Short answer
An SEO audit is a structured check of your website that finds what stops search engines and AI assistants from finding, understanding and trusting your pages. A good one covers crawlability, indexing, on-page basics, content, technical health, links, speed, structured data and AI readiness. A free audit tool usually covers the automatic part: it spots problems but does not set your strategy.
What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit is a health check for your website's visibility. It reads your pages the way a search engine does, lists what is broken, missing or weak, and ranks the problems by how much they matter. The output is a report, and the value is in what you do with it: a long list nobody acts on changes nothing.
Audits come in two kinds. An automated audit is a scan that finds measurable issues quickly and cheaply. A manual audit adds a person's judgment about your market, content and plans. A free audit is almost always the first kind, and that is a useful place to start.
What does a good SEO audit check?
| Area | What it checks | Typical findings |
|---|---|---|
| Crawlability | Can search engines reach your pages? | robots.txt blocking pages, a missing sitemap, pages nothing links to |
| Indexing | Are your pages allowed and able to be stored? | noindex tags, error pages, wrong canonical tags |
| On-page basics | Does each page say what it is about? | Missing or duplicate titles and descriptions, no main heading, images without text descriptions |
| Content | Is the writing useful and original? | Thin pages, repeated text, no clear answer to the question |
| Technical health | Is anything broken? | Broken links, redirect chains, pages not on HTTPS |
| Links | Do pages connect well? | Pages with no internal links, vague link text, broken links |
| Speed | How fast do pages open? | Slow main content, layout that jumps, oversized images (see Core Web Vitals) |
| Structured data | Are the hidden labels valid and honest? | Missing, invalid or mismatched schema markup |
| AI readiness | Can AI assistants read and quote you? | AI crawlers blocked, text that needs scripts to appear, no direct answers (see AI visibility) |
How do Arcline's scan and scores match those checks?
Arcline visits your public pages, up to 200 per scan, and records titles, descriptions, headings, links, images, markup and speed signals. It then re-scans automatically (every week on Free, every 5 hours on Premium) and gives an overall health score out of 100, which is a weighted average of thirteen scores. Each score has a “How this number is worked out” panel.
| Audit area | Matching scores |
|---|---|
| Crawlability | Easy to explore |
| Indexing | Allowed in Google |
| On-page basics | Page basics, One clear business name |
| Content | Quality of your writing, Proof you're real |
| Technical health | Technical health, Visitor trust |
| Links | Links between pages |
| Speed | Speed |
| Structured data | Hidden labels for Google |
| AI readiness | Ready for AI answers, AI assistants can find you |
Cards are sorted weakest first. Each finding is labeled “I'll do it”, “Needs your OK” or “Only you can do this”, with exact steps for the last kind. The Free plan includes the full scan, the scores and this list for one website, plus up to 10 fixes a month after your OK; fixes made by the autopilot are part of Premium. See features.
How do you read an audit report without getting lost?
- Fix anything that stops indexing first: noindex tags, a robots.txt block, broken key pages.
- Then fix the site-wide issues, such as titles missing across many pages, because one change helps many pages.
- Then work on content and links, which take longer but matter most for the pages that earn you business.
- Ignore the urge to chase a perfect score. A score of 100 is not the goal. A site that gets customers is.
- Scan again after changes to confirm the fixes took effect.
What can a free audit not do?
- It cannot see your rankings, clicks or impressions. Only Google Search Console has Google's own data, so use both. Arcline does not connect to Search Console today.
- It cannot judge your business. It does not know your market, your customers or your competitors' real strength.
- Scores are not rankings. They measure how well your pages are built for search engines and AI assistants, and are not a forecast of traffic.
- It sees public pages only, so anything behind a login is outside the scan.
- The scores cover links between your own pages. For who links to you from other sites, Search Console's Links report is the free place to start.
How often should you run an audit?
Run one after any major change, such as a redesign, a migration, a new platform or a big batch of new pages, and check again every few months. Sites change in ways nobody notices: a plugin adds a noindex tag, a developer blocks crawling on a staging copy, a page goes slow. An audit that repeats by itself catches these sooner, which is why Arcline re-scans automatically. If you want the problem behind a missing site, see why your website is not showing on Google, and for the steps after the audit read how to improve your Google ranking. To run one on your own website, try the free SEO checker.