A B2B SEO audit has one job: find out whether Google can crawl, index and properly show the pages that bring you pipeline, and what each fix is worth. Most audit reports bury that under a score out of 100 and dozens of equal-looking warnings.
This SEO audit checklist puts the checks in the order that matters for a B2B IT or SaaS website: indexing, then duplicates and language versions, then Core Web Vitals, then structured data and on-page basics. Every threshold comes from Google's documentation, and you get a real fix from our own homepage that cut mobile LCP from 6.4 to 2.7 seconds.
What should a B2B SEO audit include?
A useful audit answers three questions for each important page: can Google index it, does Google show the right URL in the right language, and does it load fast for a buyer on a phone? On most B2B IT sites these pages are few: the homepage, service or product pages, pricing, comparisons, integrations and the blog posts that bring in leads.
Google's page Do you need an SEO? sets the bar: an audit "should be about giving you realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved". Give an auditor read access to Search Console only, and walk away from anyone who guarantees first place.
Be careful with tool scores. When we first published this article in 2025, it opened with an 88 out of 100 from an audit tool. Google's guidance on third-party SEO tools says such tools "don't have access to our internal ranking data" and strongly encourages its own Search Console, whose data comes directly from Google Search.
SEO audit checklist: what to check first
Check in this order, because each step depends on the one before: a speed fix on a page Google has not indexed changes nothing.
| Priority | What to check | Why it comes here | Where to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Key pages are indexed | An unindexed page cannot rank or be cited | URL Inspection, Page indexing report |
| 2 | Canonicals and redirects | Duplicates split signals | URL Inspection |
| 3 | hreflang | Buyers land on the wrong language | Page source, sitemap |
| 4 | Core Web Vitals | Used by ranking systems; slow pages lose buyers | Core Web Vitals report, PageSpeed Insights |
| 5 | Structured data | Helps Google understand your pages | Rich Results Test |
| 6 | Titles and internal links | Pages must match searches and be linked | Performance report, a site crawler |
Start with the 10 to 20 URLs that produce demo requests and leads, one by one, before you look at any site-wide warnings.
How to check if Google indexes your key pages
Paste each key URL into the URL Inspection tool in Search Console. Google's technical requirements name only three conditions for eligibility: Googlebot isn't blocked, the page returns HTTP 200 and it has indexable content. Even then, "indexing isn't guaranteed".
- robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing. A blocked URL can still appear in results. To keep a page out, use noindex and let Google crawl the page so it can see the tag.
- Leftover noindex. A noindex copied from a staging site onto live templates can remove a whole section. Check the HTML and HTTP headers of every template.
- Status codes. Real pages return 200 and missing pages 404. A "not found" page that returns 200 is a soft 404 in the Page indexing report.
- JavaScript. Google renders it, but its JavaScript SEO basics call server-side or pre-rendering "still a great idea" because "not all bots can run JavaScript". Key text and links belong in the HTML.
- Sitemaps. List only canonical, absolute URLs. Google's sitemap guide says it ignores priority and changefreq, and uses lastmod only when it is consistently accurate.
In the Page indexing report, "Crawled - currently not indexed" means Google fetched the page but did not index it for now, and Google says there is no need to resubmit it. Improve the page or merge it into a stronger one. Google also says a site with fewer than 500 pages probably doesn't need that report: site: searches and URL Inspection will do.
How to audit canonical tags and hreflang
Every indexable page should name one canonical URL, usually itself, and every language version should list all versions, including itself. Get either wrong and Google shows the wrong language, or nothing.
Google's canonical guide calls redirects and rel=canonical strong signals and sitemap inclusion a weak one. It asks for self-referencing canonicals, absolute URLs and no mixed signals, and with hreflang a canonical in the same language: a Czech page with an English canonical tells Google to show the English URL.
Google's hreflang guide says each version must list itself and all other versions with fully qualified URLs, and that tags are ignored when two pages don't point to each other. Codes start with the language (ISO 639-1): Czech is cs, not cz, and region codes such as UK or EU have no effect (use en-GB).
Its guide to multilingual sites adds two rules: use separate URLs per language rather than cookies or browser settings, and don't redirect visitors automatically by language, because Googlebot usually crawls from the USA without an Accept-Language header. Google judges language by visible content, so keep text and navigation in one language per page.
Then compare the user-declared and the Google-selected canonical in URL Inspection, and look for "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user" in the Page indexing report.
Core Web Vitals thresholds: what counts as good?
A page passes when all three metrics are good at the 75th percentile of page loads, on mobile and desktop separately. The targets come from Google's Web Vitals guide, the poor bands from the web.dev pages on LCP, INP and CLS.
| Metric | Good | Poor |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), loading | 2.5 s or less | Over 4.0 s |
| Interaction to Next Paint (INP), responsiveness | 200 ms or less | Over 500 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), visual stability | 0.1 or less | Over 0.25 |
Values in between need improvement. INP replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in 2024, so an audit template that still reports FID is out of date.
Google's page experience guide says "Core Web Vitals are used by our ranking systems", but good results don't guarantee top rankings, and chasing a perfect score just for SEO "may not be the best use of your time". Relevance comes first.
