SEO Audit Checklist Including Images and Visual Search

Updated: 13 October 2026.

An SEO audit should leave you with a manageable list of improvements to useful pages, not a report full of warnings you cannot prioritise. Check whether customers can find the right information, use the website and complete an important task. Then investigate the technical or content problems that prevent that.

This practical checklist covers access, content, links, performance, structured data and measurement. It also includes a fuller image and visual-search review: useful pictures, accessible descriptions, accurate product imagery, consistent metadata and Google’s newer multimodal Search reporting.

An audit can identify problems and opportunities. It does not guarantee rankings, AI citations or a particular recovery timetable. Start with the pages that matter to your readers and business.

Set the scope before opening a tool

Choose a small representative set: the homepage, an important service or category page, a product page where applicable, a useful article and the contact or purchase journey. Add known problem pages. Different templates may have different faults, so checking only the homepage is insufficient.

Record the URL, its purpose, the device or template being checked and the date. Gather recent Search Console and website analytics data where available, but inspect the page itself before deciding that a number represents a problem.

Use three simple priorities: urgent for misleading advice or a broken customer task, next for recurring obstacles on important pages, and later for useful improvements with lower immediate impact. Mark checks as passed, issue found, not applicable or not yet checked.

Check access indexing and URL consistency

• Open important public pages on a phone and desktop. Check HTTPS, unexpected redirects, error pages and login walls.
• Use Search Console URL Inspection for selected pages. Review indexing status and the canonical Google has selected; investigate a mismatch rather than forcing a change blindly.
• Review intended crawl controls, noindex directives and security challenges with the site maintainer. Check the actual pages and image files, not only the robots.txt file.
• Confirm that sitemap entries and important internal links use the intended public URLs. Retired pages need an appropriate replacement route or removal response.
• Check Security issues and Manual actions in Search Console, especially if unfamiliar pages or unexpected redirects appear.

Not every published URL belongs in search. Account pages, duplicates and internal utility pages may be intentionally excluded. Comparing the number of published and indexed URLs is a starting point for investigation, not a requirement that the figures must match.

A crawler tool can help on a larger site, but you can begin with a manual sample. Save the affected URL and observed behaviour before asking someone to change a broad setting.

Review content titles and the reader task

• Read the page as a first-time visitor. Does the introduction accurately describe what the page helps them do?
• Verify services, locations, prices, examples, author details and important factual claims. Correct misleading information before cosmetic edits.
• Check the page title and meta description against the actual content. Describe the page clearly without stuffing variants or making unsupported promises.
• Use meaningful headings that organise the answer. Check the theme’s page heading before adding another headline in the body.
• Review overlapping pages. Keep, update, combine or archive according to usefulness and distinct purpose. A newer date alone is not an improvement.

A page does not need to revolve around one repeated exact phrase. Its topic and customer task should be clear, with natural wording and useful evidence. AI-generated suggestions need the same factual and editorial review as any other proposed copy.

How to refresh old content without creating more work

Check navigation and internal links

Follow the next step from the page. A service guide might lead to the relevant service and enquiry route; a product comparison might lead to the correct product variant. Use descriptive link text and remove routes that send readers to obsolete information.

Find important pages that cannot be reached through useful navigation or related content. Fix broken links and unnecessary redirect chains. Do not impose an arbitrary click-depth target without considering how readers use the site.

Content planning and useful supporting pages

Images and visual search a practical SEO checklist

An image can explain a process, show a product or help someone recognise an option. Visual search also lets people start with a photograph or other image input. Audit your visuals according to the reader’s need, not simply whether a plugin says every media field is filled.

Choose images that answer a real question

Check whether each important picture adds useful information. A product page may need a clear main photograph and views of details or scale. A tutorial may need a screenshot of the step people find confusing. An unrelated decorative banner does not replace either.

Place the visual near the explanation it supports. Add a caption when it clarifies what is shown or why it matters. Keep essential instructions and specifications available as text rather than only inside a picture.

Prefer images that represent the actual subject. Label illustrations or mock-ups when readers could mistake them for a real product, premises or completed job. Confirm that you have appropriate permission to use the asset and supply genuine credits where required.

