How to Conduct a B2B SEO Audit

I’ve audited hundreds of B2B websites, and here’s what I’ve discovered, most teams make the same critical mistakes while missing huge opportunities to drive qualified pipeline through organic search. 

Generic audits generate endless lists of minor issues with no clear prioritization while smart audits prioritize fixes that increase qualified pipeline.

This guide shows you exactly how to run an audit that surfaces high-ROI improvements across technical health, keyword performance, content quality, and authority. 

Set audit goals, scope, and signals that lead to pipeline

Before crawling a website, you need to understand the scope of the audit. Always ask clarifying questions like 

• Should we include all subdomains?
• Is there a specific locale that we should account for?
• What are our money pages?
• Are there any parts of the site that are off limits?
• Who will be reviewing this audit?
• What departments will we need to work with to implement the changes we identify?

These questions will help you shape the deliverable, understand what your POC is truly looking for and prime them to think about who should own the implementation. 

The sooner you can build trust and ownership the more likely your recommendations will get implemented. 

Pro Tip: The best audits tie revenue outcomes to rankings and organic growth. You need to understand that your POC will not have the same level of technical knowledge as you. It’s your job to convert technical information into business language that they understand and can take action on. 

Define KPIs and a simple pipeline forecast

Not all organic traffic converts equally. Someone searching “what is project management” has different intent than someone comparing your product to competitors. Your audit should include KPIs that reflect these distinctions and focus on pipeline metrics that matter such as

• Organic demo requests
• Trial conversions
• SQL generation
• Pipeline contribution
• Win rates from organic leads.

Use this framework: Organic Pipeline = Sessions × Visit-to-Demo CVR × Opportunity Rate × Win Rate × ACV

Understanding what is an seo audit helps set proper expectations with stakeholders when explaining this pipeline-focused approach.

Pitfall: Treating all organic sessions equally. Always segment by user intent and page template to identify high-value optimization opportunities that drive actual revenue growth.

Establish the audit inventory and crawl plan

Before starting a crawl, secure API access to Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console to enrich your technical analysis with user behavior data. 

Additionally, you should set up vector embeddings using either the OpenAI API or Gemini API for a detailed content gap analysis.

SEO Audit Checklist:

• Set up LLM vector embeddings to identify content gaps, topical clusters and semantic similarity
• Connect Google Analytics 4 API for session data and user behavior metrics
• Integrate Google Search Console API for click and impression data
• Connect Lighthouse API for automated site speed and performance measurement
• Document crawl scope parameters and exclusion rules before execution to prevent crawling the staging domain.

Reference our seo audit checklist for detailed inventory tasks.

Align audit deliverables and cadence

The final deliverable should be a single spreadsheet that summarizes and prioritizes issues into the following groupings

• High Impact, Quick Win: This is what you should look to solve first. Your ability to fix these issues will garner POC confidence and showcase your impact. An example of this would be 404 pages, especially ones with backlinks from high DR sites.
• High Impact, Long Win: These are your evergreen projects that will take time and lots of developer involvement. An example of this would be hreflang implementation. It’s required for localisation strategies but is often not a one size fits all approach.
• Low Impact, Quick Win: This is your technical debt that is a prime opportunity for AI automation. An example of this would be image alt text or meta descriptions. They are still important but won’t move the needle on revenue. 

Front-load your High Impact, Quick Wins during the first 30-45 days to build momentum and demonstrate early value. Simultaneously, begin foundational work on High Impact, Long Wins to ensure they’re positioned for completion or significant progress by day 90.

Pro Tip: Don’t treat audits as one-time projects. You should never just hand off a spreadsheet to your client. This is a surefire way to ensure nothing gets implemented. Instead create individual tasks in your project management software of choice.

Each task should should use this framework:

• • Who: Ensure that we have a single owner that will get it completed
  • What: Explain in non-technical terms what you’re trying to fix
  • When: Establish a timeline for when we should have the fix implemented  

• Where: Provide a detailed location of the issue on the website

• Why: Detail the importance of the issue and tie it to site performance outcomes and/or revenue goals

Fix the foundations: crawlability, indexation, and page experience

Start with issues that prevent search engines from discovering and ranking your most important pages. Focus on “money pages” like pricing, product comparisons, integrations, and conversion-focused landing pages that drive pipeline impact.

