DIY SEO Audit: 10 checks before hiring anyone

It’s not a contradiction: a good share of the most serious SEO problems can be identified without paid tools and without advanced technical skills. And if after these 10 checks you decide it’s worth turning to a professional, you’ll arrive at the consultation knowing the subject — and you’ll instantly recognise anyone selling you smoke.

1. Is your site indexed?

Type site:yoursite.com into Google. If your pages appear, you’re indexed. If nothing shows up, you have a serious problem (a global noindex, a penalty, or a site that’s too young). This check comes before any other optimisation. Also check how many pages appear: if you have 200 and Google shows 12, something is blocking crawling.

2. Is Google Search Console active?

If you don’t have it, set it up today: it’s free and it’s the only place where Google tells you directly what it sees of your site. Look at three things: the queries you appear for, the pages excluded from indexing, and coverage errors. If you notice odd patterns, I’ve written a guide on how to interpret anomalies in Search Console.

3. Is the site usable from a smartphone?

Open your site on your phone and try to do what a customer would do: read about a service, find the phone number, fill in the form easily. If you have to zoom, if the buttons are tiny or the text overflows the screen, you’re losing rankings and customers at the same time: the majority of searches now happen on mobile.

4. How long does it take to load?

Go to PageSpeed Insights, enter your address and look at the mobile score. Below 50 there’s a serious structural problem (almost always: oversized images, too many plugins, poor hosting). A score of 100 isn’t essential, but a user on a mediocre connection must not abandon before the page even renders.

5. Does every page have a unique, meaningful title?

The title is the blue line that appears on Google. Check your main pages: does the title say what you do and where (“Plumber in Manchester — 24h call-out”), or is it generic (“Home — Welcome”)? Every page needs a different one, under 60 characters, containing the keyword you want to be found for.

6. Does your content answer real questions?

Take your most important service page and read it as a customer who doesn’t know you would. Does it answer the questions they’re asking themselves (how much does it cost, how long does it take, how does it work, why you)? Or does it only talk about how you’re an “industry leader”? Google rewards pages that resolve search intent, not pages that celebrate themselves.

7. Do you have duplicate or near-empty pages?

Pages with 100 words, copy-paste pages that only change the city name, old test pages never deleted: all of this dilutes your site’s authority. Better 20 solid pages than 200 neglected ones.

8. Is your Google Business Profile optimised?

If you work with local clients, search for your business on Google Maps. Does the profile exist? Does it have recent photos, correct opening hours, reviews with replies? For many local businesses the Google profile brings more enquiries than the website itself, and it’s free.

9. Who links to you?

Enter your domain into a free backlink analysis tool (Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free for your own site). No relevant external links = to Google, you’re an island. Links from spammy directories = possible penalties. Links from real sites in your industry or area = an excellent signal when managed correctly.

10. What are the competitors above you doing?

Search Google for your main keyword and open the first 3 results. Compare: how long and complete is their content versus yours? Which questions do they cover? You don’t need to copy: you need to understand the minimum standard required to play that game.

What you CAN’T see on your own (and that’s normal)

Knowing you have 40 errors doesn’t tell you which 5 move revenue.

A DIY audit is useful for spotting the most macroscopic, immediately visible problems. What’s rarely worth tackling on your own is the deep technical analysis: studying how your site is actually crawled, assessing keyword cannibalisation between pages, reading and interpreting server logs, quantifying the authority gap against competitors, and turning the list of problems into a prioritised strategy — all signals that require specialist experience.

It’s not just about following a procedure or a checklist: many assessments rely on skills built over years of work, interpretative abilities that are hard to learn from a guide, and professional tools whose subscriptions can cost several thousand euros a year.

For anyone who doesn’t do this work routinely, acquiring those skills from scratch and paying for all the required tools would cost far more in time and money than the benefit obtained. That’s why, beyond the basic checks, relying on a professional is generally far more efficient and economically sensible.

It’s the reason professional audits exist and have a price: you’re not paying for the list of problems, you’re paying for the criteria used to prioritise them.

If after these checks you want a professional analysis: I offer a free, no-obligation SEO audit — I analyse your site and tell you exactly what’s holding it back.

Frequently asked questions about DIY SEO audits

How much does a professional SEO audit cost? It depends on the size of the site and the depth of the analysis: from a few hundred euros for a brochure site to several thousand for complex e-commerce. Be wary of automatically generated PDF audits: they are standard reports, not analysis.

How often should an SEO audit be done? A full audit should be requested once a year, or after major events: migration, redesign, a sudden traffic drop, a domain change.

Can I do SEO myself after the audit? Partly yes: content writing, for example, is within reach of anyone with time and method. The advanced strategic and technical side usually isn’t.

Which free tools do I need for a DIY audit? Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Google’s site: operator and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools cover 90% of the checks in this article.

Does an SEO audit guarantee ranking improvements? No. The audit photographs the problems; it’s the subsequent work (and time) that moves rankings. No professional can in good faith guarantee certain results and timelines.