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audit-site-seo

Audits a live site's SEO and writes a ranked fix list - crawling and indexing, redirects and canonicals, titles and headings, content and search intent, Core Web Vitals, structured data and visibility in AI search answers. Use when traffic dropped, pages are not on Google, the user asks for an SEO audit or SEO health check, or wants to show up in ChatGPT and AI search.

Version 1.0 · Updated 2026-10-31

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Audit site SEO

An SEO audit finds why a site is not getting the search traffic it should. Most problems are simple: pages Google cannot reach, pages that compete with each other, or pages that do not answer what people search for. This skill checks a live site in order and writes a ranked list of fixes. To add the basic tags to a Next.js site, use add-seo-metadata-and-sitemap.

When to use

• Search traffic dropped, or new pages never show up on Google.
• Before or after a redesign, a domain move or a big content change.
• The user asks for an SEO audit, an SEO health check or a technical SEO review.
• The user wants the site to be cited in AI answers (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews).

Steps

1. Agree the scope. Ask for the site URL, the main goal (leads, sales, sign-ups), the five to ten most important pages and the main competitors. Ask for Google Search Console access or an export if there is one. Audit the live site, not localhost.
2. Crawling. Open /robots.txt and check nothing important is blocked. Open the sitemap: it should list only live, canonical pages that return 200. Crawl the site with a crawler (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb or a script) and list 4xx errors, 5xx errors and redirect chains longer than one hop.
3. Indexing. In Search Console, read the Pages report for "Crawled - currently not indexed" and "Duplicate" reasons. Check each key page for noindex, a wrong rel="canonical" and mixed www/non-www or http/https versions. One version of each page should be the only indexable one.
4. On-page basics. For each key page check:

• A unique title of about 60 characters with the main search term near the start.
• A meta description that sells the click.
• One clear <h1>, and headings in order.
• Descriptive alt text on images, and internal links from related pages with clear anchor text.

1. Content and intent. Search the main term yourself and look at what ranks. If the results are guides and your page is a sales page, the intent does not match. Flag thin pages, near-duplicates and several pages chasing the same term (cannibalisation): merge or redirect them.
2. Speed and mobile. Run PageSpeed Insights on the key page types. Note Core Web Vitals from real-user data: LCP under 2.5 s, INP under 200 ms, CLS under 0.1. Check the mobile layout, since Google indexes the mobile version.
3. Structured data. Run the Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator on key pages. Check the type fits the page (Organization, LocalBusiness, Product, Article, FAQ). Marked-up facts must also be visible on the page.
4. AI search visibility. Check that robots.txt allows the AI search crawlers you want (for example OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Googlebot). Key facts should be in plain HTML text, not only in images or scripts. Pages should answer common questions directly in the first lines, with clear headings, dates and an author or company name. Ask a few AI assistants the questions your customers ask, and note who they cite.
5. International and scale (if relevant). Check hreflang pairs on multi-language sites. For pages made from templates at scale (city pages, comparison pages), check each one has real unique value. Thin template pages can drag down the whole site.
6. Write the report. Rank every finding by impact and effort: Critical (blocks indexing), High, Medium, Low. For each, give the URL, the problem, the evidence and the fix. End with the top five fixes to do first.

Gotchas

• robots.txt blocks crawling, not indexing. To remove a page from Google, use noindex and let Google crawl it.
• A redirect to the home page for every removed URL looks like an error page to Google. Redirect to the closest match, or return 404 or 410.
• Lab scores in Lighthouse are not what Google ranks on. Use the real-user (field) data where it exists.
• Do not promise rankings or timelines. SEO changes often take weeks to show.
• Avoid tricks such as hidden text, bought links or AI-written pages made only for search. They risk a penalty.

Safety

• Search Console and analytics exports can hold private business data. Keep them out of public repos and shared chats, and never paste account passwords or API keys into the report.
• Crawl gently (one or two requests per second) and only sites you own or have permission to audit.

Works with other tools

The checks work for any site: WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Next.js or plain HTML. Instead of Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools gives similar data. If you have Ahrefs, Semrush or a similar tool, use its site audit for step 2 and its keyword data for step 5.

Done when

• Crawling, indexing, on-page, content, speed, structured data and AI search checks are all done for the key pages.
• Every finding has a URL, evidence, a fix and a priority.
• The user has the report with the top five fixes first.

Credits

Written by TheSkillVault in our own words, CC BY 4.0. Topic coverage informed by coreyhaines31/marketingskills (seo-audit and ai-seo skills, MIT). No text was copied.

Example prompt

"Our organic traffic dropped 30% after the redesign. Do an SEO audit of example.com and tell me the top fixes, including whether we show up in AI search."

Licence: CC BY 4.0. Attribution when you reuse it: From TheSkillVault, https://theskillvault.ai, CC BY 4.0