You can audit your website’s SEO in 60–180 minutes and lay out a 90‑day plan that actually moves the needle. If you’re a small business owner, social or community manager, or content creator, you don’t have time for a deep technical audit or to stitch together a dozen siloed tools — and turning comments, DMs and user‑generated content into measurable traffic often feels impossible.
This article gives you a practical, prioritized checklist to run in an hour to three hours using mostly free tools, plus templates and automation tips so you don’t waste time. Read on for a clear 90‑day fix plan, quick wins you can implement today, and exact tactics to convert social conversations into content, links and organic visits — no advanced SEO degree required.
What a website SEO check includes (on‑page, technical, off‑page) — and why it matters
A practical SEO check rests on three pillars: on-page, technical and off-page. On-page covers titles, meta descriptions, headings, content relevance, image alt text, internal linking and schema/structured data. Technical checks verify crawlability (robots.txt, XML sitemap), status codes, canonical tags, HTTPS, mobile friendliness and performance (page speed and Core Web Vitals). Off-page examines backlinks, referring domains, anchor text diversity, brand mentions and user-generated content (UGC) or social signals.
Examples of actionable checks:
On‑page: find pages with duplicate or missing titles, add schema for product/FAQ pages, repurpose high‑traffic low‑conversion pages with clearer CTAs.
Technical: scan for 4xx/5xx errors, validate sitemap submission, fix slow TTFB, ensure mobile viewport and image compression.
Off‑page: audit lost backlinks, identify unlinked brand mentions to reclaim, and evaluate UGC trends in reviews and comments.
Why run checks regularly? Regular audits protect indexability (catch accidental noindex tags), preserve visibility after deployments, improve conversion by fixing broken funnels, and surface regressions like slowed pages or lost links before they compound.
Who should run each check on a busy team? Allocate tasks by outcome:
Quick wins (1–4 hours): content owner or social/community manager fixes titles, meta, FAQs, and responds to high‑value comments/DMs that can convert.
Technical deep dives (days): SEO or developer handles site architecture, redirects, server issues and performance.
Off‑page & reputation (ongoing): community managers and outreach teams track mentions, request link reclamation and use automation to capture UGC.
Practical tip: schedule a 30–60 minute monthly scan covering the quick‑wins list, and reserve a quarterly deep audit. Use conversation automation tools like Blabla to automatically surface high‑intent comments and DMs, convert them into tracked leads or review prompts, and reduce manual triage so your team can act on off‑page opportunities faster. Start with the highest‑impact items.
A time‑budgeted SEO checklist for busy marketing teams (10–90 minutes)
Now that we understand what an SEO check covers, here is a compact, prioritized checklist you can run in short blocks of time so your team keeps momentum without disruption.
10‑minute quick health check — fast signals that catch obvious breakages:
Search Console: open Coverage and Performance to confirm no sudden index drops and check top landing pages for impressions/CTR changes.
Indexing status: pick 3 high‑value pages and verify they're indexed using site:yourdomain.com/page or the URL Inspection tool.
Core Web Vitals snapshot: view a single high‑traffic page in PageSpeed Insights for LCP/CLS/FID or use Chrome DevTools for a quick check.
robots.txt and sitemap: load /robots.txt and your sitemap.xml to ensure critical paths aren’t blocked and the sitemap is current.
Practical tip: keep a one‑page checklist and a browser bookmarklet that opens Search Console, top analytics report and robots.txt in three tabs.
30–60 minute focused check — tactical fixes that move the needle on key landing pages:
Title/meta and headers: scan 5 priority pages for duplicate or missing titles and proper H1/H2 hierarchy; fix mismatched H1s that confuse search intent.
Content quality: flag thin pages under 300 words and add examples, FAQs or user quotes to enrich relevance.
Internal linking: identify quick wins — add contextual links from blog posts to product/category pages to boost topical authority.
Example: if a product page ranks but converts poorly, add a short FAQ sourced from customer DMs or comments — you can use Blabla to surface those customer queries and draft AI‑assisted replies that become FAQ lines.
90‑minute mini‑audit — deeper diagnostics and prioritization:
Run a crawl sample of your site to find 4xx/5xx, duplicate content and canonical issues; export the top issues and assign fixes.
Top conversions: compare traffic vs conversion for top pages and flag high‑traffic/low‑conversion pages for UX/content fixes.
Backlinks snapshot: review referring domains for toxic links and new opportunities; prioritize outreach for high‑value mentions.
Deep page speed testing: run tests from multiple locations and device types on highest‑traffic pages and document blocking scripts or images to defer.
