What an SEO audit agency actually checks
An SEO audit is a structured review of why a site does or does not earn search traffic. A good SEO audit agency checks four things in order: whether search engines can crawl and index the pages that matter, whether those pages match what people search for, whether the content deserves to rank against the pages that currently outrank it, and whether the site is visible in AI answers as well as classic results. The output is not a list of every warning a tool can produce. It is a short, ranked set of fixes with the evidence behind each one.
That last point matters because most audits fail at prioritisation, not detection. Crawl tools will happily report hundreds of “issues” on a healthy site. The job of the auditor is to separate the handful that cost you traffic or leads from the noise, and to say plainly what each fix is worth. Google’s own guidance on hiring an SEO sets the right expectation: a useful audit estimates realistic improvement and the work required, and “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google”.
The free SEO audit: what we review and what you get
Every page on this site has the same request form. When you send your URL, a person at Mediardx reviews your site by hand. It is not an automated score. The free audit covers four areas:
- Crawlability and indexing. Whether your important pages can be crawled, whether they are indexed, and whether robots.txt, noindex tags, canonicals or redirects are keeping the wrong pages in or the right pages out.
- Key templates. The page types that carry your business (service pages, category and product pages, location pages, the blog article template) checked for titles, headings, internal links, structured data and speed.
- Content gaps against the pages that outrank you. For a few of your most valuable queries, what the current top results answer that your page does not.
- AI-answer visibility. Whether AI search crawlers can reach your pages and whether your brand appears when your core questions are asked in AI search tools.
You receive the three highest-impact fixes, each with the evidence we found, why it matters and what the fix involves. There is no obligation to buy anything afterwards. If the three fixes are all you need, implement them yourself or with your current developer.
What the free audit is not: it is not a full crawl report, it does not cover every template, and it does not include backlink analysis or log files. Those belong to the full audit described below.
| Free audit | Full SEO audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Method | Manual review of public pages and search results | Full crawl, Search Console and analytics data, optional server logs |
| Access needed | None, just your URL | Read-only Search Console and analytics access |
| Scope | Crawlability, key templates, content gaps on a few priority queries, AI-answer visibility | Everything in the sample table of contents below |
| Output | Three highest-impact fixes with evidence | Full findings report, severity-ranked fix list, remediation roadmap, walkthrough call |
| Cost | Free, no obligation | Quoted after scoping (depends on site size and platform) |
What a full SEO audit covers
The full audit is for sites where the free review shows problems that need data to diagnose: indexing drops, traffic declines after a migration or redesign, large catalogs, or competitors pulling ahead for reasons that are not obvious from the outside. It goes deeper in six areas.
Technical: crawling, rendering and indexing
We crawl the whole site with a desktop crawler and compare what it finds with what Google reports. Search Console’s Page indexing report shows which URLs are indexed and why others are not, using reasons such as “Crawled - currently not indexed”, “Discovered - currently not indexed” and “Duplicate without user-selected canonical”. Each reason points to a different fix, from thin templates to internal linking to canonical conflicts. We also check redirects and redirect chains, soft 404s, XML sitemaps, hreflang where it applies, and whether JavaScript-rendered content is visible to Google.
Crawl efficiency and server logs
For larger sites, how Googlebot spends its time matters. Google’s crawl budget guide is written for sites with over a million unique pages that change about weekly, sites with 10,000+ pages that change daily, and sites where a large share of URLs sit in “Discovered - currently not indexed”. If that is you, we read the Crawl Stats report (available only for root-level Search Console properties) and, where you can share them, server log files. Log entries claiming to be Googlebot are verified with reverse DNS or Google’s published IP ranges before we draw conclusions, because other crawlers can claim to be Googlebot.
Page experience and Core Web Vitals
We check field data, not just a lab score. The Core Web Vitals thresholds are an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less, an INP of 200 milliseconds or less and a CLS of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. We report by template, so a slow product template is one ticket rather than five thousand URL warnings.
Structured data
We test markup on every key template with the Rich Results Test and compare it against what the page visibly shows. We also set expectations: Google states that it does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results, even when the markup is valid. The audit therefore focuses on complete, accurate markup for the features your pages are eligible for, not on adding every schema type available.
Content quality and keyword mapping
We map your priority queries to the URL that should rank for each, flag keyword cannibalization where two pages compete for one query, and review the main pages against Google’s helpful, reliable, people-first content self-assessment questions: does the page offer original information, is it clear who wrote it and why, and would a reader bookmark it. Pages that fail are marked to improve, merge or retire.
Authority and links
We review the backlink profile for the pages that need authority most, look for broken pages that still have links pointing at them, and flag link patterns that conflict with Google Search Essentials. A disavow file is not a default deliverable; it is recommended only when the evidence calls for it.
Sample audit table of contents
This is the structure of a typical full Mediardx audit report. Chapters are dropped when they do not apply; a ten-page brochure site does not need a log-file chapter.
- Summary and top fixes. One page: the fixes that matter, in order, with expected impact stated as ranges and confidence levels.
- Indexing status. Indexed vs submitted pages, non-indexing reasons by template, and the URLs that should be indexed but are not.
- Crawling and site architecture. Click depth, orphan pages, internal link distribution, robots.txt, sitemaps, redirects.
- Rendering. Whether key content and links exist in the rendered HTML Google sees.
- Templates. One section per key template: titles, headings, internal links, structured data, speed.
- Core Web Vitals. Field data by template, with the main cause behind each failing metric.
- Content and keyword map. Query-to-URL map, cannibalization, content gaps against the current top results, pages to improve, merge or retire.
- AI search visibility. AI crawler access, citable answers on key pages, brand presence in AI answers for core questions.