These pages should never be more than 3 clicks from the homepage.

Pro Tip: Technical problems tank performance regardless of content quality. A 500 error on your highest-converting landing page costs more than 50 broken blog URLs. Always prioritize technical fixes by revenue potential, not just volume of issues found in your crawl reports.

Crawlability and indexation controls

Search engines can’t rank what they can’t crawl or index effectively. Clean up technical barriers before scaling content efforts.

Fix server errors (5xx/4xx responses), eliminate redirect chains, implement self-referencing canonical tags, deindex thin or duplicate pages, and submit clean XML sitemaps with accurate lastmod dates. 

Use Screaming Frog and Google Search Console to identify and resolve crawl issues systematically.

Pitfall: Index bloat from tag archives, UTM parameters, or faceted navigation wastes crawl budget and cannibalizes your primary pages. Keep search engines focused on your most important content by blocking or deindexing low-value URLs.

Core Web Vitals and performance baselines

Focus on template-level Core Web Vitals improvements that scale across multiple pages simultaneously, prioritizing revenue-driving templates like pricing, product comparisons, and conversion landing pages over informational pages for immediate attention. 

• Target Interaction to Next Paint (INP) under 200ms, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5 seconds, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) under 0.1 at the 75th percentile, following current web.dev guidance since INP replaced First Input Delay in March 2024.
• Implement proven optimizations including preloading critical assets, compressing images using modern AVIF or WebP formats, deferring non-critical JavaScript execution, reducing long tasks that block interactivity, and stabilizing layout shifts with proper aspect-ratio declarations on images and video elements.
• Use PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), and Real User Monitoring (RUM) tools to measure performance. For comprehensive audit guidance, reference our best technical seo audit tools guide.

JavaScript rendering and SPA hygiene

SPAs load once and use JavaScript to dynamically update content without page refreshes, creating smooth user experiences but SEO obstacles. 

The core challenge is that search engines receive minimal initial HTML content, requiring JavaScript execution to access the actual page content. This creates risks around rendering timeouts, failed JavaScript execution, and content that never becomes visible to crawlers.

Use Screaming Frog’s JavaScript rendering feature to compare “Response” vs “Rendered” tabs, revealing what percentage of your content requires JavaScript execution. This visualization shows the gap between initial HTML and fully rendered content.

Critical Pitfall: Making essential SEO content (titles, descriptions, primary text, navigation, JavaScript tabs, and accordion content) dependent on client-side rendering puts your rankings at risk. Search engines may fail to execute JavaScript properly, leaving critical content invisible. This becomes even more problematic with AI crawlers that cannot render JavaScript, meaning your dynamically loaded content won’t be indexed or cited by AI platforms.

Implementation Checklist:

• Test rendered HTML output matches intended content
• Validate canonical URLs function without JavaScript
• Avoid infinite scroll for important content discovery
• Ensure navigation links appear in initial DOM
• Server-render or reliably hydrate primary content

Interrogate keyword performance and intent coverage

Most B2B sites miss massive opportunities by not mapping keywords to actual buyer intent. 

Someone searching “project management software comparison” is in a completely different mindset than someone researching “what is agile methodology.”

Start by analyzing query performance, page-level rankings, and SERP features to find misalignment between content and searcher intent. 

The focus should always be on the prioritization of commercial keywords with high CPC values as you can tie these more accurately to pipeline.

Aggregate search data and segment by page type

Segment search performance by page type and buyer intent rather than averaging metrics across mixed-intent content. 

A product overview page should be measured differently than blog content as they serve different stages of the buyer journey.

Begin with Google Search Console query data to understand your current organic acquisition, then overlay GA4 conversion tracking to pinpoint which landing pages are actually driving business results.

Your first-party data shows you where you stand today. Once you have that baseline, add third-party keyword intelligence from Ahrefs or SEMrush to see the full competitive landscape and spot visibility gaps where you’re missing out on valuable search traffic.