Write alternative text for the image’s purpose

Alternative text, or alt text, supplies a text alternative when an image cannot be seen. Its wording depends on what the image does in that page. Describe useful information rather than treating the field as a place to repeat SEO keywords.

W3C’s decision tree distinguishes informative, decorative and functional images. A decorative image usually needs empty alt text, while an image used as a link or button needs an alternative that explains the action or destination. A complex diagram needs its essential information explained in accessible text.

W3C’s image alternative-text decision tree

For a fictional bicycle shop, a useful description could be “Blue step-through bicycle with rear rack and front basket”. It should match the pictured product. A string such as “cheap bikes best bicycle shop buy bike” provides poor information.

Check the public page after editing in WordPress. A media-library description, attachment title and actual img alt attribute are different fields. A builder or template may use its own setting, so changing one field does not establish what visitors receive.

Use suitable product photographs

Check that the photograph matches the selected model, colour and variant. Show the item clearly and avoid crops that hide important features. Keep lifestyle photographs and detail views useful, but ensure that the main image makes the product identifiable.

For Merchant Center feeds, Google’s image_link guidance has specific requirements, including an accurate product image and restrictions on promotional overlays or placeholders. Check the applicable guidance for your products and additional images instead of assuming that any website banner is a valid feed image.

Google Merchant Center product-image requirements

A fictional mug shop may have a blue mug page while its feed still references a white mug photograph. Correct the mismatch across the selected product page, feed and existing product markup. Alt text alone cannot repair the wrong photograph.

Ecommerce product information checklist

Keep preferred-image metadata consistent

Google clarified its preferred-image advice on 2 March 2026. It can use schema.org image information and og:image when selecting Search or Discover previews. Selection remains automated; supplying a preference does not guarantee that Google will display it.

S03 Google’s Search documentation changelog

Choose a relevant representative image for those fields. Google recommends avoiding a generic logo, an image with text or an extreme aspect ratio as the preferred page preview, and using high resolution where possible. This guidance concerns the preferred image, not a ban on useful screenshots within an article.

Google image SEO guidance and preferred-image metadata

In WordPress, check the featured image, social-image setting and relevant structured-data image. They serve different purposes and can have different crops, but should not describe a different subject or point to an obsolete file. Preview the published page after replacing an image.

Review credits, creator and licence information where applicable. Google supports image metadata through structured data and IPTC metadata for relevant features. Preserve accurate rights information through your image-processing workflow; filling in a credit does not grant permission to use the picture.

Google’s image metadata and licensing guidance

Check image access loading and quality

Open the image file and test the page on a phone. Look for broken URLs, security challenges, distorted proportions and compression that removes useful detail. Ask the maintainer to check important image resources if they fail to load or may be blocked from crawling.

Use appropriately sized, sharp images and responsive delivery. Descriptive filenames are useful for new assets, but avoid renaming a working archive indiscriminately and breaking existing references. Reserve image dimensions so loading does not move surrounding content unexpectedly.

Lazy loading can help images further down a page. Avoid lazy-loading an important image already visible at the top of the page, especially the image responsible for Largest Contentful Paint. Retest the result rather than treating one image format or plugin switch as a universal fix.

web.dev guidance on browser-level image lazy loading

Record the visual checks in your audit

Use the multimodal Search filter with its limits

Google announced web multimodal reporting on 24 September 2026, beginning a global rollout. The announcement covers image-based inputs from Lens, Circle to Search on Android, uploaded images and Chrome image search. It adds reporting to Search performance and the Generative AI report where relevant data is available.

S13 Google’s multimodal Search reporting announcement

In the Search results Performance report, choose your date range, then use Search type to select Web: multimodal. Inspect the available metrics and page, country or device views, keeping the scope consistent. Export the report if you want to record the observations alongside your audit.

Web: multimodal describes searches that start with an image input. The Image search type describes results from the Google Images tab. A page containing photographs is not automatically multimodal traffic, and the two filter options are not interchangeable.

