Can I audit my own website?
Yes. Everything in a professional SEO audit can be done by hand with free tools, and this page lists all eleven checks in the order More Than Normal runs them. It takes roughly nine to fourteen hours the first time. Whether that is a good use of your week is a different question.
This is our actual method, not a summary of it. If you follow all eleven steps you will have done the same work we do, and you will not need us. That is a real outcome and we are fine with it.
What you need first
Google Search Console and Google Analytics access for your own site, a Google Business Profile login if you have one, and a phone you can browse your own site on. Every tool below is free. No paid software is required for any step.
The eleven checks, in order
| Check | What it tells you | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Search Console queries and pages | Which queries bring impressions but few clicks, and which pages get impressions with no matching content | 2 to 3 hrs |
| Device split | If most impressions are mobile and most conversions are not, that gap is where the money is going | 30 min |
| Local Pack and rank, live | What you actually place for, logged out, in your own town. Point in time, not permanent | 45 min |
| AI assistant visibility | Whether assistants name you when asked for a recommendation, and who they name instead | 45 min |
| PageSpeed, repeated | Where the delay is. Lab figures, not what your visitors experienced | 1 hr |
| Third party scripts | What loads before anything appears. Chat widgets are often among the heaviest things on the page | 45 min |
| Structured data | Whether machines can read what you are and where. Broken contact schema is common | 45 min |
| Canonicals and crawl hygiene | Sitemap resolves, old URLs redirect rather than 404. Legacy 404s are the most common finding we see | 1 to 2 hrs |
| Google Business Profile | Verification actually completed, name address and phone matching the site exactly | 45 min |
| Analytics and funnel | Whether form interactions are recorded at all. Many sites measure visits and nothing else | 1 to 2 hrs |
| Enquiry walkthrough | Make an enquiry on your own site, on a phone, on mobile data, as a stranger would. Time it | 45 min |
Nine to fourteen hours, if you already know the tools
Considerably longer if you do not, and most of the time goes on the first, the eighth and the tenth rather than the ones that sound difficult. Add two to three hours again to write the findings up in an order you can act on, which is the part that makes it useful rather than a pile of tabs.
What is genuinely harder to do yourself
Not gatekeeping. Three things take experience and practice rather than time.
Knowing which findings matter. An audit produces forty observations. Perhaps five change anything. Ranking them by commercial impact is the skill, not the finding.
Reading Search Console honestly. It is easy to see patterns that are seasonal noise, and easy to miss a page quietly losing ground for eighteen months.
Knowing what is normal. Is 2.4 seconds bad? It depends entirely on what your competitors do and what your visitors are on. Without comparison you are measuring in a vacuum.
What we do not check either
So you can judge the list fairly: our paid audit also excludes backlink and authority analysis, direct competitor benchmarking, and clinical or professional accuracy of your copy. We say so in every report. If someone offers you all of that for £450, ask them how long it took.
Last checked 2 September 2026 · written by Alex Harvey