Pitfall: Averaging metrics across content and money pages masks performance gaps. Blending blog posts with product pages hides whether your high-converting pages are getting enough visibility. Always segment by page intent to focus optimization where it drives revenue.

Map keywords to buyer journey and stakeholders

Begin keyword identification in SEMrush or Ahrefs to capture search volume and competition data, but always manually review the SERP to confirm whether existing ranking pages actually satisfy user intent.

No matter what you do you will not be able to rank a commercial page for an informational keyword. 

Structure your keyword analysis around how B2B buyers research solutions and map keywords to specific stakeholders in the buying process:

Informational (problem research)

• Keywords: “customer data platform challenges”, “CDP implementation problems”, “data silos marketing”, “fragmented customer data issues”
• Content: Problem-focused guides, industry reports, diagnostic tools
• ICP: Technical marketers struggling with fragmented customer data across multiple tools

Solution (category education)

• Keywords: “customer data platform vs CRM”, “CDP software benefits”, “real-time personalization platform”, “customer data management solution”, “marketing data platform comparison”
• Content: Category comparisons, ROI calculators, capability matrices
• ICP: Marketing directors researching CDP categories to present options to leadership

Vendor (specific comparisons)

• Keywords: “Segment vs Amplitude CDP”, “Salesforce CDP alternatives”, “enterprise customer data platform pricing”, “best CDP software 2024”
• Content: Head-to-head comparisons, pricing transparency, security documentation
• ICP: VP Marketing and procurement teams with budget authority evaluating 2-3 finalist vendors

Integration (implementation details)

• Keywords: “Segment Salesforce integration setup”, “CDP API documentation”, “customer data platform GDPR compliance”, “CDP software implementation guide”
• Content: Technical documentation, implementation guides, compliance checklists
• ICP: Marketing operations managers and developers responsible for technical implementation and ongoing management

For detailed SaaS buyer journey mapping and intent strategies, see our saas seo guide.

Detect cannibalization and content decay

Content cannibalization is inevitable no matter how carefully you plan your content strategy. 

Over time, a consolidation audit becomes more advantageous for maintaining topical authority as your content library scales. While it seems counterintuitive, deleting or culling weaker content can actually increase organic traffic by consolidating authority signals and eliminating internal competition.

Use Screaming Frog’s vector embedding feature to analyze semantic similarity across your content, identifying topic overlap that goes beyond simple keyword matching. This analysis reveals how multiple pages may be competing for semantically similar queries, which dilutes topical authority and confuses search engines about which page should rank for specific topics.

Review the content clustering graphs to understand how tightly grouped your topics are, then leverage Screaming Frog’s new inlink and outlink visualization to map internal link connections between clusters. This reveals whether your internal linking strategy is reinforcing the right content hierarchies or accidentally strengthening weaker pages.

Based on these insights, you’re ready to take action:

• Identify content cannibalization with clustering analysis – Vector embeddings surface pages with overlapping semantic themes, but tightly packed clusters aren’t automatically problematic. Use your judgment to distinguish between helpful topic clusters and true cannibalization.
• Consolidate or redirect based on authority metrics – When you discover genuine competing clusters through manual validation, analyze backlink profiles, referring domains, and current keyword rankings to determine which page has stronger traffic potential. Keep the authoritative winner and 301 redirect weaker pages to consolidate link equity and eliminate internal competition.

Evaluate content quality, E-E-A-T, and conversion readiness

B2B buyers evaluate content differently than other industry buyers. 

They need proof of expertise, specific implementation details, and clear evidence that your solution solves their exact problems due to the sales cycle being longer than other industries.

Focus on building expertise signals, focusing on content depth, not breadth and keep the information up-to-date with appropriate offers for different stages.

Quality and credibility signals

Your ICP prefers specificity over generalities. They want specific benchmarks, implementation steps, detailed how-to instructions, and content authored by subject matter experts in their industry.

Content checklist: Author bios with relevant expertise, publication and update dates, data sources and citations, unique examples and case studies, security and compliance information where relevant.

Pitfall: Publishing generic thought leadership content without author expertise or data backing. Your technical audience will immediately spot content written by generalists rather than practitioners.

