SEO Audit Checklist for SA Small Business

Most SA small businesses have never had a real SEO audit. They pay R3,500 a month to a "SEO company" that runs Semrush, sends a PDF, and never explains anything. This is the actual checklist we run when a Centurion accountant or Hartbeespoort lodge comes to us asking why they are invisible on Google. Run it yourself, or have us do it free, the results are the same.

Section 1: Technical health

• Mobile LCP under 2.5 seconds. Test at pagespeed.web.dev. Anything above 4 seconds kills local rankings.
• Mobile CLS under 0.1. Layout shifts hurt UX and rank signal.
• HTTPS everywhere. No mixed-content warnings.
• Sitemap.xml live and submitted in Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster.
• Robots.txt allows crawling of all important paths.
• No broken internal links. Run Screaming Frog (free for under 500 URLs).
• Canonical tags set on every page (or rel=canonical pointing to the canonical URL).
• No noindex tags on pages you want ranked. Common mistake on staging-pushed sites.

Section 2: On-page SEO

• Title tags ≤60 characters, primary keyword first, brand last.
• Meta descriptions 140-160 characters, action-oriented, mention the value prop.
• One H1 per page, matching the title intent.
• Logical H2/H3 structure. H3s nest under H2s. No H4s without parent H3.
• Image alt text on every image, describing actual content (not "image1.jpg").
• Schema markup deployed: LocalBusiness, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Article on blog posts.
• Internal linking depth. Each page should be reachable in 3 clicks from homepage.
• URL structure clean and lowercase. /web-design-pretoria not /Web_Design_Pretoria_2026?id=42.

Section 3: Local SEO

• Google Business Profile claimed and verified. Full GBP optimisation here.
• Correct primary category matching top-3 ranking competitors.
• NAP consistency across website, GBP, and 20+ SA citation sites.
• Suburb landing pages for every area you serve.
• Reviews 20+, averaging 4.5+, replied to within 48 hours.
• Weekly Google Posts on the GBP, with photos.
• 100+ photos on the GBP, real, recent.

Section 4: Content

• Service pages with depth. 800+ words per major service. Generic 200-word service pages do not rank.
• FAQ section on every service page. Schema-marked. Answers buyer-intent questions.
• Blog with regular posts. One quality long-form post per month beats five short ones.
• Content matches intent. Buyer-intent keywords land on service pages, not blog posts.
• No duplicate content. Two pages targeting the same keyword cannibalise each other.
• South African spelling and currency. "Optimisation" not "optimization", "ZAR" or "R" not "$".

Section 5: Backlinks and authority

• Domain Rating (DR) baseline check. Use Ahrefs free tool or Moz. Most SA SMEs sit at DR 1 to 8.
• Local directory citations. Snupit, Yellosa, Hotfrog, Cylex, your industry chamber.
• Industry mentions. Local news features, supplier listings, supplier registers.
• No spammy backlinks. Disavow obvious link-farm referrals via Search Console.
• Internal authority distribution. Important pages link to from homepage and footer.

Section 6: Analytics and tracking

• Google Analytics 4 installed and tracking pageviews, scroll depth, and key events.
• Google Search Console linked with sitemap submitted, no critical errors.
• Conversion tracking on form submits, WhatsApp clicks, phone clicks, booking submissions.
• Bing Webmaster Tools registered. Bing drives 5 to 12 percent of SA traffic and is often easier to rank on.
• Monthly review cadence. Block 30 minutes a month to check Insights + Search Console.

Frequently asked questions