How to Use a Website SEO Checker to Find and Fix SEO Issues
Running a website SEO checker takes under three minutes. Knowing what to do with the results is where most people get stuck. This guide walks you through the full process — from entering your URL to building a prioritized fix list — so you leave with a clear action plan, not a pile of red flags.
What a Website SEO Checker Actually Scans
A website SEO checker is an automated tool that crawls one or more pages of your site and evaluates them against a list of known ranking factors and best practices. The goal is to surface issues that could be suppressing your visibility in Google and other search engines before you spend time on content or links.
Most tools scan across the same core categories. Here is what each one covers:
Title tags, meta descriptions, and Open Graph tags. These are the snippets Google shows in search results. Missing, duplicate, or over-long tags directly affect click-through rate.
Heading hierarchy (H1–H6), semantic HTML, and internal link structure. A clear structure helps both search engines and users understand your content's organization.
Word count, duplicate content, keyword usage, and readability. Thin pages — those with little original content — are a common cause of poor rankings.
HTTPS status, robots.txt, sitemap, redirect chains, and canonical tags. Technical issues can prevent Google from indexing your pages entirely.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and Interaction to Next Paint (INP). Google uses these performance signals as a ranking factor.
Font sizes, tap target spacing, and viewport configuration. With the majority of searches happening on mobile, a poor mobile experience has real ranking consequences.
External links pointing to your site, their authority, and any toxic or broken inbound links. Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals.
How to Run Your First SEO Scan in Under 3 Minutes
Whether you use a free SEO audit tool like AuditDepot or another website analysis tool, the process is the same. Here is the step-by-step walkthrough:
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Enter your URL. Type or paste the full address of the page you want to audit — including
https://. Start with your homepage, then repeat the process for your most important landing pages. -
Start the scan. Click the audit or analyze button. A typical SEO scan takes 10–30 seconds depending on page complexity and server response time.
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Read the overall score first. Most tools show a headline score (e.g. 68/100). Do not obsess over the number — it is a rough guide. What matters is which category is pulling it down.
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Expand each category. Drill into Meta Tags, Technical, Performance, and Content sections individually. Each flagged item usually includes an explanation of the issue and sometimes a recommended fix.
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Export or copy the issues list. Save the results so you can prioritize them outside the tool. A spreadsheet works well — one row per issue, with columns for category, severity, and effort.
No account required. Run a free SEO audit on your site in seconds.
Run Free SEO Audit →The 5 Most Important SEO Issues Your Checker Will Find
Your SEO checker will likely surface a dozen or more issues. These five appear most often and have the greatest impact on rankings. They are listed in order of priority — fix them in this sequence for the fastest results.
Missing or Duplicate Meta Descriptions
What the checker reports: A warning that the page has no meta description, or that two or more pages share the same one.
Why it matters: Meta descriptions are the first thing users read in search results. While Google does not use them as a direct ranking signal, a well-written description improves click-through rate — which does influence rankings indirectly. Duplicate descriptions confuse Google about which page to show.
How to fix it: Write a unique meta description of 140–160 characters for every page. Focus on the benefit to the reader, include your target keyword naturally, and end with a mild call to action.
Broken Internal Links
What the checker reports: One or more links on the page that return a 404 error or redirect to an unintended destination.
Why it matters: Broken links waste crawl budget and destroy link equity — the authority that flows from one page to another through internal links. They also create a poor user experience that increases bounce rate.
How to fix it: For each broken link, either update the URL to the correct destination, redirect the dead URL to the most relevant live page, or remove the link entirely if the destination no longer exists.
Slow Page Load Speed
What the checker reports: A failing or needs-improvement score for Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) or overall page speed, often with specific file-level recommendations.
Why it matters: Page speed is a confirmed Google ranking factor. According to Google's SEO Starter Guide, Core Web Vitals are part of the page experience signals used in ranking. Pages that load in under 2.5 seconds consistently outperform slower counterparts.
How to fix it: Start with image compression — oversized images are the most common cause of slow LCP. Next, enable browser caching and defer non-critical JavaScript. For a comprehensive list of checks, see our technical SEO audit checklist.
Missing Image Alt Text
What the checker reports: Images on the page that have empty or missing alt attributes.
