Free SEO analysis: the ten checks you can run yourself today, and how to read an agency audit

You can run a complete free SEO analysis of your own site in about an hour with three free tools: Google Search Console for what Google actually did with your pages, PageSpeed Insights for speed and layout, and a free desktop crawl for structure. That combination covers indexing, queries, technical health and performance, which is the whole of a technical audit. The ten checks below are the order to run them in, with what good looks like for each. The last section covers the other meaning of the phrase: the free SEO analysis an agency offers, and how to get real value out of one.

Set up the three tools first

• Search Console, verified on your domain. This is measured data from Google about your own site, and nothing else can replace it. If it is not set up, stop and do that first; the rest of this list reads better with four weeks of data in it.
• PageSpeed Insights, which needs nothing but a URL. Run it on your home page, one category or service page, and one product or article page.
• A crawler. Screaming Frog SEO Spider is free up to 500 URLs per crawl, which covers a small site completely. Point it at your home page and let it finish before you read anything.

Our page on what each kind of SEO audit tool actually checks explains which layer each product owns if you want to add a paid one later.

The ten checks, in order

• 1. Indexing. In Search Console, open the Pages report. Compare the number of indexed pages with the number of pages you expect to have. Then read the "not indexed" reasons. Good looks like: every page you want found is indexed, and every excluded page is excluded for a reason you chose.
• 2. Your real queries. Open the Performance report, set it to the last three months, and sort queries by impressions. Good looks like: the top twenty queries describe what you sell. If they describe something else, your pages are answering the wrong question.
• 3. Positions four to twenty. Filter the same report to average position between four and twenty, sort by impressions. These are the queries where a page already exists and is close. Good looks like: a list of ten or more, which is your cheapest work available.
• 4. Click through rate outliers. Find pages with high impressions and low click through rate. Good looks like: no page with thousands of impressions and a click through rate far below the others, because that is usually a title and description problem you can fix in an hour.
• 5. Crawl errors and redirects. In the crawler, filter to response codes. Good looks like: no internal links pointing at 404s, no redirect chains longer than one hop, and no internal links to http where the site is https.
• 6. Titles and descriptions. In the crawler, sort by title. Good looks like: every page has a unique title describing that page, and no two pages share one.
• 7. Internal links. In the crawler, look at inlinks per URL. Good looks like: no important page with one or zero internal links pointing at it, and your main service or category pages reachable in two clicks from the home page.
• 8. Canonicals and duplicates. Check that each page's canonical points at itself unless you deliberately chose otherwise. Good looks like: no page canonicalised to the home page by accident, which is a common theme default.
• 9. Speed and layout. Read the PageSpeed Insights field data section, which uses measurements from real visits. Good looks like: all three metrics in the green band on mobile. If field data is not available, read the lab scores and treat them as a diagnostic.
• 10. Mobile rendering. Use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console on one of each template, and look at the rendered HTML Google holds. Good looks like: your main content and your links present in what Google rendered.

Write every finding into one list as you go, with the page or template it affects. A single ordered list beats a tool report, because it is the thing you can hand to a developer.

What to fix first

Priority	Finding	Why it is first
1	Pages blocked, noindexed or returning errors that should be indexable	Nothing else matters while a page cannot be reached
2	Wrong canonicals and duplicate titles	Cheap to fix and it decides which page competes
3	Titles and descriptions on high impression, low click through pages	Fastest measurable gain from existing rankings
4	Internal links to important pages	Free, permanent, and usually the most neglected item
5	Core Web Vitals failures on your main templates	Fix the template once and every page benefits
6	Pages close on queries you want	Improvement on an existing page is cheaper than a new page

For the full technical pass, see our technical SEO checklist in the order that matters, and for the three performance metrics and their thresholds, the Core Web Vitals page.

Free tools worth adding

• Google's rich results test and schema validators, for checking structured data on a template before it goes live.
• A free tier of a platform suite, for a competitor's top queries and a sense check before a meeting.
• Google's own documentation, starting with Search Essentials, which is the reference every tool is approximating.

The other free SEO analysis: the one an agency offers

A free audit offered by an agency is a sales step, and that is a perfectly reasonable thing for it to be. It becomes genuinely useful when you ask for four specific things rather than accepting a PDF with a score on the front.

• The crawl export, as a file. Findings without the underlying data cannot be verified or handed to a developer.
• Their top ten named fixes, in priority order, with the reason each one is above the next. This tells you whether there is judgement behind the tool.
• Which findings came from a tool and which from a person. Both are legitimate. A report that cannot distinguish them was generated, not written.
• Read only access only. Grant read access to Search Console at this stage, never write access. Google's own guidance on hiring an SEO makes the same point in its page on whether you need an SEO, and it is also the page that says an audit should give you realistic estimates of improvement and of the work involved.

That same Google page carries the clearest warning in the category: if an SEO guarantees you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else. Treat a promised position the way you would treat a promised lottery number, and walk away.

This page covers the free analysis you can run yourself and how to read somebody else's. For what each paid audit product adds, see the audit tools page linked above. For the order to fix findings in, see the technical checklist linked above. For turning findings into traffic, see how to measure and diagnose organic traffic.

Where people get stuck on Free SEO analysis

Can I really do an SEO analysis for free?

Yes, and the free tools cover the most important layers. Search Console is measured data from the search engine itself, PageSpeed Insights uses real visit measurements, and a free crawl shows the structure of a small site completely. Paid suites add competitor estimates, backlink indexes and scheduled monitoring, which are additions rather than prerequisites.

How long does a free SEO analysis take?

About an hour for the ten checks on a small site, once the tools are connected, plus the crawl time. Budget a second hour to turn the findings into a prioritised list with an owner against each item, because that is the part that produces change.

How often should I run it?

Run the full pass quarterly, and keep two checks on a monthly rhythm: the indexing report and the position four to twenty list. Schedule the crawl monthly as well if your site ships changes often, because the useful signal is a new issue appearing after a deployment.

What does a free website SEO checker score mean?

A score out of a hundred is a summary of whichever checks that tool runs, weighted by its own choices. Read the findings list underneath rather than the number, sort it by what actually blocks a page from being crawled, indexed or served quickly, and you have something you can act on.

Is a free analysis enough, or do I need a paid audit?

The free pass is enough to find and fix the issues that hold most sites back. A paid audit earns its fee on large sites, on international or multi domain setups, after a traffic drop you cannot explain, and before or after a migration, because those situations need a specialist reading the data rather than a longer checklist.

One layer no free SEO checker looks at yet

Run every check above and you will know how Google sees your site. There is a second question your buyers are now asking somewhere else: when they put the category question to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews, does the answer name you? That answer is generated per prompt rather than ranked in a list, and it draws heavily on what third party sources say about you. AI Knows Us measures it and shows which sources each answer used, with a free scan and no account needed at aiknowsus.com, which makes it a sensible eleventh check once the ten above are clean.