The complete guide
How to run, read & act on your SEO audit
Everything you need to get the most out of SEO AI Audits — from running your first audit to understanding every score and fixing what matters first. No jargon, no signup.
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1. Run your audit in 3 steps
Enter your URL
Paste any website address on the homepage and hit Analyze. No account, no credit card, nothing to install.
We crawl & analyze
Our engine crawls up to 600 pages and runs 28 analysis modules in parallel, plus a live Core Web Vitals check via Google PageSpeed that fills in moments later.
Read & act
Get an overall grade, per-category scores, and every issue ranked by impact with a plain-English fix. Export to PDF/Excel or share a link.
2. Read your report
Three layers, from the headline down to the fix.
The overall grade (A–F)
A single A–F grade backed by a 0–100 score: the plain average of nine core categories — Technical, On-Page, Performance, Security, Accessibility, Content, AEO, GEO and AIO. Every one counts the same; none is weighted more heavily than another. If a category can’t finish on your site, it shows “Didn’t finish” instead of a score and is left out of the average. It's your at-a-glance health check.
Each letter from A to D is split into three steps: A+ is 97 and up, A is 93–96 and A− is 90–92, and the same pattern runs down to D− at 60–62. You see the same letter for the same score everywhere: the report, the PDF and Excel exports, the public report page and the seal.
Category scores
Each module (Technical, On-Page, Performance…) gets its own 0–100 score so you can see exactly where you're strong and where to focus. Click any module on the dashboard to drill into its findings. The categories beyond the nine above — links, images, mobile, schema, E-E-A-T and the rest — are there for detail and don't move the overall grade. If a category can't be checked on your site, we leave it out of the average instead of counting it as a zero.
Issue severity — what to fix first
Critical
Fix first. These actively hurt rankings, indexing, or users — broken pages, no HTTPS, noindex on important pages, missing titles.
Warning
Fix soon. Real problems with meaningful impact — thin content, missing meta descriptions, redirect chains, missing security headers.
Notice
Polish. Smaller refinements and best-practice nudges — long titles, generic anchor text, minor accessibility tweaks.
Rule of thumb: clear all Critical issues first, then Warnings, then Notices. The AI action plan on every report orders this for you automatically.
3. What each part of the audit checks
28 checks, grouped here into 13 areas — what each looks at, the most common fix, and a way through to the step-by-step fix guides for the issues that come up most often.
Technical SEO
Whether search engines can reach, crawl, and index your pages.
Fix: Serve every page over HTTPS, keep a clean robots.txt and XML sitemap, set self-referencing canonicals, and clear out redirect chains and loops.
On-Page SEO
Titles, meta descriptions, heading structure, and keyword usage per page.
Fix: Give every page a unique title tag of 30–60 characters and a meta description of 70–160; use exactly one H1 and a logical H2/H3 outline.
Performance & Core Web Vitals
Real-user speed (CrUX p75 LCP, INP, CLS) plus lab data and a JavaScript render budget.
Fix: Cut unused JavaScript, compress oversized images, and reduce the main-thread work behind poor Interaction to Next Paint. Aim for LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1.
Security & Trust
HTTPS, HSTS, Content-Security-Policy, mixed content, and other response headers.
Fix: Add an HSTS header and a CSP, enforce HTTPS everywhere, and fix any HTTP resources loaded on HTTPS pages.
Accessibility
WCAG signals that also help SEO — alt text, ARIA, contrast, labels, landmarks.
Fix: Add descriptive alt text to images, label every form field, and use semantic landmarks (header, nav, main, footer).
Content Quality
Readability, thin content, duplicate/near-duplicate pages, and internal link equity.
Fix: Expand thin pages, consolidate pages competing for the same query, and strengthen internal linking from strong pages to important ones.
AEO — Answer Engine Optimization
Whether your pages can win featured snippets and answer boxes.
Fix: Answer each question directly in the first line or two beneath its heading, and break long pages up with question-style headings. FAQ markup no longer earns a Google rich result, so treat it as labelling rather than a win — and if you use it, the markup has to match the visible Q&A.
GEO — Generative Engine Optimization
The on-page trust signals a generative engine reads, and how clearly your markup identifies the organization behind the site. It measures your pages, not any engine’s decision to cite you.
Fix: Strengthen E-E-A-T: clear authorship signals, an About/Contact page, and specific, sourced facts instead of vague copy. Add Organization schema that names and links your official profiles.
AIO — AI Optimization
Whether your site is machine-readable for LLM crawlers.
Fix: Use semantic HTML and schema.org metadata in JSON-LD, keep AI crawlers allowed in robots.txt, and make sure key content is in the HTML (not only after JavaScript runs). An llms.txt file is optional — it is cheap and harmless to add, but no major AI engine has committed to reading it.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust signals.
Fix: Put a named author on every article, link out to the sources you rely on, keep About, Privacy and a real contact page easy to find, and use one brand name consistently.
Schema & Semantic HTML
Structured data validity and clean, meaningful markup.
Fix: Add the right schema types for your content — Article, Product, LocalBusiness for a physical storefront — repair any JSON-LD that fails to parse, and use real semantic tags over generic divs.
Mobile
Viewport, tap targets, and mobile-friendliness (where AMP, if any, is detected).
Fix: Set a responsive viewport meta tag, keep tap targets large enough, avoid fixed-width layouts, and don’t cover the page with an interstitial on arrival.
Links & Anchor Text
Broken links, redirects, orphan pages, and anchor-text quality.
Fix: Fix or remove broken links, point links to final URLs, give orphan pages at least one internal link, and use descriptive anchor text instead of “click here”.
4. Go deeper with the free tools
Beyond the full audit, 44 single-purpose tools let you spot-check one thing fast — meta tags, robots.txt, an optional llms.txt file, what your robots.txt says to each AI crawler, your domain & hosting, and more.
Browse all 44 free toolsFrequently asked questions
How long does an SEO audit take?
Your homepage results come first; the full report follows in minutes, and larger sites take longer because we crawl up to 600 pages. The report appears as soon as the analysis is done, and the performance panel fills in a few seconds later once Google PageSpeed responds.
Is it really free?
Yes — the full audit and all the standalone tools are free, with no account, no credit card, and no trial limit. You can export the report to PDF or Excel at no cost.
How many pages do you crawl?
Up to 600 pages per audit, following internal links from the URL you enter — and your sitemap when one is available — so even large sites get a representative picture.
What is the difference between AEO, GEO, and AIO?
They are the three layers of AI-era SEO. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) targets featured snippets and answer boxes. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the on-page trust and authority signals a generative engine reads, plus how clearly your markup identifies the organization behind the site — it measures your pages, not any engine’s decision to cite you. AIO (AI Optimization) makes your site machine-readable for LLM crawlers: semantic HTML, structured metadata, what your robots.txt says to each AI crawler, and how much of your content is in the raw HTML. An llms.txt file is optional and unscored — no major AI search engine has committed to reading it.
Why did my score change when I re-ran the audit?
Scores reflect the live state of your site at audit time, so they move as you make changes (or as your real-user Core Web Vitals data updates). A re-run after fixes should show improvement.
How often should I run an audit?
Monthly is a sensible cadence for most sites, plus an extra audit after any major change — a redesign, migration, new CMS, or a big content push.
Ready? Audit your site free
Put this guide to work — full report in minutes, no signup. New here? Start on our free SEO audit page.