A publisher’s website can grow by hundreds or thousands of URLs as articles, tags, author pages, and archives accumulate. That scale makes it easy for valuable stories to go unindexed, slow templates to frustrate readers, or crawlers to waste time on low-value pages. A practical SEO audit helps you find these problems and prioritize fixes. Review the site in four areas: indexing, page speed, crawl health, and page structure. Start with a manageable sample, then expand based on what you find.
Check What Search Engines Index
Compare the URLs you want search engines to find with the pages they actually index. Start with your XML sitemap and Search Console’s indexing reports. Look for important articles marked as excluded, unexpected drops in indexed pages, and URLs included in the sitemap that return errors or point elsewhere. Group findings by page type—such as articles, topic pages, author pages, and archives—to spot template-wide problems.
Inspect representative URLs with Search Console’s URL Inspection tool. Check whether the page can be crawled, whether it has a noindex directive, and which canonical URL Google selected. Confirm that the canonical points to the preferred version, especially when an article appears in multiple sections or has tracking parameters. Fix the underlying template or publishing rule when the same issue affects many URLs.
Measure Speed on Key Templates
Test a sample of pages on mobile and desktop, including a recent article, a section landing page, and a high-traffic story. Use PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse to review Core Web Vitals and identify what slows the page. Common areas to investigate include oversized images, render-blocking scripts, excessive advertising or analytics code, and slow server responses. A single article score is not enough to diagnose a template used across the publication.
Prioritize changes that improve the reader experience across many pages. Serve appropriately sized images, compress files, and reserve image space so content does not shift as it loads. Review third-party scripts with the teams that manage ads and analytics, and remove tools the publication no longer needs. Retest the same page types after changes, and compare field data over time when it is available.
Find Crawl and Navigation Problems
Crawl the site with an SEO crawler, then review status codes, redirect chains, broken internal links, and pages that cannot be reached through normal navigation. Check robots.txt and meta robots directives to confirm they block only pages that should stay out of search. Make sure important articles are not buried behind several clicks or accessible only through on-site search.
Look for crawl traps created by calendar archives, faceted filters, search results, and parameter combinations. These can generate large numbers of near-duplicate URLs. Decide which versions deserve crawling and indexing, then use consistent internal links, canonical tags, and crawl directives to support that choice. Validate any robots.txt change carefully: blocking a URL can prevent crawlers from seeing its noindex instruction.
Strengthen Article Page Structure
Review whether each article has a clear, descriptive title, one visible main heading, a useful introduction, and headings that organize the story. Check that the article template displays the publication date and, when relevant, an updated date without creating confusing duplicates. Give images descriptive alt text when they convey information, and make sure related-story links help readers reach relevant coverage.
Check structured data against the content readers can see. Article markup should accurately describe the page, including its headline, images, dates, and author where applicable. Also review internal links from topic pages, section pages, and newer stories to important evergreen reporting. When you find an issue, record the affected template, example URLs, evidence, and proposed fix so editors and developers can act without repeating the audit.
A publisher SEO audit works best as a repeatable review, not a one-time checklist. Track findings by template, prioritize problems that affect important content or many URLs, and verify each fix after deployment. Schedule a regular review alongside publishing and technical changes. Prairie Page SEO can help your team plan a focused audit if you want an outside perspective.