Do I need a paid SEO tool, or is Google Search Console enough?

Set up Google Search Console first — it's free and shows what Google actually sees. For sites where rankings drive revenue, paid tools (Semrush, Ahrefs) catch issues GSC doesn't surface: bulk schema problems, internal link decay, AI search readiness, competitor gaps. For a personal blog or low-stakes site, GSC plus a free audit tool is enough.

How often should I run a site audit?

Monthly for sites under 5,000 pages. Weekly continuous monitoring (Semrush and Ahrefs both offer this) for sites where outages or rank drops cost real money. Always run an audit immediately after a CMS migration, redesign, or major content update — those are when most issues get introduced.

What's 'AI Search Health' and why does it matter?

Newer audit category measuring how well your content is structured for citation by LLMs and AI search engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews). Schema markup, clean headings, factual specificity, and named-entity coverage all matter more for AI search than for traditional Google rankings. As AI search share grows, sites optimized only for blue links will lose visibility.

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seo

Best AI for Run an on-page SEO audit

Identify on-page SEO issues across your website — missing meta descriptions, weak title tags, broken heading hierarchy, slow pages, and AI search visibility gaps — and get specific fixes you can ship.

Last updated May 6, 2026seo auditon-page seowebsite auditseotechnical seo

Best AI for this task

Semrush

Semrush's Site Audit scans 130+ technical and on-page issues in one pass, including a new AI Search Health report that scores how well your content is structured for LLMs and AI search engines. It connects to Google Search Console and Analytics for real ranking data, and the recommendations are written in plain language with priority levels. Most cited tool across 2026 SEO reviews.

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Prompt template

In Semrush Site Audit:

Site to audit: [DOMAIN]
Crawl scope: [FULL SITE / KEY SECTION / NEW PAGES ONLY]
Connect: Google Search Console + Google Analytics for traffic context
Include: AI Search Health report

Focus areas:
- Missing or duplicate title tags and meta descriptions
- Broken or weak H1/H2 hierarchy (multiple H1s, skipped levels)
- Pages over [SPEED THRESHOLD]ms TTFB, poor Core Web Vitals
- Internal linking gaps to [PRIORITY URLS / MONEY PAGES]
- Schema markup completeness (FAQ, HowTo, Product, Article)
- AI Search structured-data coverage and content readability for LLM citation

Output structure:
1. The 10 highest-impact issues, prioritized by traffic effect
2. The specific URL and field for each
3. The exact fix (target meta length, suggested H1, missing schema property)
4. Estimated effort (1-hour, 1-day, sprint-level)
5. The single fix likely to move rankings most this month

Avoid: dumps of "all 130 issues". I need triage, not exhaustive lists. Skip notices that are best-practice nags but not ranking factors.

Did this prompt produce good output?

See the difference

Before vs. after using this prompt

Before — without the prompt

Ran a free online SEO checker, got a score of 72/100, list of generic fixes (improve meta descriptions, add alt tags, fix broken links). No specific URLs, no priority order. Made changes blindly to whatever pages I happened to remember. Three months later, traffic hadn't moved.

After — with the prompt

Semrush Site Audit, connected to Google Search Console for ranking context. Top issues: 1. CRITICAL — 47 product pages have duplicate H1 tags after a CMS migration in March. These pages have lost an average of 4 ranking positions on their target keywords since. Fix: rebuild the H1 template in the CMS to pull from product.name instead of category.label. ~1 day of dev work. 2. CRITICAL — Schema.org Product markup broken site-wide. The 'price' field is being output as a string ($29.99) instead of a Number. Lost rich-result eligibility for ~600 product pages. Fix: 1 line change in the schema template. 3. HIGH — A regex redirect rule from the migration is sending /products/* through 3 hops before reaching final URLs. Eating ~30% of internal link equity for the e-commerce category. Fix: collapse to a single redirect. 4. HIGH — 12 of the top 20 ranking blog posts have meta descriptions over 320 characters; getting truncated in SERP. Fix: rewrite to 150-160 chars, lead with the search-intent answer. 5. MEDIUM — AI Search Health flags 73% of pages as missing the "factual specificity" markers AI search engines cite. Fix: add explicit dates, named entities, and statistics in the first paragraph of pages targeting commercial queries. Recommended sequence: ship 1, 2, 3 this sprint. 4 next week. 5 over the next month. Recovery expected within 6-8 weeks for the migration-related issues.

Runner-up

SEOptimer

Free alternative for quick audits without a subscription. Scans 100 data points including AI visibility checks. Best when you want a fast read on a site before deciding whether to invest in a paid platform.

Open SEOptimer

Frequently asked

Do I need a paid SEO tool, or is Google Search Console enough?
Set up Google Search Console first — it's free and shows what Google actually sees. For sites where rankings drive revenue, paid tools (Semrush, Ahrefs) catch issues GSC doesn't surface: bulk schema problems, internal link decay, AI search readiness, competitor gaps. For a personal blog or low-stakes site, GSC plus a free audit tool is enough.
How often should I run a site audit?
Monthly for sites under 5,000 pages. Weekly continuous monitoring (Semrush and Ahrefs both offer this) for sites where outages or rank drops cost real money. Always run an audit immediately after a CMS migration, redesign, or major content update — those are when most issues get introduced.
What's 'AI Search Health' and why does it matter?
Newer audit category measuring how well your content is structured for citation by LLMs and AI search engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews). Schema markup, clean headings, factual specificity, and named-entity coverage all matter more for AI search than for traditional Google rankings. As AI search share grows, sites optimized only for blue links will lose visibility.