AART SEO Complete Audit Checklist - By Techjackie (please make a copy to use this template)

Audit List Grading Details Notes

Basics (9 points)
Is Google analytics set up? PASS Yes: Pass, No: Fail - this helps keep track of your total traffic for benchmark and marketing
Is Google Google Search Console set up? FAIL Yes: Pass, No: Fail - this helps keep track of overall performance on Google search
Is Search Console free from errors? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - majority of errors in the tool are technical issues, some of which need attentions
Did you submitted sitemap to Search Console? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - sitemap helps Google Bot discovers your content easier (not required)
Any heatmap software set up? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - this helps you understand what users do when they land on the website (for SEO & marketing)
Does the majority of your page get indexed? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - low number of indexed pages show that your site isn't well-trusted/high-quality enough
Do you have a consistent crawl requests in Search Console? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - inconsistent/decrease in crawl rate is often associated with declines in site quality
Do you have any sharp drops in impressions on the algo update day? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - sharp drops in impressions indicate that your site is hit by Google algorithm update
Any SEO plugins installed? (for WordPress users) Yes: Pass, No: Fail - this helps with the heavy lifting in all the basic tasks like meta tags configuration

Technical SEO (19 points)

SSL (HTTPS) installed? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - SSL indicates that your site is secured and is also a weak ranking signal
Do all pages redirect from HTTP to HTTPS correctly? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - try accessing the site with http:// & https:// and see if it redirects to one version
Robots.txt file set up correctly? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use this https://technicalseo.com/tools/robots-txt/ to check
Do the canonical tags reference the page themselves? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - right click on your web page -> click view source and see if the canoical tag is referencing that url itself
Does the site render correctly in Search Console? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - view live test of your web page on Google Search Console or Google Mobile Friendly Test tool
Does the site pass mobile friendly test? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use this https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly to test
Javascript & CSS minified? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use this https://pagespeed.web.dev/ to test
Is caching plugin installed? (for WordPress users) Yes: Pass, No: Fail - this helps with all the code optimization and caching to speed up the site speed
Are images compressed and resized correctly? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - this helps with the site speed. Look for any image compressing tool on Google
Do the majority of images are .jpg file? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - JPEG image file extension is lighter, which helps with the site speed.
Is CDN set up? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - CDN helps speed up the websie. Use CloudFlare for free CDN
Does the site pass Google Page Speed Insights test? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use this https://pagespeed.web.dev/ to test
Malware & security checks pass? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - check in Search Console and do the site:domain.com to see if your site is hacked
Lots of broken/redirect internal links Yes: Pass, No: Fail - most of the crawling tools like screamingfrog and Ahrefs can check
Are there lots of unnecessary pages in the indexed? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - use site:domain.com to check for large quantity of unnecessary pages in the index like tags, etc.
Are all the important pages easily accessible in the navigation? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - all important pages must be placed in the navigation menu or not more than 3 clicks from the homepage
Are there lots of server errors/404 errors? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - SSL indicates that your site is secured and is also a weak ranking signal
Does hreflang set up properly? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - check in search console
Do important pages have noindex tag on them? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - right click on your website -> click view source and look for "noindex" on the pages you want to rank

On-Page SEO Keyword Elements (13 points)

Are the main keywords close to the start of all the titles? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - keyword placed in the beginning of the title tag is given more weight
Are there lots of fluffs in the title tags? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - make sure the title tag is highly focused, try to reduce words that aren't related to your main keyword
Are all titles under 65 characters long? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use https://totheweb.com/learning_center/tool-test-google-title-meta-description-lengths/ to check
Are all the meta descriptions unique and descriptive? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - don't keyword stuff the meta description
Are all the urls short and contain the main keywords? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - short and keyword-focused url helps Google understand the page better
Are there any pages missing h1s or titles? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - most of the crawling tools like sreamingfrog and Ahrefs can check
Do all of the h1s contain the main keywords? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - h1 should be highly focused on the main keyword
Do all the h2/h3s contain semantic keywords? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - don't use main keywords in h2/h3 if possible (tested and found to be overoptimized) use semantically relevant words
Are the main keywords placed higher up on the page? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - keywords placed higher up on the page is given more weight and importance
Are image alt tags used & descriptive? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - alt tags is one of the ranking signals and should not be keyword-stuffed
Are keyword densities of the main keyword & partial matches in the average? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use https://wordcounter.net to check if your keyword density for all the words match the average of competitors
Have you used all the important semantic keywords on the page? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use on-page tools like SurferSEO to check words you should use in the content
Are the internal link anchor texts descriptive & not exact match? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - try avoiding exact match keyword as internal anchor texts. Use long, descriptive words that are relevant

On-Page SEO Quality Elements (18 points)