Cadence guidance: perform the 10‑minute check weekly, the 30–60 minute focused check monthly, and the 90‑minute mini‑audit quarterly — plus event‑driven checks after redesigns, migrations or major content pushes. Use Blabla during event checks to monitor spikes in comments/DMs, automate moderation to protect reputation, and capture user‑generated content you can transform into SEO‑rich copy.
Assign responsibilities: rotate a 15‑minute 'SEO huddle' where one team member runs the 10‑minute checklist and the rest review urgent flags; log actions in a shared doc. Track three KPIs: indexed pages, average page load, and organic conversion rate. Small, consistent reviews reduce risk and feed useful signals into social engagement automation each week consistently.
Free tools and simple automations to check your website SEO
Now that you have a time‑budgeted checklist to guide quick audits, here are free tools and simple automations to run those checks efficiently.
Must‑use free tools and what to use each for:
Google Search Console — monitor indexing, query performance, URL Inspection and export top queries and pages for prioritisation.
Bing Webmaster Tools — supplement GSC with crawl diagnostics and quick link reports that sometimes show different issues.
PageSpeed Insights / Lighthouse — field and lab performance data; use the auditing suggestions to prioritize images, JS and server timing fixes.
Mobile‑Friendly Test — quick verification of touch targets and viewport issues on problem pages identified in your checklist.
Screaming Frog (free mode) — crawl up to 500 URLs to find broken links, missing meta tags and duplicate titles without a paid plan.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools — free backlink and organic traffic overview for verified sites; useful to spot new referring domains and lost links.
Moz Link Explorer (limited) — use the free lookups to cross‑check authoritative domains pointing to top landing pages.
Google Analytics (basic reports) — behavior flow, landing pages, and conversion path basics to confirm which pages need SEO attention first.
Practical tip: start a single spreadsheet and attach exports from Search Console, PageSpeed and Screaming Frog. Keep three columns: issue, priority (traffic/conversion), owner. That gives immediate focus for a 30–60 minute follow‑up.
How Blabla helps
Capture and automate comment and DM ingestion so social signals and user questions don’t get lost — Blabla pulls incoming interactions into a queue for tagging and review.
Tag UGC and conversation themes automatically, allowing content teams to identify high‑intent questions that can become FAQ pages or blog posts — saving hours of manual sifting.
Push engagement data into Google Sheets or analytics platforms so social conversations become measurable SEO signals in your prioritisation sheet.
Protect brand reputation by automating moderation rules that filter spam and hate, preventing irrelevant content from skewing your UGC analysis.
Lightweight automations to set up today
Schedule weekly Screaming Frog crawls for your top 500 URLs and send a CSV to your priority sheet.
Export Search Console queries monthly and use a sheet formula to flag pages with rising impressions but falling CTR.
Use Zapier or Make to forward flagged comments and DMs from Blabla into a "Content Backlog" sheet with tags and timestamps so writers can turn UGC into optimized pages quickly.
Suggested quick combos: Search Console + PageSpeed + Screaming Frog sample covers index, performance and on‑page issues; add Blabla + Zapier to capture social intent and feed the content pipeline without paid SEO subscriptions.
Example: flag a DM asking about returns, convert to an FAQ snippet, publish on the relevant product page today.
Step‑by‑step simple website SEO audit (on‑page, technical, off‑page)
Now that we covered tools and automations, let’s run a concise, repeatable audit you can complete with a small team or solo marketer.
Preparation: inventory your top pages by traffic or conversions, define the audit goal (improve rankings, increase qualified traffic, or lift conversions), select a sample size (top 10–30 for small sites, 50–200 for larger) and set up a reporting sheet mapping each finding to an owner and status.
Example inventory columns: URL, traffic (last 90 days), primary keyword, owner.
Practical tip: Pick one goal per audit run to keep focus — e.g., increase organic signups or reduce product-page bounce.
On‑page audit steps — walk each sampled page and check:
Titles and meta descriptions: confirm uniqueness and keyword relevance; rewrite thin titles that repeat the brand name only.
Header structure: validate H1 presence and a logical H2/H3 hierarchy; consolidate multiple H1s or excessive H2s that dilute focus.
Content relevance and gaps: compare page content to ranking competitors; add FAQ, data points or user questions found in comments and DMs to close gaps.
Canonical tags and duplicates: ensure canonical points to the preferred URL and remove near-duplicates or implement consolidating redirects.
Schema and internal linking: add or correct schema for products, articles or FAQs; add 1–3 contextual internal links to related pages.
