At Distinct SEO, we offer SEO audits and training for small businesses. However, if you have some basic web skills, there are a lot of good tools to help you perform SEO audits on your website. 5 years ago you needed someone with SEO expertise to run through your website with a fine tooth comb and make recommendations. Although more complex websites will benefit from having an expert audit, technology has progressed far enough that you’ll capture most glaring efforts on your own.

One such tool is the recently released Lighthouse extension for the Chrome browser. It’s made by Google and was built with the purpose to,

….be an automated auditing tool for improving the quality of web pages. It provides a well-lit path for improving the quality of sites by allowing developers to run audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps compatibility and more. Basically, it “keeps you from crashing into the rocks”, hence the name Lighthouse.

The SEO audit category within Lighthouse enables developers and webmasters to run a basic SEO health-check for any web page that identifies potential areas for improvement. Lighthouse runs locally in your Chrome browser, enabling you to run the SEO audits on pages in a staging environment as well as on live pages, public pages and pages that require authentication.