A lot of business owners treat SEO like it requires a specialist on retainer before anything can happen. The truth is that for most small business websites, the problems are obvious, fixable, and findable in about an hour using free tools you probably have not touched yet.
You do not need to understand how Google's algorithm works to run a useful audit. You need to know what to look for and where to look. This guide walks you through exactly that.
Why Doing It Yourself First Actually Wins
When you audit your own site before talking to an agency or consultant, a few things happen. First, you spot the easy wins you can fix today at no cost. Second, you go into any agency conversation with enough context to tell a pitch from a real diagnosis. Third, you understand your own site well enough to hold a vendor accountable.
An agency that charges $1,500 for an audit and delivers a 40-page PDF you cannot read is not serving you. Doing your own baseline audit changes that dynamic.
Here are the eight steps. Block an hour and work through them in order.
Step 1: Search Your Business Name in Google (5 minutes)
Open Google and type your exact business name. Then type it with your city. Then type your primary service plus your city.
What comes up? Does your website appear? Does your Google Business Profile appear in the map pack? Are there any other listings for your business that you do not recognize or control?
What you are looking for: your website on page one for your name, your GBP in the map pack for your service and city, and no rogue or outdated listings creating confusion. If your business does not appear for its own name, that is a serious problem that needs immediate attention.
Step 2: Check Your Google Business Profile (10 minutes)
Go to business.google.com and log in. If you have not claimed your profile yet, do that now before anything else.
Check these fields: business name, address, phone number, hours (including special holiday hours), website URL, primary category, secondary categories, and business description. Then look at photos. How many do you have? Are they recent?
A fully complete GBP with 10 or more photos, a keyword-rich description, and the correct primary category is one of the highest-leverage free optimizations available to any local business. If yours is half-empty, you are leaving ranking signals on the table.
Step 3: Run PageSpeed Insights (5 minutes)
Go to pagespeed.web.dev and enter your homepage URL. Run it and wait for the results.
Look at the mobile score first. If it is below 50, page speed is almost certainly hurting your rankings and your conversion rate. Google uses mobile page speed as a ranking signal, and most of your visitors are probably on phones.
The most common culprits for a low score: images that are not compressed, unused JavaScript, no browser caching, and hosting that is too slow for your traffic level. The PageSpeed report will call out the specific issues. If your score is under 50, fixing it should be near the top of your priority list.
Step 4: Run the Mobile-Friendly Test (5 minutes)
Go to search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly and enter your URL. This is separate from PageSpeed and checks whether Google considers your site usable on a mobile device.
A site can load fast but still be technically unfriendly on mobile due to text size, button spacing, or viewport settings. If this test flags issues, Google is already penalizing your mobile rankings.
Step 5: Check How Many Pages Google Has Indexed (5 minutes)
In Google, search: site:yourdomain.com (replace with your actual domain, no www needed in most cases).
The results show every page Google has indexed from your site. A 10-page website should show roughly 10 results. If you see significantly fewer pages than you have, some of your pages are not being indexed, which means they cannot rank.
If you see far more pages than expected, it may mean thin or duplicate content is being indexed and diluting your overall site quality. Both scenarios are worth investigating.
Step 6: Check for Broken Links (10 minutes)
Go to ahrefs.com/free-seo-tools and use the free Broken Link Checker, or download the free version of Screaming Frog (screaming frog.co.uk, free up to 500 URLs). Run it on your domain.
Broken links, both internal and external, tell Google your site is poorly maintained. They also send real visitors to dead pages instead of to your contact form. Even one or two broken links on high-traffic pages can suppress conversions.
Fix or redirect any broken links you find. This takes less than 30 minutes for most small sites.
Step 7: Check Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, and H1s on Your 10 Top Pages (15 minutes)
This is the single most impactful SEO check for most small business sites.
For each of your 10 most important pages (homepage, service pages, location pages), check three things:
Title tag: Look at the browser tab when the page is open. Or use the free Ahrefs SEO Toolbar (browser extension, free). Each page should have a unique title between 50 and 60 characters that includes the primary keyword for that page. "Home" is not a title tag. "Plumbing Services in Cedar Falls, IA - [Your Business Name]" is a title tag.
Meta description: Right-click any page and choose View Page Source. Search for "description." Each page should have a unique meta description between 130 and 155 characters that describes the page and gives someone a reason to click. If every page has the same description or no description, fix this immediately.
H1 tag: Every page should have exactly one H1 heading that contains the primary keyword for that page. If you have no H1 or the same H1 on every page, your on-page optimization is working against you.
Common failures: no title tag, duplicate title tags across pages, keyword stuffing in the title, or the H1 just being the business name on every page.
Step 8: Check If You Are Ranking for Your City and Service (5 minutes)
Search for your primary service plus your city. Note your position in both the map pack (top three local results) and organic results (blue links below).
Then search for two or three variations. "Electrician Cedar Falls." "Cedar Falls electrician." "Electrician near me" if you are on mobile with location on.
If you are not on page one for any of these, you are not getting organic traffic from buyers who are ready to hire right now. That is a measurable gap in your lead pipeline, and it is fixable.
Red Flags to Fix Immediately
These are the issues that cause the most damage and should go to the top of your list, regardless of everything else:
- Mobile score below 50 on PageSpeed
- Site pages not indexed in Google
- No title tags or duplicate title tags
- Missing or duplicate H1 tags
- Google Business Profile unclaimed or incomplete
- Broken links on service or contact pages
Tools Used in This Audit: All Free
- Google Search (built into Chrome)
- Google PageSpeed Insights: pagespeed.web.dev
- Google Mobile-Friendly Test: search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
- Google Business Profile: business.google.com
- Ahrefs Free SEO Tools: ahrefs.com/free-seo-tools
- Screaming Frog (free tier): screamingfrog.co.uk
- Ahrefs SEO Toolbar (browser extension, free): ahrefs.com/seo-toolbar
After the Audit
Once you have completed these eight steps, you will have a clear list of issues ranked by severity. Most of the fixes are either free or require nothing more than a few hours of time. A few, like page speed optimization or structured data markup, may need a developer but should be quick to scope.
If you want a second set of eyes on what you found, or want a more thorough audit of your full site, use the free SEO audit tool at tools.eabmarketing.agency and we will send you a detailed breakdown.
Questions about what you found, or want help prioritizing what to fix first? Reply here or book a free 30-minute Zoom: Schedule a call here
