Frequently Asked Questions
What does a complete SEO audit check?
A complete SEO audit examines meta tags (title, description, canonical, robots), Open Graph tags for social sharing, heading structure (H1-H6), structured data and schema markup, robots.txt crawl rules, XML sitemap coverage, and page performance signals. Each area affects how search engines discover, crawl, understand, and rank your content.
How often should I run an SEO audit?
Run a technical SEO audit at minimum once per quarter, and whenever you make major site changes — new theme, migration, new pages, or URL structure changes. For active sites publishing content regularly, a monthly audit helps catch regressions early. Critical issues like noindex tags or broken canonicals can silently kill rankings in weeks.
What is the most important SEO audit finding to fix first?
Always fix indexing blockers first: a noindex tag on the wrong page, Disallow: / in robots.txt, or a missing/broken canonical can wipe out all your ranking gains. After that, focus on missing title tags and meta descriptions (direct CTR impact), then broken H1 structure, then schema markup for rich results.
What is schema markup and why does it matter?
Schema markup is structured data you add to your HTML (usually as JSON-LD) that helps search engines understand your content. It can unlock rich results — star ratings, FAQs, recipes, events, products — directly in Google search results. Pages with structured data typically get 20-30% higher click-through rates because they stand out visually.
How do robots.txt and sitemap.xml work together?
Robots.txt tells crawlers what NOT to visit. Sitemap.xml tells crawlers what TO visit. Together, they guide search engines to your important content efficiently. Best practice: reference your sitemap inside robots.txt using the Sitemap: directive, so any crawler finds it automatically without needing manual Search Console submission.