SEO Audits and Diagnostics

Introduction to SEO Audits & Diagnostics

In today’s hyper-competitive digital environment, a comprehensive SEO audit is not just a luxury—it’s a necessity. At Octopus, we specialize in offering expert-level SEO audits and diagnostics services that reveal exactly what’s working on your website, what’s holding it back, and how to fix it. From on-page SEO audits to technical diagnostics and everything in between, our process is data-driven, user-focused, and aligned with best practices that ensure your brand achieves optimal search engine visibility. We go beyond the basics to offer a full website SEO audit, uncovering errors that affect organic visibility, hinder performance, or compromise your SEO health.

Understanding Core Concepts of SEO Audit

An effective SEO diagnostic report should serve as a blueprint for sustainable growth. Our audits are grounded in core areas such as technical SEO, on-page optimization, off-page evaluation, structured data integrity, and content alignment. These insights help businesses evaluate search engine ranking factors in a holistic manner. Whether you’re dealing with a manual SEO audit or require a more automated SEO site review, we ensure our comprehensive SEO analysis delivers actionable results. We cover critical checkpoints including page-level audits, website performance audits, and diagnostic SEO services that benchmark your current standings against industry standards and your top competitors.

Technical SEO Diagnostics: Identifying Hidden Issues

Technical issues can be silent killers of your website’s search performance. Our technical SEO audit identifies all hidden challenges, from crawl errors and indexability problems to schema markup issues and duplicate content analysis. Using industry-trusted tools, we assess your robots.txt configuration, sitemap.xml status, and canonical tag implementation to ensure your site is both crawlable and index-friendly. We also evaluate core web vitals, focusing on elements like page speed, render-blocking resources, server response time, and lazy loading implementation. Our diagnostics go deep—into JavaScript rendering, CSS blocking, and mobile usability, to resolve bottlenecks that undermine your visibility.

On-Page SEO Analysis: Evaluating the Foundation of Your Content

Every successful SEO strategy begins with a solid on-page foundation. Our on-page SEO audit includes a detailed assessment of elements that impact your content optimization, search visibility, and SERP position. We audit the use of title tags, meta descriptions, header tags (H1, H2, H3), and URL structure to ensure consistency and alignment with your keyword strategy. Through keyword placement audits, image alt text evaluations, and thin content detection, we highlight areas where your content can be improved for better organic ranking. Additionally, we assess HTML structure, readability, and content hierarchy to ensure each page delivers a seamless user experience and aligns with SEO best practices.

We also check for anchor text diversity, keyword density, and internal link flow, identifying opportunities to strengthen internal relevance. Whether it’s resolving broken images, optimizing underperforming content, or correcting canonical conflicts, we provide a granular page-level audit to help elevate your on-page effectiveness.

Off-Page & Backlink Profile: Strengthening Domain Authority

Your backlink profile is one of the strongest indicators of your website’s authority. In our SEO audit, we conduct an in-depth off-page SEO analysis to identify high-risk links, toxic backlinks, and unnatural anchor text patterns. We analyze your domain authority, referring domains, spam score, and anchor text diversity to build a strategy that supports white-hat link acquisition. Using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Majestic, we uncover patterns of link velocity, lost backlinks, and spammy link schemes that may require disavow recommendations.

We also explore citation flow, trust flow, and page authority metrics to create a comprehensive profile of your current link landscape. From identifying link penalties to evaluating backlink relevance, our approach focuses on restoring your site’s authority, eliminating risk, and uncovering growth opportunities through natural link-building practices.

Internal Linking & Site Architecture: Building a Crawlable & Logical Structure

Strong internal linking is essential for both user experience and search engine crawlability. We analyze your site structure, silo architecture, and internal link depth to detect orphan pages, inefficient link equity distribution, and crawl path issues. Our audit examines anchor text usage, menu hierarchy, footer link structures, and breadcrumb navigation, ensuring that users and bots can efficiently access and understand the value of every page.