Tip: use recent social comments and user questions to seed FAQ schema — Blabla can surface recurring DMs and comments so you prioritize schema that answers real user intent quickly.
Technical audit steps — focus on crawlability, errors and performance:
Verify indexation status and robots controls; confirm XML sitemap entries match canonical URLs and that important pages are not disallowed.
Scan for 4xx/5xx errors and redirect chains; replace temporary 302s with 301s and collapse redirect chains.
Check redirects and hreflang if applicable; ensure language variants point correctly.
Run Core Web Vitals on sample high-traffic pages and note LCP, CLS and FID/INP offenders; prioritize quick wins like image compression, lazy loading and eliminating render-blocking scripts.
Off‑page audit steps — capture backlink health and brand signals:
Snapshot referring domains and top linking pages; flag new high-value links and any sudden drops.
Identify toxic or irrelevant links to disavow or outreach for removal; look for spammy anchor-text patterns that over-optimize exact-match keywords.
Log brand and social mentions, including unlinked citations; convert mentions into link opportunities by outreach or by publishing supporting content.
Practical tip: use conversation data from social to identify where customers talk about specific pages — Blabla helps by tagging mentions and routing them to the outreach or content owner.
Prioritisation framework: map each issue into an impact vs effort matrix. High-impact, low-effort items (title rewrites, single redirects, small schema additions) become immediate tickets; high-effort projects (site rearchitecture, major speed rebuilds) go into the roadmap with clear milestones. Recommended cadence: quarterly full audits and monthly targeted checks on priority pages. For social-driven content gaps, run a weekly quick scan of tagged comments and DMs to catch trend shifts early. Assign owners and deadlines for every high-priority fix.
How technical issues (page speed, mobile responsiveness, XML sitemap) affect SEO — checks and fixes
Now that we’ve walked through on‑page and technical checks, let’s focus on the technical performance items that most directly harm rankings and user behaviour: page speed, mobile responsiveness, and sitemap/robots errors.
Why page speed and Core Web Vitals matter: slow pages increase bounce rates, reduce crawl efficiency and can lower rankings through user‑experience signals. Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift and Interaction to Next Paint) capture real user frustration: a slow LCP delays content, high CLS breaks trust, and poor INP/FID makes pages feel sluggish. Measure with PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse.
Quick technical fixes (high impact, low effort): compress and serve scaled images (WebP/AVIF), enable browser caching with Cache‑Control headers, deploy a CDN to reduce latency, enable server‑side compression (gzip/Brotli), and use HTTP/2.
JavaScript and rendering: defer nonessential scripts, remove unused JS, split code with dynamic imports, and move critical CSS inline to speed first paint.
Lazy loading: lazy‑load below‑the‑fold images and iframes, but exclude above‑the‑fold hero images to avoid LCP regressions.
Mobile responsiveness checks: run Google’s Mobile‑Friendly Test and inspect pages on multiple device sizes. Common responsive failures include missing viewport meta, fixed‑width elements that cause horizontal scroll, tiny tap targets and fonts that aren’t readable without zoom. Make mobile‑first decisions: place the main CTA and key content early, use responsive images (srcset) and adaptive loading for smaller assets.
Look for layout shifts from late‑loading web fonts or images without dimensions; set explicit width/height or use aspect‑ratio CSS.
Test touch targets (min 48px), readable font sizes and keyboard accessibility for mobile users.
XML sitemap and robots.txt: ensure your sitemap lists canonical URLs only, is split if it exceeds 50,000 URLs, and is referenced in robots.txt. Common mistakes: blocking indexable pages with Disallow rules, submitting sitemaps that contain non‑canonical or parameterized URLs, or forgetting to resubmit after major URL changes. Submit and monitor sitemaps in Search Console and review the Coverage report for excluded or errored states.
Fast remediation plan & developer ticket templates: separate quick wins from deeper engineering work using a simple impact/effort matrix (impact 1–5, effort in hours). Prioritise fixes that improve pages with the most traffic or conversions.
Compress hero image — Steps: convert to WebP, add srcset, lazy‑load below the fold. Priority: High. Effort: 1–2 hours. Expected impact: LCP improvement.
Defer analytics script — Steps: mark script async/defer, load via requestIdleCallback. Priority: Medium. Effort: 0.5–1 hour. Expected impact: Faster FCP/TTFB.
Fix sitemap — Steps: remove non‑canonical URLs, resubmit in Search Console, add sitemap reference to robots.txt. Priority: High. Effort: 0.5–1 hour. Expected impact: indexing accuracy.