Conversion triggers and UX friction

Remove friction points on high-intent pages where buyers are ready to convert. The goal should be to provide as much information to your ICP as possible so they are ready to start a conversation with sales.

Best Practices for Reducing Conversion Friction:

• Streamline high-intent pages with short forms, instant demo access, and transparent pricing information positioned prominently.
• Display clear above-the-fold value propositions that immediately communicate your unique selling points to visitors.
• Create dedicated enterprise paths with “talk to sales” options and technical specification details for B2B buyers.
• Position social proof near CTAs such as customer logos, security badges, certifications, third party awards, case studies, and user testimonials to build confidence at decision points.
• Identify micro-conversion opportunities such as newsletter signups, ebook downloads, free trial activations, and interactive product demos that guide users toward your primary conversion goals.

Pitfall: Hiding pricing details can create unnecessary friction and reduce conversion rates. Enterprise buyers want to understand baseline costs and technical requirements before engaging with your sales team.

Assess authority—backlinks, anchors, and internal links

Links are one of the factors in 2025 that still drive rankings. Say what you will about backlinks but they have a direct impact on your authority and trust signals.

When it comes to links, I often see too much effort placed externally and not enough consideration to the internal linking of the current site. 

Start by prioritizing your internal linking structure as you have direct control over it, can make changes much quicker and are not reliant on third parties. 

Once you have a strong internal link structure, focus on backlink acquisition.

Backlink profile health check

The best way to assess your backlink profile is using Ahrefs backlink analysis or Majestic. While the metrics such as DR and UR are important for quantifying the quality of the link. One factor that is often overlooked is the industry of the domain itself. 

This is where looking past the numbers becomes equally important. 

Link Velocity Considerations:

• Monitor your monthly link growth and aim for consistent, gradual increases. Sudden spikes can trigger algorithm penalties while too slow of a pace may limit ranking momentum. 

NoFollow to Follow Ratios:

• A healthy backlink profile includes a natural mix of both follow and nofollow links. Most natural profiles contain roughly 70-85% follow links, with the remainder being nofollow. 
• However, this is not a hard and fast rule. Being mentioned is still more important than nothing.

Competitor Link Acquisition Analysis:

• Regularly analyze where your competitors are gaining new backlinks to identify untapped opportunities. 
• At the end of the day, backlinks are a signal of visibility and you want to be visible in the same places as your competitors.

Pitfall: Don’t chase link volume. Instead focus on link quality and diversity. A second link from a website that has already mentioned you is less valuable than a link from a unique domain. Additionally, a link from an industry-relevant website is generally better than a non-specific publication. 

Internal linking and PageRank flow

The goal of an internal link strategy is as follows

1.  Create clear pathways from blog posts, guides, and educational content to comparison pages, alternatives guides, and pricing pages where prospects make buying decisions.
2. Pass PageRank also known as Link Sculpting from informational content to money pages to improve commercial keyword rankings. This is most commonly seen using the hub and spoke model.

When you implement an internal link strategy, focus on contextual relevance. Use this framework instead of forcing connections

1. What is the likely next set of questions my ICP would have about this topic?
2. Is there an opportunity to connect a solution that addresses the pain point surfaced here?

The fastest way to uncover new linking opportunities is using Screaming Frog’s n-gram feature to identify anchor text that already exists creating easy link additions. 

The second way is to use Screaming Frog’s content cluster diagram and visualize the inlinks and outlinks from specific pages allowing you to insert links between related clusters and connect high traffic informational content to BOFU conversion pieces.

Reference our saas seo guide for topic cluster and internal linking examples specific to SaaS businesses.

Schema and rich results eligibility

Schema markup has evolved beyond traditional SEO into a critical foundation for AI search readiness. 

As search engines increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to provide users with more relevant answers to their queries, implementing comprehensive structured data helps AI systems identify authoritative sources and extract accurate information from your pages.

The strategic advantage comes from building a connected content knowledge graph that establishes your domain expertise and entity relationships. 

When you implement connected Schema Markup, you are defining the objects in your content as individual entities with their own properties and relationships to other entities. This semantic foundation enables AI systems to understand not just what your content says, but how it connects to broader industry knowledge.