By fixing broken internal links, optimizing homepage navigation, and enhancing user flow paths, we help your site become more intuitive and SEO-friendly. The result is improved crawl efficiency, stronger topical relevance, and better indexation of high-priority pages. Our focus on internal redirects, site navigation audits, and priority page alignment ensures your architecture supports scalable growth.

Mobile SEO & Usability: Optimizing for a Mobile-First World

With Google’s mobile-first indexing and the increasing dominance of smartphones in user behavior, optimizing your site’s mobile usability is no longer optional. Our SEO audit includes a comprehensive review of mobile responsiveness, viewport configurations, tap target optimization, and font legibility across devices. We evaluate your mobile page speed, detect responsive layout issues, and identify any mobile content rendering problems that affect performance or visibility.

Through tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, we assess whether your website meets modern usability expectations. Our team also checks for mobile-specific redirect issues, cross-device compatibility, and evaluates your site’s performance using mobile UX scores and mobile SERP previews. If your mobile experience is lacking, you’re potentially losing both users and rankings—our audit identifies what to fix and how.

Website Speed & Core Web Vitals: Enhancing Load Time and User Satisfaction

Website performance is a critical ranking signal that also directly impacts user engagement and conversions. As part of our website performance audit, we analyze your site’s Core Web Vitals, including LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), FID (First Input Delay), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). Using platforms like PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Lighthouse, we conduct in-depth diagnostics on your page load speed, server response time, and render-blocking resources.

We evaluate technical elements such as unused JavaScript and CSS, lazy loading configuration, gzip compression, CDN performance, and browser caching strategy. Our audit reveals opportunities for optimization that can reduce bounce rates, improve user experience, and increase organic visibility—especially on mobile. Whether you’re dealing with JavaScript bloat or image compression inefficiencies, we’ll provide a custom strategy to enhance speed across devices.

HTTPS & Site Security: Building Trust & SEO Compliance

Search engines favor secure websites, and so do users. Our SEO health audit checks for HTTPS implementation, expired SSL certificates, and mixed content issues that might affect trust or cause browser security warnings. We audit your HTTP to HTTPS redirection setup, validate your TLS configuration, and review for redirect loops or non-secure content blocks.

We also evaluate the presence of security headers, privacy policy pages, cookie consent banners, and conduct site security scans for potential vulnerabilities. Ensuring your website is fully encrypted, secure, and aligned with Google’s best practices not only boosts credibility but also prevents ranking loss due to security protocol gaps. If your HTTPS status is not properly configured, our diagnostics ensure it will be.

Indexing & Crawlability: Ensuring Search Engines Can Access Your Content

If your content isn’t indexed, it can’t rank. We perform a detailed crawlability and indexability audit that evaluates your site’s robots.txt, XML sitemap, canonical URLs, meta robots tags, and noindex directives. We uncover issues such as excluded pages, crawl anomalies, indexed duplicates, or incorrect parameterized URLs that might be bloating your index unnecessarily.

We cross-check your sitemap with your indexed pages in Google Search Console, ensuring consistency between your submitted content and what’s visible to search engines. Our diagnostics also include crawl frequency monitoring, user-agent directive reviews, and assessments of crawl budget optimization. By identifying thin indexed content, blocked assets, or canonicalization errors, we help you improve index coverage and search engine accessibility.

SEO Tools & Reporting: Leveraging the Right Tech for Deep Insight

A robust SEO audit is powered by data—and that requires the right tools. At Octopus, we rely on a stack of industry-leading platforms including Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Search Console, Moz, Sitebulb, and GTmetrix to provide a comprehensive diagnostic SEO report. These tools allow us to conduct everything from a full technical SEO audit to pinpointing on-page SEO issues, performance bottlenecks, and crawlability errors.

We also utilize Google PageSpeed Insights, Web.dev, and Lighthouse Reports for speed and UX testing, and tools like SEOQuake, Netpeak Spider, and CognitiveSEO for technical insights and backlink reviews. Our team delivers actionable dashboards through Google Data Studio, enabling real-time visibility into organic performance, search visibility, and SEO health trends. No fluff, no guesswork—just precise diagnostics backed by data.