Why it matters: Alt text does two things: it tells search engines what an image depicts (contributing to image search visibility) and it provides an accessible text alternative for users with visual impairments. Both matter for SEO and compliance.
How to fix it: Add a short, descriptive alt attribute to every meaningful image. Describe what is in the image concisely — one sentence is usually enough. Decorative images that add no information can use an empty alt attribute (alt="").
Thin or Duplicate Content
What the checker reports: Pages with very low word counts, or blocks of text that appear on multiple pages of the site.
Why it matters: Google's Helpful Content system rewards pages that demonstrate genuine depth and expertise. Pages with fewer than 300 words of substantive content are routinely outranked by more comprehensive competitors. See our on-page SEO checklist for a full breakdown of content quality signals.
How to fix it: Merge thin pages into a single more thorough page, expand them with genuinely useful detail, or add a canonical tag if the duplicate serves a technical purpose. For duplicate product or category pages, canonical tags and structured data are usually the right approach.
How to Prioritize Your SEO Fix List
The biggest problem with SEO audit reports is not a lack of information — it is too much of it. Most tools return 20–50 issues at once, which creates paralysis rather than momentum. The solution is a simple two-axis framework: Impact × Ease.
Rate each issue on two dimensions: how much fixing it is likely to improve rankings or traffic (impact), and how quickly you can actually fix it (ease). Then work through the quadrants in this order:
| Quadrant | Impact | Ease | Action | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fix First | High | Easy | Do immediately | Missing meta descriptions, alt text, duplicate title tags |
| Schedule | High | Hard | Plan a sprint | Page speed, thin content rewrites, broken link audit |
| Batch Later | Low | Easy | Quick wins when you have time | Image filenames, minor heading order issues |
| Ignore | Low | Hard | Deprioritize | Minor structured data warnings on non-transactional pages |
Most sites can resolve their highest-priority issues — meta tags, alt text, and a handful of broken links — in an afternoon. That alone is often enough to see measurable movement in Google Search Console within four to six weeks. For deeper guidance on E-E-A-T signals that affect how Google evaluates your content's trustworthiness, see our finance SEO audit guide, which covers these trust factors in detail.
Beyond the Basics: Checking AI Visibility
Traditional SEO checkers focus on Google rankings. But as more users get answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, there is a second layer of visibility worth auditing: AI citation readiness.
AI systems tend to cite content that is structured, specific, and easy to extract as a discrete answer. Pages optimized for traditional SEO are often already partially optimized for AI visibility — but there are several additional signals that matter specifically for large language models.
- Clear heading hierarchy — H1 through H3 headings that accurately summarize each section allow AI crawlers to identify the scope of your content.
- Structured answers near the top — A direct answer to the page's primary question in the first two paragraphs increases the likelihood of being quoted or cited.
- Schema markup — Article, HowTo, and FAQ schema help AI systems understand the format and subject of your content. AuditDepot checks for these LLM-ready signals as part of its audit output.
- Factual specificity — Vague claims are rarely cited. Precise statistics, named tools, step counts, and dated information are favored by AI citation systems.
- Author attribution — Named authorship with a linked author page signals expertise and is increasingly used by AI systems to assess credibility.
AI visibility is an emerging ranking surface, not a replacement for traditional SEO. The good news is that content built to rank in Google — authoritative, well-structured, specific — tends to perform well in AI search too. Think of AI optimization as a free bonus for content already doing the fundamentals right.
What to Do After Your First Audit
A single SEO audit is a snapshot. SEO is a moving target — pages degrade, competitors improve, and Google updates its algorithms regularly. The most effective approach is to treat auditing as a recurring habit rather than a one-time task.
Here is a simple 30-day plan to get started:
- Week 1: Fix all high-impact/easy issues from your first audit — meta descriptions, alt text, duplicate title tags.
- Week 2: Address broken links and any redirect chains. Verify your sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console.
- Week 3: Tackle the highest-priority content issues — expand your thinnest pages, consolidate any true duplicates.
- Week 4: Re-run the audit using your free SEO audit tool and compare scores. Check Google Search Console for crawl errors and Core Web Vitals field data.
Set a monthly reminder to run a fresh scan. Even a 15-minute review each month will catch regressions before they affect your traffic. The sites that rank consistently are not the ones that ran one perfect audit — they are the ones that kept checking.