How to Do a Free SEO Audit of Your Own Site

You do not need an agency, a subscription, or a marketing degree to find out why your site is barely showing up on Google. Most of what a consultant checks on a first pass is visible to you too, with free tools and the phone in your pocket. This do-it-yourself checklist takes an afternoon, and each check comes with the free tool that does it and what a passing result looks like.

What is a free SEO audit, and can I really do it myself?

A free SEO audit is a short walk through your own site to find the basic things holding it back in search. Not the hundred-point technical report an enterprise tool spits out. Just the handful of checks that matter for a small business: is your site indexed, does each important page have a clear title and one topic, is it fast and mobile-friendly, are there broken links, is your Google Business Profile complete, and do your pages answer what people search. These are the SEO basics every small business can handle, and you can check each one yourself, for free.

You only need three free tools and a blank note to write down what you find:

• Google Search Console — free, and it shows how Google actually sees and indexes your site. If you set up one tool this week, make it this one.
• A plain Google search — the site: operator and searching your own business name tell you what's already indexed and how you show up.
• PageSpeed Insights — Google's free checker for speed and mobile experience, on both phone and desktop.

Is my site even showing up on Google?

Start here, because nothing else matters if Google hasn't indexed your pages. Being indexed means Google has your page and can show it; ranking comes later, but first the page has to be in the index. The quick check: search Google for site:yourdomain.com (your real domain, no space after the colon). It returns the pages from your site Google has indexed. If your key pages are there, good. If it returns almost nothing, or is missing pages you care about, those pages are invisible to search, and it's worth working out why your website isn't showing on Google before anything else.

For a precise answer on a single page, open Google Search Console and paste a page URL into the URL Inspection tool at the top. It tells you plainly whether that URL is on Google or is not on Google, when it was last crawled, and whether indexing is allowed (Google). Do this for your homepage and three or four most important pages. What good looks like: each says it's on Google. A page that says it isn't, and should be, goes to the top of your fix list.

Does each key page have a clear title, meta, and one topic?

Now look at the pages that matter: homepage, main services or products, your booking or contact page. On each, check three things — the title tag, the meta description, and whether it's really about one thing.

• Title tag — the blue clickable headline in Google's results. In about 50 to 60 characters, in your customer's words, it should say what the page offers. "Gluten-free birthday cakes in Austin" beats "Home | Welcome".
• Meta description — the grey line under the title. About 150 characters that make one clear promise and match what the person searched. Google may rewrite it, but a good one still earns clicks.
• One topic per page — each page should answer one question or sell one thing. A page trying to be about cakes and catering and classes ranks well for none of them. If two pages cover the same topic, they compete with each other instead of you.

You can see your live titles by searching your business on Google, or in Search Console's performance report. What good looks like: every important page has its own title and description, each different from the others, each naming what the page is really about. If that sounds like work, it's the cheapest work in SEO — writing titles and meta descriptions is about ten minutes a page and moves clicks directly.

Is my site mobile-friendly and fast enough?

This matters more than most owners realize, because Google now uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking — the phone version is the version that counts (Google). If your site is painful on a phone, that's the site Google is judging. (Google retired its old Mobile-Friendly Test, so this check now lives in the speed tools and your own phone.)

The free tool is PageSpeed Insights. Paste a page URL and it reports the experience on mobile and desktop, using real Chrome-user data where it has it plus a lab test, then lists what to improve (Google). You don't need to understand every line. Look at the Core Web Vitals, Google's three plain measures of a good page experience:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — how fast the main content loads. Good is 2.5 seconds or less.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. Good is 200 milliseconds or less.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — how much the page jumps around while loading. Good is 0.1 or less.

Google counts a page as passing when at least 75% of real visits hit all three "good" thresholds (web.dev). Don't chase a perfect 100 — green or near-green on the three vitals is fine. And the simplest mobile check needs no tool at all: open your own site on your phone. Can you read it without pinching, tap buttons without missing, and does it load before you get impatient? If not, neither can your customers.

Are there broken links sending people to dead ends?

A broken link leads to a page that no longer exists — the "404 not found" screen. Broken links waste the trust of a visitor who was ready to act, and they signal to Google that a site isn't well kept. They creep in on their own as you rename pages and retire old offers.

Two free ways to find them. Google Search Console has a page indexing report that flags URLs it couldn't reach, including "Not found (404)" errors — a ready-made list of dead pages Google has already hit. And a free online broken-link checker crawls your site and lists every dead link. What good looks like: your important pages return no 404s, and every link a customer might follow — to book, to buy, to contact — actually works. Fix each by pointing it at the right page or removing it.

Is my Google Business Profile complete?

If you serve a local area, your Google Business Profile often does more for visibility than your website. It's the box with your name, map pin, hours, photos, and reviews that appears when someone searches for what you do nearby. It's free, and a half-finished one quietly costs you customers.

• Every field filled — name, address or service area, phone, hours, website, and the right business categories. Blank fields are missed searches.
• Real photos — a handful of your actual space, work, or products. Profiles with photos look open for business; empty ones look abandoned.
• Reviews, and replies to them — ask happy customers after each job and send a direct link, then reply to the ones you get. Steady, recent reviews are some of the strongest free proof you have.

What good looks like: search your business name, and the box that appears is complete, accurate, and matches the name, address, and phone number on your website exactly. Mismatched details confuse customers and Google, and drag down local visibility.

Do my pages actually answer what people search for?

This is the check most audits skip, and increasingly the one that decides whether you show up — in Google and in the answers AI assistants like ChatGPT give. Both reward pages that clearly answer a real question. So read your key pages as a stranger who just typed a specific question. Does the page answer it plainly, near the top, in normal words? Or does it open with a welcome message and bury the answer three paragraphs down?

Make a short list of the exact questions your customers ask: how much it costs, whether you serve their area, how long it takes, what's included. Then make sure a page answers each one directly and early. This is what earns a featured snippet, and what an AI assistant pulls when it recommends a business. Answer the real question in plain language, up top, and you optimize for search and AI at once.

How do I get through all of this in one afternoon?

Do it in order and don't polish as you go — write down what you find and fix afterward. A workable run:

1. Set up Google Search Console if you haven't, then check indexing with a site:yourdomain.com search and the URL Inspection tool.
2. Open your five most important pages and check each one's title, meta description, and single topic.
3. Run those pages through PageSpeed Insights, and open your site on your own phone.
4. Find broken links with Search Console's page indexing report and a free link checker.
5. Search your business name and finish your Google Business Profile.
6. Read your top pages as a customer and make sure each answers a real question up top.

By the end you won't have a perfect site, but something more useful: a short, specific list of fixes, ranked by what matters, that you understand because you found them yourself.

The one part that won't fit in an afternoon is keeping it up: new pages, fresh answers, a proper title for every post. That steady stream is the gap the Laspi WordPress plugin fills — it writes SEO- and AI-ready articles for your site, each with its own title, description, and a plain answer, grounded in your real business. However you keep it going, the audit is yours this week: do it, fix the top few things, and you've made real progress on getting found on Google without spending a cent.