Essential schema types for AI-ready content

Start with these high-impact schema types that provide direct answers to user questions:

• FAQPage – Structures question-and-answer content that AI systems can easily parse and cite in response to voice searches
• HowTo – Maps step-by-step instructions that align perfectly with voice search queries and AI assistant responses
• Article/BlogPost – Establishes comprehensive content markup with authorship and topical authority signals
• Organization/Person – Defines core entities that help AI understand your brand relationships and expertise
• Product/SoftwareApplication – Provides detailed commercial information for product queries and competitive comparisons

The real power emerges when you connect your schema to external knowledge sources. Focus on entity linking within your markup by connecting topics to established authorities like Wikipedia, Wikidata, or industry-specific databases. This grounding provides AI systems with additional context and increases the likelihood your content will be cited as an authoritative

This approach transforms isolated content pages into nodes within a broader knowledge network, helping search engines understand how your expertise fits into the larger industry landscape.

Pitfall: Adding schema markup that doesn’t accurately reflect actual page content destroys trust with both search engines and AI systems. Without structured data, search engines rely on algorithms to infer details about your business, which can lead to inaccuracies and misunderstandings. 

Run a b2b seo audit with this 7-step playbook

Step 1 – Prep and access: Confirm Google Search Console, GA4, and CRM access. Define pipeline KPIs and create shared issue tracking. Finalize crawl scope.

Step 2 – Crawl and indexation: Execute full site crawl. Fix critical status codes, canonical errors, duplicate titles, and sitemap coverage issues. 

Step 3 – Page experience: Benchmark Core Web Vitals (INP, LCP, CLS) by template. Implement top 3 performance improvements for money pages first.

Step 4 – Keyword and intent analysis: Export GSC queries and pages data. Map keywords to buyer intent stages. Identify bottom-of-funnel gaps and cannibalization opportunities.

Step 5 – Content quality and E-E-A-T: Score priority pages for depth and expertise signals. Add SME bylines, data sources, unique pain points and micro-conversion opportunities.

Step 6 – Authority and internal links: Analyze competitor link gaps. Add contextual internal links from high-traffic informational pages to conversion-focused pages.

Step 7 – Prioritize and execute: Rank all issues by impact and effort. Build a 90-day implementation plan with clear owners. Report monthly on issue resolution and pipeline contribution.

Prioritize, communicate, and convert findings into wins

Transform technical discoveries into business outcomes with clear prioritization and stakeholder communication. Lead with items that unblock crawling and indexation while raising conversion rates on high-intent pages.

Reporting and stakeholder updates

Use Google Search Console’s new annotation feature to mark implementation dates directly within GSC’s performance reports, creating clear before-and-after comparisons that connect technical changes to organic traffic shifts. 

Pro Tip: Make technical SEO a regular team priority by adding it as a standing agenda item in weekly or bi-weekly syncs. Allocate 15-20 minutes to review progress, address blockers, and set realistic implementation timelines. This collaborative approach prevents technical debt buildup, ensures accountability, and maintains consistent momentum.

When resourcing constraints become blockers, our b2b seo agency can provide additional execution support to maintain momentum on critical technical implementations.

Refresh and iterate

Create a systematic content refresh workflow by using Screaming Frog’s custom extraction feature to pull published and modified dates from all your content, then compile this data into a centralized spreadsheet. 

Establish your organization’s refresh benchmark, typically 3 to 4 months for competitive niches, and integrate Ahrefs MCP server to monitor ranking fluctuations and content decay signals in real-time. 

This creates a living, breathing content management system that adapts to SERP volatility rather than relying on static refresh schedules.

Pro Tip: Don’t neglect your historically top-performing content in favor of creating new pages. Google already knows and trusts your established content, and most crawls are specifically looking for refreshes rather than discovering entirely new URLs. 

Next Steps

Companies that systematically audit and optimize their organic search performance see compound returns in qualified pipeline. 

Start with technical foundations, map content to real buyer intent, and measure success by pipeline impact rather than vanity metrics. The audit you conduct today will continue driving qualified leads for months to come.

Ready to audit your B2B site for maximum pipeline impact? Schedule a consultation with our b2b seo team to get started.