Website SEO check: how to check your site for free, step by step

Step 1: Can Google find and index your pages?

Everything else is pointless if your pages aren’t in Google’s index. A quick first look is a search for site:yourdomain.com – it shows a rough sample of indexed pages, but the count isn’t reliable. For real answers, use Google Search Console. If you haven’t set it up yet, our Search Console guide for beginners walks you through it.

In Search Console, paste one of your important URLs into the URL Inspection bar at the top. It tells you whether the URL is on Google, which canonical Google picked and whether crawling was allowed. Then open Indexing → Pages to see how many pages are indexed and why others aren’t.

Not every unindexed URL is a problem – redirects, duplicates and filter pages are often excluded on purpose. Worry when pages you actually want to rank show up there. If that’s the case, see why a page is not indexed and how to fix it.

Step 2: Check your robots.txt

Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser. A single “Disallow: /” under “User-agent: *” blocks all crawlers from your whole site – a classic leftover from a staging setup. A simple, harmless robots.txt looks like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Step 3: noindex, redirects and other technical basics

Next, look for a noindex tag. In your browser, open the page source (View Source) and search for “noindex”. A meta robots noindex keeps a page out of Google. Remember that robots.txt blocks crawling, not indexing: if you want a page gone, use noindex and don’t block it in robots.txt, or Google never sees the tag.

Then check these basics. Most take a minute each:

• HTTPS: every page loads over https:// without browser warnings.
• One version of your domain: http:// and the non-www (or www) version redirect with a single 301 redirect to the version you use.
• No redirect chains: a link should reach its target in one hop, not three.
• Status codes: important pages return 200, deleted pages 404 or 410, not a “soft 404” that looks like an error but returns 200.
• Canonical tag: each page points to itself or to the main version of duplicate content.
• XML sitemap: it exists, lists only indexable URLs and is submitted under Sitemaps in Search Console.

Step 4: Titles, descriptions and headings

Every page needs its own title tag and meta description. The title is what people see as the blue link in Google, so put the main topic first and keep it to about 50–60 characters – Google cuts by pixel width, not by an exact character count. The meta description isn’t a ranking factor, but a good one can earn more clicks. About 150–160 characters is a sensible length.

Google often rewrites titles and writes its own snippets from your page content, so don’t panic if the result looks different. Duplicate titles across many pages, however, are worth fixing. More details and examples are in our guide to title tags and meta descriptions.

On the page itself, use one clear H1 that matches the topic and H2s that structure the content. You can skip the meta keywords tag – Google ignores it.

Step 5: Content and internal links

Technical checks only make sure Google can read your pages. Whether they rank depends on whether they answer the search better than the alternatives. For each important page, ask: what would someone type into Google to find this, and does the page answer that clearly near the top?

Look for thin pages with only a few sentences, several pages covering the same topic (they can compete with each other) and pages that no other page links to. Internal links help Google discover pages and understand what matters. Your most important pages should be reachable in a few clicks from the homepage, with link text that says what the target is about – not just “click here”.

Also check your images: descriptive file names, alt text that describes the image and sensible file sizes.

Step 6: Speed, mobile and structured data

Run your homepage and one or two key pages through PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). The upper part shows field data from real Chrome users if your site has enough traffic, the lower part a lab test. The Core Web Vitals are LCP (loading, good up to 2.5 seconds), INP (responsiveness, good up to 200 milliseconds) and CLS (layout shift, good up to 0.1). Search Console shows the same field data for your whole site under Core Web Vitals.

Google indexes the mobile version of your pages, so check your site on a real phone: is the text readable without zooming, are buttons easy to tap, is all content there? Chrome’s developer tools have a device mode for a quick check.

If you use structured data – for example for products, recipes, events or FAQs – test it with Google’s Rich Results Test. It shows errors and whether a page is eligible for rich results. Valid markup doesn’t guarantee that Google shows them.

What to fix first

After a check you usually have more items than time. This order works well for most sites:

Run the check on your iPhone with Rankpilot

Rankpilot is an iPhone and iPad app that runs this kind of check for you. It is coming soon to the App Store and isn’t available yet. You enter your website and get a score from 0 to 100 with a list of problems and concrete fixes – technical issues, content, performance including Google PageSpeed, mobile, structured data and security headers. You can also start a check straight from Safari with the share extension.

The app is free and doesn’t need an account. The free version checks up to 5 pages per run, Rankpilot Pro up to 25 and adds the history with changes since the last check, a PDF report and background monitoring that alerts you when something breaks. Pro is a monthly or yearly subscription with a 7-day free trial.