Know which numbers you read. PageSpeed Insights shows lab data from Lighthouse, which simulates a mid-tier phone on a mobile network, and field data from real Chrome users over the previous 28 days. Google's PageSpeed Insights documentation warns that good lab data "does not necessarily mean real-user experiences will also be good". Search Console's report uses field data, so a fix takes up to 28 days to show in full.
SEO audit example: our homepage LCP from 6.4 to 2.7 seconds
In September 2026 we audited our own homepage. On mobile, PageSpeed Insights gave it a performance score of 76, with LCP at 6.4 seconds, deep in the poor band. Three changes took the score to 95 and LCP to 2.7 seconds:
- No more hidden headings. Our headings started invisible and appeared only when an entrance animation ran. LCP ignores elements with an opacity of 0 and counts an element only once it "has rendered and is visible to the user", so hidden text only counts once the animation reveals it. Now the text shows as soon as the page renders.
- A preloaded hero image. web.dev's guide to optimizing LCP says the LCP image should be discoverable in the initial HTML, suggests fetchpriority=high for it and warns never to lazy-load it.
- Resized client logos, served at the size they are displayed, so phones download less data.
The lesson: find out which element is the LCP on each key template and why it paints late before you compress another image. And we are not done. 2.7 seconds is still above the 2.5 second target, and these are lab figures until the field data catches up.
LCP carries 25% of the Lighthouse performance score, next to Total Blocking Time at 30% and CLS at 25%, according to Chrome's scoring documentation, which helps explain the jump. This kind of work is part of our SEO and AI visibility service.
Structured data, titles and internal links
- Structured data. Google's structured data guidelines recommend JSON-LD, say not to mark up content that readers cannot see, and state that markup enables a rich result but does not guarantee it. Test with the Rich Results Test; Organization markup is covered in what generative engine optimization actually is.
- FAQ markup. Google's documentation updates record that FAQ rich results stopped appearing in Google Search from 7 May 2026. Keep FAQ sections for readers, not for extra space in the results.
- Titles. Google's title link guide asks for a descriptive title on every page, without boilerplate, and truncates long ones to fit the device width.
- Internal links. Google can generally only crawl standard HTML links with an href attribute, and its link guidelines say every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. Link service and pricing pages from your strongest pages with descriptive anchor text.
What an SEO audit report can safely skip
Anything that does not affect crawling, indexing, relevance or real user experience can wait. Our own 2025 report listed a few such items:
- ads.txt. IAB Tech Lab describes it as a tool against fraud in buying and selling advertising. A site that sells no ad space does not need one.
- Toxic link clean-ups. Google's disavow documentation says most sites will not need the tool; it is for many spammy links that have caused, or will likely cause, a manual action.
- Word count targets. Google's guide to helpful, people-first content says it has no preferred word count.
Frequently asked questions
How often should you run a B2B SEO audit?
Run a full audit once or twice a year and before any redesign, migration or CMS change. Google's own advice is that a redesign is a great time to bring in an SEO, the earlier the better. Between audits, spend 30 minutes a month in Search Console on indexing, Core Web Vitals and the search performance of your key pages.
Which tools do you need for an SEO audit?
Start with Google Search Console, which Google strongly encourages because its data comes directly from Google Search. Add PageSpeed Insights for speed, the Rich Results Test for structured data and a crawler that lists status codes, canonicals, titles and internal links across the site. Paid suites help with backlinks and competitors, but none of them sees Google's internal ranking data.
Does a PageSpeed score of 100 improve rankings?
Not by itself. Google's ranking systems use Core Web Vitals, which measure real-world user experience, while the PageSpeed score is a lab measure from Lighthouse. A score of 90 or above already counts as good, and Google says that chasing a perfect score just for SEO may not be the best use of your time. Fix pages in the poor band first.
Does an SEO audit cover AI search?
It should. G2's survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers in March 2026 found that 51% now start their research with an AI chatbot more often than with Google, up from 29%. Google's guide to its generative AI features says a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear in them. For ChatGPT, see how to tell if ChatGPT recommends your company.
Turn your SEO audit into fixes
An audit is worth what gets fixed after it. Run this checklist on your 10 to 20 key URLs, fix indexing and canonicals first, then speed, and check the field data again a month later.
If you would rather hand it over, technical audits and fixes are part of our SEO and AI visibility service, which can also run inside a wider digital marketing program. Our marketing plans are on marketing pricing, and what a B2B IT company should spend on marketing helps you size the budget. For qualified meetings from outbound, our Sales Engine plans start at 1,750 euros a month with 5 qualified meetings a month guaranteed; see our pricing page.
Sources and further reading: Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?; Google Search Central, third-party SEO tools; Google Search Central, technical requirements; Search Console Help, Page indexing report; Google Search Central, JavaScript SEO basics; Google Search Central, building a sitemap; Google Search Central, canonical URLs; Google Search Central, hreflang; Google Search Central, multilingual sites; web.dev, Web Vitals; web.dev, LCP; web.dev, INP; web.dev, CLS; Google Search Central, page experience; Google, PageSpeed Insights documentation; web.dev, optimize LCP; Chrome for Developers, Lighthouse scoring; Google Search Central, structured data guidelines; Google Search Central, documentation updates; Google Search Central, title links; Google Search Central, crawlable links; IAB Tech Lab, ads.txt; Search Console Help, disavowing links; Google Search Central, people-first content; G2, The Answer Economy; Google Search Central, generative AI features.