How to Audit Your Website's SEO: A Practical Guide for Irish Businesses

A step-by-step guide to conducting a thorough SEO audit of your website, with specific considerations for the Irish market and practical examples.

3/27/2025•By Senior Software Engineer & SEO Team Lead
SEO AuditIrish MarketTechnical SEOWebsite PerformanceGoogle Search Console

How to Audit Your Website's SEO: A Practical Guide for Irish Businesses

In our previous post, we explored the Irish digital landscape and why technical SEO matters. Now, let's roll up our sleeves and learn how to audit your website's SEO performance. This is going to get a bit technical, and there's some work for you to do in it too. So make a cuppa and be ready to work along beside me.

What We'll Cover

  1. Basic Site Health Check
  2. Check google for your site
  3. Find your sitemap
  4. Checking Core Web Vitals and Page Speed

Starting with the Basics: Site Health Check

Before diving into complex tools, let's check your site's fundamental health:

📋 Basic Health Checklist

Search Engine Accessibility

  • Check robots.txt for blocked important pages
  • Verify no critical content has noindex tags
  • Test JavaScript rendering with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test
  • Confirm accessibility from Irish IP addresses
  • Review server response codes (should be 200 for important pages)

Indexing Status & Site Visibility on Google

One of the first and most crucial steps in an SEO audit is to understand how Google sees your website and which pages are included in its index. The site: operator is a powerful Google search command that lets you see exactly this. For instance, to check Breen Digital's indexed pages, you would search Google for site:breendigital.ie. You can use this with your own domain to get quick insights.

  • Perform a "site:" search on Google: Use the command site:yourdomain.ie (replacing yourdomain.ie with your actual domain name).
  • Analyze "site:" search results:
    • Note the total number of indexed pages shown by Google. Does this roughly match the number of valuable pages on your site?
    • Review how your page titles and meta descriptions appear in the search results. Are they compelling and accurate?
    • Check the URL structure displayed. Is it clean and user-friendly?
    • Identify any unexpected pages (e.g., old versions, test pages, private areas) that are indexed and shouldn't be.
    • Look for important pages that might be missing from the index.
  • Use advanced "site:" search operators for deeper insights (optional):
    • site:yourdomain.ie inurl:blog (to find all indexed pages within a /blog/ directory)
    • site:yourdomain.ie filetype:pdf (to find all indexed PDF files from your domain)
    • site:yourdomain.ie "specific key phrase" (to find pages on your site that Google has indexed containing that exact phrase)
  • Cross-reference with Google Search Console:
    • Check the "Coverage" report in Google Search Console for a comprehensive list of indexed pages and any indexing errors.
  • Verify important pages appear in general search results: Beyond site: searches, check if your key pages rank for their target terms.
  • Monitor for unexpected indexed content regularly.
  • Compare mobile vs. desktop indexing in Google Search Console if you suspect discrepancies, particularly using the URL Inspection tool.

Understanding and Checking Your Sitemap

Google and all search engines for that matter do the same thing, they crawl the web indexing it. A good way to think of it is like having the index at the back of a book, someone had to know what was on each page before writing that index. Google has speical web servers called crawlers that crawl the internet for updates and index those changes, making your google search just a fancy way to check the back of the book that is the internet. A sitemap is an XML file that lists all your website's important pages. It acts as a roadmap for search engines like Google, helping them discover and index your content more efficiently and understand when pages were last updated. Most content management systems generate these automatically. For example, you can typically find a sitemap at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (like Breen Digital's at https://breendigital.ie/sitemap.xml).

  • Locate your sitemap:
    • Check common locations: yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml or yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml (for larger sites).
    • Look for a sitemap declaration in your robots.txt file (e.g., Sitemap: https://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml).
    • Consult your website platform's documentation (e.g., WordPress SEO plugins, Shopify settings, Nuxt modules) for sitemap generation details.
  • Validate your sitemap:
    • Use an online tool like SEOptimer's Sitemap Checker or the sitemap report in Google Search Console.
    • Ensure the sitemap is in valid XML format and accessible to search engines (not blocked by robots.txt or server configurations).
  • Review sitemap content for accuracy and completeness:
    • Confirm that all important, canonical URLs of your website are included.
    • Verify that no irrelevant URLs (e.g., non-canonical versions, redirected URLs, error pages, private admin pages) are listed.
    • Check that lastmod (last modification) dates are accurate, reflecting when the content of each page actually changed.
    • Ensure the sitemap doesn't include URLs that are disallowed in your robots.txt file.
  • Address common sitemap issues:
    • Critical pages missing from the sitemap.
    • Outdated lastmod dates, giving search engines stale information.
    • Listing non-canonical URLs, which can confuse search engines.
    • Including URLs that are blocked by robots.txt.
    • Sitemap exceeding size limits (Google's limit is 50MB uncompressed or 50,000 URLs per sitemap; use a sitemap index file if your site is larger).
  • Submit your sitemap to search engines:
    • Add your sitemap URL to Google Search Console.
    • Add your sitemap URL to Bing Webmaster Tools.