Schema & Structured Data: Elevating Search Appearance

Structured data plays a crucial role in helping search engines understand your content, which can lead to enhanced visibility through rich results. Our schema audit includes validating the correct use of JSON-LD, microdata, and schema.org vocabulary for elements like product schema, FAQ schema, organization data, review markup, and local business schema.

We check for missing schema tags, duplicate schema instances, incorrect hierarchy, and issues that may prevent eligibility for rich snippets. Whether it’s article schema, breadcrumbList schema, event schema, or video object markup, our team ensures your structured data is implemented cleanly and accurately. Using tools like Google’s Rich Results Test and the Schema Validator, we help elevate your content’s presence in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Local SEO Diagnostics: Dominate Your Geo-Specific Market

Local visibility is crucial for businesses targeting specific regions. Our local SEO audit focuses on elements such as your Google Business Profile (formerly GMB), NAP consistency (Name, Address, Phone), citations, and location page optimization. We evaluate your presence in the local map pack, analyze your city-based keyword coverage, and review performance on Google Maps.

From duplicate listing detection to review signals and regional content audits, we identify gaps that may be hindering your local search rankings. If you serve multiple areas, we’ll assess the performance of location-specific landing pages, detect proximity-based issues, and ensure you’re sending the right trust signals to both users and search engines. Local SEO diagnostics help you appear more frequently when nearby customers are ready to act.

User Experience & Engagement: Evaluating How Visitors Interact

Search engines measure more than just code—they track how users engage with your site. That’s why our SEO audit includes a full UX diagnostics review. We evaluate bounce rates, dwell time, scroll depth, and CTA engagement to assess content stickiness and layout effectiveness. With heatmaps, session recordings, and event tracking, we identify barriers to conversion and content blind spots.

We also assess web accessibility compliance, mobile UX behavior, exit intent data, and interaction design flaws that may be lowering your SEO performance. A poor experience can lower rankings even with technically sound pages. We audit your design, structure, and interactivity to ensure your SEO success is built on a foundation of visitor satisfaction.

E-Commerce SEO Audit: Maximizing Online Store Visibility

If you’re an e-commerce brand, your audit needs go deeper. Our e-commerce SEO audit covers critical areas such as product page SEO, inventory crawl issues, paginated content, product schema accuracy, and filter crawlability. We look at common pitfalls like duplicate product descriptions, canonicalization for product variants, and category page issues that dilute your SEO efforts.

We audit structured data for SKUs, availability tags, price schema, and review markup—essential for rich snippets. Issues like out-of-stock indexing, faceted navigation conflicts, and breadcrumbs misconfiguration can all negatively affect organic traffic and ranking. Our audit ensures your product and category pages are not only optimized for Google but also designed to convert.

Content & Copy Review: Auditing Relevance, Quality & Intent

SEO isn’t just about code—it’s about content. Our content audit examines your website’s keyword usage, readability, topic coverage, and semantic depth. We identify thin content, outdated posts, low-performing pages, and areas of keyword cannibalization that may be hurting your rankings.

We review content length, heading hierarchy, and featured snippet opportunities, offering a content map for improvements. Using TF-IDF, semantic analysis, and voice search readiness metrics, we evaluate whether your web copy matches user search intent and query formats. If you’re not ranking, chances are your content isn’t answering the questions your audience is asking—our audit corrects that.

Penalty Risks & Manual Actions: Stay Safe from Algorithmic Trouble

A history of shady SEO can leave lasting damage. That’s why we include a manual action and penalty audit to identify any Google penalties, black-hat SEO footprints, or spammy backlinks that may have triggered algorithmic suppression. We detect anchor text over-optimization, keyword stuffing, hidden text, cloaked redirects, doorway pages, and other risky tactics.

If your site has experienced a drop in visibility or traffic, our diagnostics trace the root cause—whether it’s a Penguin, Panda, or manual action issue. We prepare a remediation plan that includes backlink disavows, content cleanup, and reconsideration request strategies to get your site back on track and compliant with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.