A full technical SEO audit from a consultant can cost $2,000 to $10,000 and take weeks to deliver. That level of depth is valuable and worth the investment for major websites, but most sites do not need that level of analysis to find and fix the issues that matter most.

The reality is that 80% of technical SEO issues fall into a predictable set of categories: crawlability problems, missing meta tags, slow page speed, mobile usability issues, and security gaps. You can check all of these in 30 minutes using free tools, and the fixes you identify will deliver the majority of the improvement a full audit would surface.

This workflow uses our suite of free tools alongside Google's own tools. Each step is timed so you stay focused and efficient. If you want to learn more about what each scoring factor means and how to fix specific issues, refer to our comprehensive guide on checking your website SEO score.

Before You Start: Preparation (2 Minutes)

Before starting the timer, prepare your workspace and gather what you need.

• Open a new spreadsheet or document to record your findings. Create columns for: Issue, Severity (Critical/High/Medium/Low), Page Affected, and Fix Description.
• Identify 3 to 5 key pages to audit. Include your homepage, your most important service or product page, your highest-traffic blog post, a category or listing page, and your contact or conversion page.
• Open these tool URLs in browser tabs: SEO Score Calculator, Meta Tag Analyzer, Core Web Vitals Calculator, Mobile Friendly Checker, Page Speed Analyzer, and Heading Structure Analyzer.
• Set a 30-minute timer. The timed structure keeps you focused and prevents rabbit holes.

Minutes 1-5: Overall SEO Score Assessment

Start with the big picture. Run your homepage through the SEO Score Calculator to get an overall health score and identify which categories need the most attention.

What to look for: If your overall score is below 60, you have significant issues that need urgent attention. Between 60 and 80, you have a decent foundation with clear areas for improvement. Above 80, you are doing well and looking for fine-tuning opportunities.

Quick win: If the score reveals a missing XML sitemap, create one immediately after the audit. Most CMS platforms can generate sitemaps automatically with a plugin or built-in setting.

Minutes 6-10: Meta Tag Analysis

Run your homepage and your top 2 to 3 inner pages through the Meta Tag Analyzer. This tool examines your title tags, meta descriptions, Open Graph tags, canonical URLs, and other head-section elements in detail.

Common findings: Missing meta descriptions are the most common issue we see. They do not directly affect rankings, but they reduce click-through rates from search results. Duplicate title tags across pages are the second most common finding and are more serious because they confuse Google about which page should rank.

Quick win: If your meta descriptions are missing, write them. Each one takes 30 seconds. A well-written meta description with your target keyword and a compelling reason to click can measurably improve CTR.

Minutes 11-15: Core Web Vitals Check

Run your homepage and your highest-traffic page through the Core Web Vitals Calculator. These metrics are confirmed ranking signals, so failures here directly impact your search performance.

Common findings: LCP is the most frequently failing metric. The usual cause is a large, unoptimized hero image. Converting it to WebP and adding fetchpriority="high" often fixes the issue entirely. CLS failures are typically caused by images without explicit dimensions or late-loading ad scripts. For detailed fixes, see our guide on how to fix Core Web Vitals issues.

Minutes 16-20: Mobile Friendliness and Page Speed

With Google's mobile-first indexing, the mobile version of your site is what Google primarily evaluates. Run your homepage through the Mobile Friendly Checker and the Page Speed Analyzer.

Common findings: Small touch targets on mobile navigation are extremely common. Text that is too small to read without zooming is another frequent issue. On the speed side, uncompressed images are by far the most common performance drag. For a deeper dive into mobile optimization, see our guide on checking if your website is mobile friendly.

Minutes 21-25: Security, Robots, and Content Structure

In this segment, check the foundational technical elements that control how search engines access and understand your site. Also run your key pages through the Heading Structure Analyzer.

Common findings: Missing sitemaps are surprisingly common, especially on smaller sites. Robots.txt files that accidentally block CSS or JavaScript files (which prevents Google from rendering your page correctly) are another frequent issue. Multiple H1 tags on a single page is also common, especially in WordPress themes that put the site title and the page title both in H1 tags.

# Good robots.txt
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

# Bad robots.txt (blocks CSS/JS rendering)
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /wp-includes/

Minutes 26-30: Review and Prioritize Findings

The final five minutes are for organizing everything you found and building your action plan. This is the most important step because a list of issues is only useful if you know what to fix first.

Organize by Severity

Review your spreadsheet and assign a severity level to each issue:

• Critical (fix today): Issues that prevent indexing: broken robots.txt, noindex on important pages, missing SSL, broken sitemaps.
• High (fix this week): Issues that directly hurt rankings: missing or duplicate title tags, LCP over 4 seconds, no mobile viewport.
• Medium (fix this month): Issues that impact performance: missing meta descriptions, CLS over 0.25, unoptimized images, missing structured data.
• Low (fix when convenient): Issues that provide marginal improvement: missing OG tags, minor heading hierarchy issues, missing alt text on decorative images.

Create Your Fix Plan

Sort your issues by severity. Start with Critical items and work down. For each issue, note the specific fix required. Group related fixes together (for example, all title tag fixes can be done in one session). Estimate time for each group. Most technical fixes take 15 to 60 minutes each once you know what to change.

After the Audit: Next Steps

You have completed your 30-minute audit and have a prioritized fix list. Here is what to do next.

Fix Critical Issues Immediately

Do not wait. If you found critical crawlability or indexation issues, fix them today. Each day these issues persist is a day Google is not properly indexing your site. A missing sitemap takes 5 minutes to fix. A robots.txt misconfiguration takes 2 minutes. These are not things to schedule for next sprint.

Schedule High-Priority Fixes

Block time this week to address title tags, page speed issues, and mobile problems. These are the fixes most likely to produce visible ranking improvements. Title tag fixes often show results within 2 to 4 weeks. Page speed improvements take longer (28 days for field data to update) but are worth the effort.

Build a Monthly Audit Routine

Run this 30-minute audit monthly. Calendar it. Make it a habit. Regular audits catch regressions early (a plugin update that breaks your schema markup, a redesign that removes your H1 tags, a new image that was not optimized). The monthly cadence is frequent enough to catch issues before they cause ranking damage.

Consider AI Overview Readiness

Once your technical fundamentals are solid, turn your attention to AI Overview optimization. Use the AIO Readiness Checker to evaluate your preparedness for AI-powered search. Our guide on optimizing for AI Overviews covers the full strategy.

Go Deeper When Ready

This 30-minute audit covers the essential technical factors, but there are deeper layers to explore: internal linking analysis, content gap identification, backlink profile evaluation, competitor technical benchmarking, and AI content optimization. When you are ready for a comprehensive assessment, our professional SEO audit covers 200+ factors with detailed recommendations, and our technical SEO service handles implementation of the fixes.

Frequently Asked Questions