Technical SEO Deep Dive

Ok, here's where we get into the meat and potatoes of what google thinks of your site. It's all well and good that you can make your site found easily so it can be indexed, the problem is so has everyone. 30 years ago. So you need to do more, google used to rank sites using [backlinks]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlink this was a pretty good way to gague what sites were most popular, until people like me found a way to game the system unfortunately if you're reading this now, you've missed out on the golden era of SEO ranking, now you'll have to do a bit of work. One important thing is to check your site's performance

🚀 Performance Checklist

Page Speed Targets

  • Mobile Load Time: Under 2.5 seconds
  • Desktop Load Time: Under 1.5 seconds
  • First Contentful Paint: Under 1.8 seconds
  • Time to Interactive: Under 3.8 seconds
  • Total Blocking Time: Under 200ms

Understanding and Measuring Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of specific factors that Google considers important in a webpage's overall user experience. They focus on three aspects: loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Improving these metrics can lead to better user engagement and can and does positively influence your search rankings.

Key Core Web Vitals Metrics:
  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP):
    • What it is: LCP measures how quickly the main content of a page loads. Specifically, it marks the point in the page load timeline when the page's largest image or text block is visible within the viewport.
    • Why it's important: A fast LCP helps reassure the user that the page is useful and actually loading.
    • Targets:
      • Good: 2.5 seconds or less
      • Needs Improvement: Between 2.5 and 4.0 seconds
      • Poor: More than 4.0 seconds
  • Interaction to Next Paint (INP):
    • What it is: INP is a metric that assesses a page's overall responsiveness to user interactions. It measures the time from when a user interacts with your page (e.g., clicks a button, taps on an accordion, uses a JavaScript-powered control) until the browser is able to paint the next frame, showing visual feedback that the interaction has begun. INP has replaced First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital as of March 2024.
    • Why it's important: Good responsiveness means the page reacts quickly to user inputs, providing a smoother experience and preventing frustration.
    • Targets:
      • Good: 200 milliseconds or less
      • Needs Improvement: Between 200ms and 500ms
      • Poor: More than 500 milliseconds
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):
    • What it is: CLS measures visual stability. It quantifies how much visible content shifts unexpectedly during the lifespan of the page. A low CLS helps ensure that the page is delightful and not frustrating to use.
    • Why it's important: Unexpected layout shifts can cause users to click on the wrong thing or lose their place, leading to a poor experience.
    • Targets:
      • Good: 0.1 or less
      • Needs Improvement: Between 0.1 and 0.25
      • Poor: More than 0.25
Google's Free Tools for Measuring Core Web Vitals:
  • PageSpeed Insights: (pagespeed.web.dev)
    • Analyzes your page and provides both lab data (from Lighthouse) and field data (from the Chrome User Experience Report, if available). Gives specific recommendations for improvement. You can check the Core Web Vitals for this very guide here as an example.
  • Lighthouse: (Available in Chrome DevTools)
    • Access it by right-clicking on a page, selecting "Inspect," and going to the "Lighthouse" tab. Provides lab data and a comprehensive audit of performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO.
  • Google Search Console: (search.google.com/search-console)
    • The "Core Web Vitals" report under "Experience" shows how your site's pages are performing based on field data (real-user data). Groups URLs by status (Good, Needs Improvement, Poor) for each metric.
  • Web Vitals Extension: (Available for Chrome)
    • Provides real-time feedback on Core Web Vitals metrics as you browse your site or other sites.
Core Web Vitals Checklist:
  • Test key pages with PageSpeed Insights:
    • Homepage
    • Main category pages
    • Popular product/service pages
    • Blog post templates
  • Analyze Lighthouse reports for detailed diagnostics and opportunities.
  • Regularly monitor the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console for trends and to identify groups of URLs needing attention.
  • Use the Web Vitals Extension for quick checks during development or browsing.
  • Identify the causes of poor scores for LCP (e.g., slow server response, render-blocking resources, large images/videos), INP (e.g., long JavaScript tasks, inefficient event handlers), and CLS (e.g., images without dimensions, dynamically injected content, web fonts causing FOIT/FOUT).
  • Prioritize fixes based on impact and feasibility.

Summary

This guide has walked you through the initial crucial steps for auditing your website, particularly with an Irish business context in mind. We started with the fundamentals:

  • Checking Your Site on Google: Using the site: operator and analyzing what Google has indexed to understand your current visibility.
  • Understanding Your Sitemap: Learning what a sitemap is, why it's vital for search engine crawling, how to locate yours, and tools to check its validity.
  • Measuring Core Web Vitals: Diving into Google's key performance metrics – Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – and exploring free tools like PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse to assess and improve your site's loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.

Performing these checks regularly will provide a solid foundation for understanding your website's technical SEO health and identifying areas for improvement to better serve your users and enhance your search engine presence.

Next Steps

In our next post, we'll dive into setting up comprehensive monitoring for your Irish website, including:

  • Real-time performance tracking
  • Search visibility monitoring
  • Local ranking tracking
  • Competitor analysis

Resources

  1. Google Search Console - Essential for monitoring search performance
  2. Google Business Profile - Critical for local Irish SEO
  3. Schema Markup Generator - For implementing structured data

Next week, we'll explore the tools and systems you need to monitor your SEO performance continuously. Stay tuned for practical examples and Irish market-specific insights.