the root causes that prevent a site from performing and creating a prioritized plan that delivers measurable results. Redditors converged on a practical, iterative approach: triage for quick wins, run deeper technical and content analyses, prioritize via impact vs. effort, and always measure outcomes. Use the checklist and expert prioritization methods above to turn audit findings into revenue-driving actions.

Read the full Reddit discussion here.