Search Console search-type definitions

Google’s dimensions guidance says that text query data is not available for multimodal searches, so the Queries dimension is unavailable for this search type. You cannot use that view to recover the exact photograph or text a customer submitted.

Search Console dimensions and multimodal query limits

Do not assume your property has useful observations. Google says these metrics appear when the site receives traffic from those queries. If a report is empty or unavailable, record that condition, check the selected property and filters, and revisit later. It is not evidence that your images are defective.

Keep the report’s counts separate from visits and sales. Impressions are not unique people, and a displayed link does not establish a purchase. Do not add several report views together and call them a combined audience without checking their definitions and overlap.

Use the page results to choose an inspection, not to diagnose an image by number alone. Check whether the destination identifies the pictured item, supplies useful information and offers the appropriate next step. A before-and-after change in counts does not prove that an image edit caused it.

How to measure SEO success when Search uses AI

Check performance and the customer journey

Test representative pages with PageSpeed Insights and review Search Console’s Core Web Vitals information where data exists. The current metrics are Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift: LCP, INP and CLS. Replace older audit references to FID.

Core Web Vitals help assess loading, responsiveness and stability. They do not cover every usability issue, and passing them does not guarantee top rankings. Distinguish field data from a diagnostic lab run, then investigate the relevant template and task.

Google’s Core Web Vitals guidance

Test the enquiry, booking or purchase route yourself. Confirm that buttons work, fields are labelled, errors explain the next step and the real system receives the request or order. A click on a phone link is not proof that a conversation happened.

Review overlays, mobile navigation and translated forms where applicable. Change caching, image optimisation or scripts carefully and retest the affected journey. A faster page is not useful if its booking form has stopped working.

Validate structured data with the right tool

Review markup that is appropriate to the visible page and the features Google currently supports. Check product facts, author details and image references. Do not add unrelated markup or promise rankings, AI citations or rich-result display.

Use Google’s Rich Results Test for supported Google search features. Use the Schema Markup Validator to inspect schema.org vocabulary more broadly. These tools answer different questions; a valid vocabulary item does not establish eligibility for a Google feature.

Google Rich Results Test

Schema Markup Validator

Schema markup explained for website owners

Review external links and business information sensibly

Inspect relevant mentions, referral sources and important lost links. Consider useful partnerships, expertise and coverage that fit the audience. Third-party authority or spam scores are diagnostic tool outputs, not a complete assessment of your site.

Do not make disavowing links a routine audit task. Google says most sites do not need the tool; its use is for substantial artificial or low-quality link problems associated with an actual or likely manual action. Get specialist advice before changing a disavow file.

Google’s guidance on when to disavow links

For a local business, confirm public hours, services, locations and contact routes across the website and relevant listings. Correct inconsistent facts and keep reviews genuine. A directory count alone is a poor substitute for useful, accurate information.

Google Business Profile and local visibility

Turn the findings into a short action list

Record an observed issue, its evidence, likely reader impact, owner and next action. Separate a confirmed problem from a hypothesis needing investigation. Keep the completed change and retest date in the same record.

The following example is fictional. It illustrates prioritisation, not a rule about which faults always have the greatest SEO impact.

Retest important fixes immediately. Review longer-term search and business results over consistent periods, accounting for seasonality and other changes. If traffic has fallen, investigate tracking, access and demand as well as content; timing alone does not establish the cause.

How to investigate a traffic drop

Choose a maintenance rhythm based on how often the site changes and how much work you can sustain. Review after migrations, major template changes and reported problems. You do not need a full quarterly audit of every page to fix a clear fault today.

Frequently asked questions

Does every image need descriptive alt text

Its purpose decides the alternative. Informative images need useful descriptions, functional images need their action explained and purely decorative images generally need empty alt text. Avoid filling every field with keywords.

Does no multimodal data mean my images are wrong

No. The property may have no relevant recorded traffic under the selected conditions. Check scope and filters, then continue assessing whether the images help readers.

Can I guarantee which preview Google will use

No. Preferred-image metadata supplies a useful signal, but selection is automated. Check that your preference represents the page and can be loaded.