Every engagement starts with an audit. A structured process that covers the specific factors most likely to explain why the site is performing at its current level and what’s most likely to move it. The output is always in two formats: a plain-English document outlining the issues and priorities, and a Google Sheets checklist of specific fixes for each identified problem area. This is the underlying process, documented.

Before Running Any Tools

The first thing I look at is the site itself — as a user. I navigate the main sections, read a few pages in depth, check how the site presents on mobile, and form an opinion about the quality of the content relative to what the target queries would lead a user to expect.

This matters because tools measure what’s measurable. They don’t tell you whether the site’s content is genuinely useful, whether the navigation makes sense to someone unfamiliar with the business, or whether the conversion paths are coherent. Those observations shape how I interpret everything the tools surface.

Technical Crawl

I run a full site crawl using Ahrefs Site Audit. The output I’m looking at first:

Indexation. How many URLs are indexed versus how many the crawl discovers. Large gaps between the two suggest either deliberate noindex use or technical issues preventing indexation. I cross-reference against Google Search Console to see what Google reports as indexed.

Crawl depth. Pages more than four clicks from the homepage are rarely crawled efficiently. A site with important content buried at depth five or six has a structural navigation problem.

Redirect chains. Every redirect beyond a single hop loses a small amount of link equity. Sites that have been through migrations without cleanup often have chains of three or four redirects. These need to be collapsed to a direct redirect.

Orphaned pages. Pages with no internal links pointing to them are invisible to crawlers navigating from the homepage. These either need to be linked into the site architecture or removed.

Duplicate or near-duplicate pages. Identical or near-identical page content on multiple URLs — including parameter-based duplicates from faceted navigation, pagination issues, and WWW/non-WWW — needs canonical resolution.

Search Console Analysis

Google Search Console gives me the data that reflects how Google actually sees the site, which is more important than what any third-party crawl tool reports.

I look at the Index Coverage report for excluded and error pages — specifically understanding why each excluded URL is excluded and whether any excluded URLs should be indexed. I look at the Performance report over 12 months to identify ranking trends, query footprint breadth, and pages that have dropped in position. I look at the Core Web Vitals report for mobile and desktop separately. I look at any manual actions or security issues flagged.

Keyword Analysis

I pull the site’s current organic keyword footprint from Ahrefs and classify it:

  • What’s ranking on page one? What’s the traffic contribution?
  • What’s ranking on pages two and three — the “near miss” opportunities where a position improvement would materially increase clicks?
  • What are the primary keywords in the client’s category that the site isn’t ranking for at all?
  • Where is the site ranking for branded terms versus non-branded terms?

This classification shapes the content and optimisation priorities for the engagement. Near-miss keywords — positions seven through twenty for relevant queries — are almost always the fastest traffic lever.

I pull the full backlink profile and look at:

  • Total referring domains (the count that matters, not total links)
  • Distribution of link authority — a site with 500 referring domains, all from low-DR sites, has a different profile than one with 50 referring domains from high-DR publications
  • Anchor text distribution — over-optimised anchor text can be a penalty signal
  • Recent link acquisition trend — is the profile growing, flat, or declining?
  • Spammy or disavowed links — whether a disavow file exists and whether it needs updating

Content Quality Assessment

This is the least automated part of the audit. I manually review the 20–30 pages with the most organic impressions, the 10 pages in near-miss positions, and a sample of the site’s lowest-performing content.

The questions I’m asking: Does this page do what it needs to do for the query it’s targeting? Is the content genuinely more useful than the three pages currently above it in the SERP? Is there first-hand value or is it a restatement of what every other page on the topic says?

The Output

Every audit is delivered in two formats, side by side.

The first is a plain-English document — typically 10 to 20 pages — that explains the issues found, why each matters, and what the impact of fixing it is likely to be. Issues are ranked by priority: high impact and quick to fix come first, structural or longer-horizon work comes later. The goal is that anyone on the client’s team, regardless of technical SEO background, can read it and understand what’s wrong and why it matters.

The second is a Google Sheets checklist: a row-by-row breakdown of every specific fix, organised by problem area, with columns for status, owner, and notes. This is the implementation layer — the document that gets used in weekly check-ins, assigned to developers and content teams, and ticked off as work completes. It’s also the document that makes it easy to see, at a glance, how much of the audit has actually been actioned.

The two formats serve different purposes. The document answers “what is the strategy and why.” The checklist answers “what exactly needs to happen and has it been done.” Most audits fail not because the diagnosis is wrong but because the findings aren’t converted into an actionable form that people actually use. The two-format structure is the fix for that.

The audit is the diagnosis. The value is in the treatment that follows — and whether the client has what they need to see it through.