Tip: route performance reports from comments and DMs into your backlog—Blabla captures and tags those signals to help prioritise urgent fixes faster.
How to check and improve your backlink profile (off‑page SEO)
Now that we've covered technical page health, let's examine your backlink profile — the off‑page signals that often determine how competitive your site can be.
A backlink audit starts with free and freemium tools: export the "Links" report in Google Search Console, run a domain report in Ahrefs Webmaster Tools or Moz Link Explorer, and compare recent referring domains. Look for:
total referring domains and their trend
link quality signals (domain rating/authority, spam score)
anchor text diversity and exact‑match anchors
recent gains and losses (surges can be natural or manipulative)
Practical audit steps:
Export and deduplicate domains, then sort by organic traffic or DR.
Manually sample the top 50 domains to check relevance and placement (editorial vs footer).
Flag obviously toxic links: irrelevant content, link farms, foreign language spam, or pages with many paid/ads.
Create a remove/disavow spreadsheet with sources, contact attempts, and whether to disavow.
Decide remove/disavow vs outreach by impact:
Try removal first when links are spammy or clearly paid: contact the webmaster with a polite removal request and document attempts.
Disavow only after failed removals or when patterns show harmful intent across many domains.
For neutral or low‑quality links that nevertheless drive traffic, prioritize outreach and content improvements instead of disavowal.
Positive outreach tactics that work:
Resource pages: pitch your high‑quality how‑to or checklist as an addition.
HARO/PR: respond with data or expert quotes to get brand mentions and links.
Guest contributions: offer a unique angle and relevant examples.
Leverage existing audiences and social engagement: ask satisfied customers for testimonials with a link, convert strong UGC or case studies into linkable assets, and use community advocates identified from social DMs/comments to request mentions. Blabla helps here by tagging advocates and surfacing UGC that’s ripe for outreach.
Monitoring and KPIs: track referring domains, new/lost links, organic traffic to linked pages, and referral traffic. Review monthly while actively building links, and every quarter for maintenance; investigate sudden spikes immediately.
Example: a new editorial link to a product page often produces organic traffic uplift in 2–8 weeks; then record the source, monitor landing‑page conversions and tag revenue for monthly ROI.
Turning comments, DMs and UGC into measurable SEO wins — automation and measurement
Now that we examined backlink profiles, let's focus on turning social conversations into SEO assets.
Search engines treat social signals differently than backlinks: direct ranking signals are limited, but high social engagement reliably produces discovery, backlinks, richer snippets and improved click‑through rates—so the SEO value is indirect, measurable and actionable. For example, a viral Q&A thread can surface a common question that becomes an FAQ page ranking for long‑tail queries.
Start by capturing and surfacing UGC with automated workflows. Use a simple tag taxonomy (product_issue, pricing_question, testimonial, howto) and set triggers to pull relevant comments and DMs into a central content pipeline.
Blabla automates this: AI‑powered comment and DM automation tags, prioritises and routes messages to writers, product owners or support, saves hours of manual triage, increases response rates and filters spam or abusive content before it reaches your team.
Convert UGC into SEO assets with a repeatable process:
Map frequent tags to content formats: pricing_question → FAQ, howto → stepwise guide, testimonial → case study snippet.
Create or update on‑page sections (FAQ blocks, user examples, quote callouts) and add structured markup such as FAQ schema.
Publish curated quotes and examples as micro‑sections that answer exact user language to boost relevance and CTR.
Practical measurement and experiments:
Pick a high‑traffic page and a control page.
Add UGC‑driven content to the test page and keep the control unchanged.
Track organic sessions, impressions, average position, CTR and conversions for 6–12 weeks.
Expect phased attribution: social→content→search can take several weeks. Use these simple loops—capture, convert, measure—to turn everyday conversations into measurable SEO wins.
Set a 4‑week cadence for a UGC digest emailed to content owners and run a content sprint to convert the top ten tags each month; over time this process builds topical authority and makes SEO gains predictable rather than accidental.
























































































































































































