- Authority. Link profile summary, broken linked pages to reclaim, risks.
- Remediation roadmap. Every fix as a ticket: severity, effort, owner, dependencies and how we will confirm it worked.
How findings are ranked: the severity scale
Every finding carries one severity level and one effort tag (small, medium or large). Severity describes the cost of leaving the issue alone, not how alarming it sounds.
| Severity | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | Stops important pages being crawled, indexed or shown. Fix before anything else. | A sitewide noindex left over from staging; robots.txt blocking the product directory; key pages returning server errors. |
| High | Measurably limits traffic or leads on priority pages. | Money pages canonicalised to the wrong URL; two service pages competing for the same query; a template failing Core Web Vitals in field data. |
| Medium | Weakens performance or wastes crawling, but priority pages still rank and convert. | Redirect chains in internal links; thin category intros; structured data missing recommended properties. |
| Low | Hygiene. Fix when the template is next touched. | Missing image alt text on decorative images; long title tags on low-traffic pages. |
The fix order is severity first, then effort: a High issue that takes an hour beats a High issue that needs a rebuild. That ordering is what turns an audit into a plan your developer can start on Monday.
The evidence behind each finding
An audit finding without evidence is an opinion. Each item in our report links to the data that proves it, and wherever possible that data comes from Google’s own tools rather than a third-party score.
| Check | Primary evidence |
|---|---|
| Is the page indexed, and if not, why? | Search Console Page indexing report and URL Inspection tool |
| How is Googlebot spending its crawl? | Crawl Stats report; verified server logs on large sites |
| Is the page fast enough for real users? | Core Web Vitals field data (Search Console report, PageSpeed Insights) |
| Is structured data valid and eligible? | Rich Results Test; Search Console enhancement reports |
| Which queries and pages are losing clicks? | Search Console Performance report, compared period over period |
| Is site structure hiding pages? | Full crawl: click depth, orphan pages, internal links |
| Are AI crawlers allowed in? | robots.txt and server responses for the documented AI search user agents |
This also follows Google’s advice for anyone hiring an SEO: at the audit stage, grant read access to Search Console, not write access, and expect realistic estimates of improvement and of the work involved.
AI search visibility inside an SEO audit
AI answers have changed what an audit has to check, but less than many vendors suggest. For Google, there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and traffic from those features is included in the Web search type of the Search Console Performance report. A clean technical audit is therefore also the foundation of Google AI visibility.
Other AI search tools add their own checks. OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot is the crawler that makes sites appear in ChatGPT search, separate from GPTBot, which is used for model training. Perplexity says sites should allow PerplexityBot to appear in its results. A firewall rule or a copied robots.txt line can block these crawlers without anyone noticing, so the audit checks access for each one. Bing Webmaster Tools now has an AI Performance report (public preview) showing citations and cited pages in Copilot and Bing AI summaries, which gives at least one first-party measure of AI citation.
What we add on top is a practical review: whether your key pages answer core questions in short, self-contained passages that an AI system can quote, and whether your brand appears when those questions are asked. A GEO audit is simply this AI-visibility part done in more depth; if that is your main concern, see our generative engine optimization service.
Auditing online stores
Store audits follow the same method but spend most of their time on faceted navigation, product variants, pagination, out-of-stock handling and product data. We cover that store-specific checklist, ranked by revenue impact, on our ecommerce SEO agency page. If you run a store, say so in the form and the free audit will focus on your category and product templates.
What you will receive, and when
The timings below are typical for a site of a few hundred to a few thousand pages, once access is in place. They are not guaranteed. Very large catalogs, log-file analysis and slow access approvals extend them, and we will tell you the expected dates at scoping.
| Stage | What you receive | Typical timing |
|---|---|---|
| Free audit | Three highest-impact fixes with evidence | A few working days after your request |
| Scoping call | Agreed scope, access checklist, delivery date (full audit only) | Day 1 |
| Data and crawl | Access confirmed, crawl complete, early critical issues flagged as they are found | Days 1-4 |
| Full report | Findings report, severity-ranked fix list and remediation roadmap | About 1 week after access is in place |
| Walkthrough | Call with you and your developer to agree fix order and owners | Within a week of the report |
| Fix check | Re-crawl and validation of completed fixes (if agreed) | After your team ships the fixes |
We aim to flag critical issues as soon as we find them rather than holding them for the final report. A sitewide noindex found on day two should not wait for week four.
How to judge any SEO audit proposal
Whether you work with us or another SEO audit company, a few checks separate useful audits from expensive PDFs:
- Ask for a sample table of contents and severity definitions. If the agency cannot explain how it ranks findings, the report will be a tool export.
- Ask what data they need. A serious audit asks for Search Console access. One that needs nothing but your URL is a sales scan, which is fine for a free first look but not for a paid audit.
- Be wary of guarantees and secrecy. Google’s hiring guidance lists red flags including guaranteed rankings, claimed special relationships with Google, link schemes and refusing to explain what will be changed on your site.
- Check that the output is actionable. Every finding should name the affected URLs or template, the fix and how to confirm it worked.
- Ask who implements. An audit is only worth the fixes that ship. Agree whether the agency, your developer or both will do the work.
How Mediardx runs an audit
Mediardx is an SEO agency based in India that works remotely with clients in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Audits are the starting point for most of our work, whether the engagement then becomes technical SEO, content, local SEO or AI SEO. We keep the method transparent: every finding comes with its evidence, every fix with a way to check it, and we do not promise rankings. You can read how engagements run step by step on our process page.
To start, use the audit form on this page or message us on WhatsApp at +91 99263 12626. Tell us your URL, your platform and the one thing you most want search to do for your business.