SEO audits and a checklist
Why a page doesn't show up, Search Console statuses, traffic drops, tools, tips.
Updated
What an SEO audit means
An SEO audit starts from a concrete question: "Why doesn't this page show up in Google?", "Why did traffic drop?", "What can I improve?". Like debugging, you don't guess — you check step by step, from the simple causes to the complex ones.
The page isn't in Google — the order of checks
| # | You check | How |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | is it indexed? | Search Console → URL Inspection, or search site:site.com/page |
| 2 | is Google allowed to crawl it? | robots.txt doesn't block it (URL Inspection shows this) |
| 3 | is it allowed to index it? | no noindex in the HTML / header |
| 4 | does it respond with 200? |
DevTools → Network or URL Inspection |
| 5 | does the canonical point to itself? | not to another page |
| 6 | is the content in the rendered HTML? | URL Inspection → "View crawled page" / "Test live" |
| 7 | do links lead to it? | internal links, the sitemap |
| 8 | is it useful and unique? | thin or duplicate content isn't indexed |
What the statuses in the "Pages" report mean
| Status in Search Console | Means | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Crawled — currently not indexed | Google read it, but decided it isn't worth it | improve the content, internal links |
| Discovered — currently not indexed | it knows about it, but hasn't crawled it yet | internal links, the sitemap, server speed; patience |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical | it looks like another page | an explicit canonical or different content |
| Alternate page with proper canonical tag | it's a variant, the canonical is correct | nothing — it's normal |
| Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag | you asked for it not to be indexed | check that it's intentional |
| Blocked by robots.txt | it isn't allowed to crawl it | remove the rule if you want the page in the index |
| Soft 404 | responds with 200, but looks empty / "doesn't exist" | a real 404 status or real content |
| Not found (404) | the URL doesn't exist | a 301 redirect if the page moved |
Traffic dropped — where to look
- Search Console → Performance, compare the periods before / after: did impressions drop (positions) or only clicks (CTR)?
- Which pages and which searches lost?
- Does it coincide with a Google algorithm update (the Search Status Dashboard)?
- Was there a deploy then? Check: a
noindexthat slipped into production, a wrongrobots.txt, broken redirects, a changed canonical, content moved to the client. - Seasonality? (Google Trends)
The audit tools
| Tool | What you use it for |
|---|---|
| Search Console — URL Inspection | the exact state of a page, the HTML Google sees |
site:domain.com / site:domain.com/blog |
a quick estimate of the indexed pages |
| Rich Results Test | is the structured data valid? |
| Lighthouse → SEO / PageSpeed Insights | basic problems + Core Web Vitals |
| Screaming Frog (a desktop crawler) | crawls the whole site: broken links, duplicate titles, redirect chains |
| DevTools → "View source" vs Elements | is the content in the initial HTML or does it appear only after JS? |
| the server logs | which pages Googlebot actually visits |
A checklist for a new site in Next.js
-
metadataBase, atitlewith a template, a uniquedescriptionon every page -
app/sitemap.ts+app/robots.ts, the sitemap submitted in Search Console - a canonical on pages with parameters; a
www↔ no-wwwredirect - the important content in Server Components (in the initial HTML)
-
noindexon previews, admin, internal search, the account - a real 404 (
not-found.tsx), 301 redirects for moved URLs - images with an
alt,next/image; green Core Web Vitals - JSON-LD for the main kind of content
- Search Console + Analytics installed from day one
Long-term tips
- Publish useful content consistently, on a clear topic — topical authority is built over time.
- Monitor Search Console weekly: new indexing errors, pages losing positions.
- Improve the pages in positions 5–15 — they're closest to a win.
- The first results for a new site usually show up after 3–6 months — SEO is a marathon.
Summary
- A page missing from Google: indexing → robots → noindex → status → canonical → rendered content → links → quality.
- The "Pages" report tells you the exact reason; URL Inspection shows you what Google sees.
- After any drop: compare in Search Console, check the last deploy, then Google's updates.