Are there too many interstitial ads? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - too many ads especially pop ups have a negative impace on the ranking
Are the content well-structured using headings, short paragraphs, & lists? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make sure to use headings, lists and short paragraphs to structure the content for the algorithm to easily digest
Are the majority of images unique & original? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - every page should contain at least 1 original, unique image
Do you have about, privacy policy & contact page set up with contact details? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - tested to be trust factors that Google look at
Have you linked out to authoritive sources in your content? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - don't forget to link out to other authoritative sources relevant to your content (try avoiding wikipedia)
Does the about page tell clearly who you are and what you do? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - clear about information helps the algorithm understands about your entity better
Is there a clear author-bio? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - author bio and author expertise is proven to be a ranking factor
Are there enough call-to-action buttons in the content Yes: Pass, No: Fail - this ensures that visitors can easily convert into customers (good for SEO too)
Is there enough contrast between the color and the content? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - good website accessiblity is a ranking factor
Are hyperlinks clear & can easily be distinguished? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - good website accessiblity is a ranking factor
Do the content cover enough sub-topics? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - check the top 5 competitors + people also asked and other resources to make sure content has enough subtopics
Do you have enough supporting content for the main topic? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - no exact numbers you need, but make sure to have some amount of pages relevant to your topics
Are all the outbound affiliate links no-followed? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - no-following outbound affiliate link is proven to be an important quality factor
Are there any keyword cannibalizations? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - use Search Console to check and see a keyword doesn't have multiple pages competiting for it
Is the majority of content duplicated? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - make sure at least 60% of every page content is unique
Is the majoirty of content AI-generated without human edits? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - pure AI content is tested to be considered as low-quality by Google
Is content ever-green or fresh? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make sure to keep the content relevant and updated
Are there any gramatical errors? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - use grammarly to check

Backlinks (7 points)
Are the majority of links contextual & relevant? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make sure to get links from relevant pages and if better, relevant domain
Are the majority of links coming from sites with traffic relevant to your topic? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use any SEO tools to check - get links from sites that get some traffic relevant to your topic, not sites built for guest posts
Are the majority of anchor texts branded/safe? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use any SEO tools to check
Are there a healthy distribution of links to all pages? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make sure to build links to multiple pages, not just focusing on a few
Is the link velocity consistent? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use any SEO tools to check
Have you disavowed obvious spammy links? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use any SEO tools to check and create a disavow file regularly
Lots of broken links? Yes: Fail, No: Pass - use any SEO tools to check

Off-Page SEO Quality Elements (6 points)

Do you have some links/mentions from high authority sites? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make sure at least 5%-10% of the lnk profile has links from high authority/trusted sites, eg: important directories, wikipedia, etc.
Are all the major social profiles setup & active? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make sure to set up all major social media profiles like facebook, twitter, pinterest and have real active engagements
Do the majority of sites talk about your brand positively? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make sure to get positive reviews/mentions about your brand on other online properties
Are you getting traffic from branded search? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - do other kinds of brand building marketing like PR, ads, etc.
Does your content get shares & engagement on social media? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - post engaging, valuable content regularly + run social media ads to get positive engagement with your web pages
Does your homepage comes up first when searched for brand name? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - do a search for brand name and check

Local SEO (7 points)

Are location pages set up? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - create specific pages targeting each location + keywords
Is GMB set up? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - sign up here: https://business.google.com
Do you have a clear NAP on the website? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - have a clear NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) on the website, preferably in the header or footer
Is the site listed in reputable business directories? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - do the search for your keyword and see what directories come up - means they are important. Then check competitors
Are all the NAP consistent on external pages? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - can check manually or use tools like Moz local to check NAP consistency across other citations
Are there too many thin local pages? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make sure at least 40%-50% of all location pages on the site are unique. Don't just duplicate them and just change the location
Do you have local content? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - create 5-10 location-relevant content or keyword + location content (make sure they are real keywords, not anything arbitary)
Do you have local schema set up? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use https://technicalseo.com/tools/schema-markup-generator/ to generate local schema

Google My Business (11 points)

Are the listing infor filled up? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - fill up all the details like about business, business hours, etc.
If you have keyword in the business name, is it your legal business name? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - if you want to have keyword in the business name and it's not your legal business, make sure to prepare documents for it
Have you filled up all the important secondary listing categories? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - check out this tutorial to know how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHIP0Ha09Hw
Do you have the Q & A set up? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - set up 3-5 Q & A for your listing
Have you uploaded unique business images regularly? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - upload original, unique business images, preferably via a phone regularly
Are the image file names relevant to the keyword? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make sure to rename the file name of the images to have your keyword there (be descriptive, not keyword stuffed)
Do you post regularly? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - make it a habit to post regularly, at least twice a weak
Do you have the Google 360 images? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - hire Google's verified streetview photographer here: https://www.google.com/streetview/business/
Do you have at least 10 positive reviews? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - ask your customers to leave positive reviews, at least 10 and preferably with some keywords in them
Have you respondeded to all the reviews? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - respond to every reviews, even the negative ones
Did you set up the free GMB site? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - set up gmb site from the google my business dashboard

E-Commerce (6 points)
Are category pages set up and optimized with content on the top? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - category pages are what drive the traffic the most - make sure to have them setup and add SEO-content on the top, after h1
Are URL parameters canonicalized to the main pages? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - canonicalize URL parameter back to original URL, eg: domain.com/shirt?=color=blue&style=short to domain.com/shirt
Is product schema set up correctly? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - not required, but usually comes out of the box with most of the web platforms
Do you have the cart-abondoning prevention system in place? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - set up email sequences or pop ups that trigger when users left the products in the cart without checkingout
Is the checkout page easy to use? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - use Hot Jar or any tools to track user behaviors and adjust accordingly
Is the product content written according to Google Product Review Update guidlines? Yes: Pass, No: Fail - check out the guidelines here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/ecommerce/write-high-quality-product-reviews