How to use this checklist
Work through the five groups in order. Technical problems can make every other fix pointless, so they come first. Each check has a severity: Critical means it blocks results or measurement, High means it costs leads now, Medium means it limits growth later.
Most checks need only Google Search Console, a crawler such as Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs), your analytics and your CRM. You do not need to fix everything before starting SEO. You do need to know which Critical items are open.
Technical checks (1 to 10)
| # | Check | How to test | Severity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Money pages are indexed | Search Console page indexing report, or URL inspection for each service and product page | Critical |
| 2 | Nothing important is blocked in robots.txt | Read the file; test key URLs in Search Console | Critical |
| 3 | Content renders without JavaScript errors | URL inspection, view the rendered HTML and screenshot | Critical |
| 4 | One canonical version of each page | Crawl for canonical tags, http/https, www and trailing-slash duplicates | High |
| 5 | No noindex tags on pages that sell | Crawl and filter for noindex on indexable templates | Critical |
| 6 | XML sitemap lists every indexable page and nothing else | Compare sitemap URLs with crawl results | Medium |
| 7 | Redirects are single hops to live pages | Crawl for chains, loops and redirects to 404s | High |
| 8 | Core Web Vitals pass on mobile for money pages | Search Console Core Web Vitals report, PageSpeed Insights field data | High |
| 9 | Structured data is valid | Rich Results Test on the homepage, a service page and an article | Medium |
| 10 | Internal links point to money pages from body copy | Count in-content links to each service page, not just menu links | High |
The detail behind each of these, and how we write the fixes for developers, is on our technical SEO page.
Content and intent checks (11 to 18)
| # | Check | How to test | Severity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Each money page targets one buyer term | List the term per page; look for two pages chasing the same one | High |
| 12 | Page wording matches the words buyers use | Compare page headings with Search Console queries and sales-call notes | High |
| 13 | Titles and descriptions sell the click | Search Console: pages with impressions but a low click-through rate | Medium |
| 14 | Every buying-group role has a page | Map pages to user, manager, finance, IT and procurement questions | High |
| 15 | Comparison and alternatives pages exist | Search “[competitor] alternatives”; check whether you have a page for it | High |
| 16 | Pricing or pricing approach is published | Is there a page a finance reader can find? | Medium |
| 17 | Content shows first-hand expertise | Named authors, examples and data only your company has | Medium |
| 18 | Thin or outdated pages are merged or refreshed | Crawl for short pages and old dates with no traffic | Medium |
Want this applied to your own site?
The free audit is a 20-minute review that ends with three specific opportunities.
Market targeting checks (24 to 27)
For B2B companies this is less about map listings and more about selling into the right countries.
| # | Check | How to test | Severity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 | UK and US keyword sets are researched separately | Check that volumes and terms come from each market's own data | Medium |
| 25 | hreflang is correct on regional versions | Crawl for reciprocal hreflang tags and matching canonicals | High |
| 26 | Company name, address and contact details match everywhere | Compare the site, LinkedIn and directory profiles | Medium |
| 27 | Location claims are true | No offices or service areas the business does not have | High |
AI search checks (28 to 32)
| # | Check | How to test | Severity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 28 | AI assistants describe the company accurately | Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google what your company does | High |
| 29 | You appear in shortlist answers for your category | Ask “best [category] for [your buyer]” and record who is named | Medium |
| 30 | AI search crawlers are not blocked by accident | Check robots.txt for blanket blocks on AI user agents | High |
| 31 | Key answers sit in the HTML, early on the page | View source: is the answer there without JavaScript? | Medium |
| 32 | Organisation, service and author schema is in place | Rich Results Test and a schema validator | Medium |
Why these matter, and how to measure them over time, is covered on our AI search visibility page.
Before you start: can you measure the result?
How to prioritise what you find
- Critical items first, in any order. They block indexing or measurement, so nothing else pays until they are fixed.
- Then High items on money pages. A problem on the template behind your service pages beats ten problems on old blog posts.
- Then the cheapest High items elsewhere. Titles, internal links and redirects are often an afternoon's work.
- Medium items go into the 90-day plan, scheduled against the content and links they support.
A good audit output is short: a list of issues, each with evidence, the pages affected, the fix and a priority, not a 200-page export from a tool. That is the format of our free audit, which picks the three opportunities most likely to affect pipeline.
Run it yourself, or have it run for you
Every check above can be done in-house. If you would rather have a strategist do it, the free B2B SEO audit covers the checks most likely to matter on your site in 20 minutes, and the full technical and content audit, from £1,200, covers all of them in writing. Ongoing work is priced on our pricing page; what a retainer includes month by month is in what B2B SEO services include.
