Semrush Site Audit Guide 2025: Fix Errors for Higher Google Rankings

If your website isn’t ranking on Google, it might not be your content that’s the problem. It could be technical issues behind the scenes that search engines don’t like. That’s where the Semrush Site Audit tool comes in. This guide will show you exactly how to use it to scan your website, fix major SEO issues, and improve your chances of showing up on page one. Let’s get in.

 

What Is the Semrush Site Audit Tool?

Semrush’s Site Audit scans your website and checks for over 100 technical problems that can hurt your Google rankings. It looks at broken links, redirect issues, slow pages, HTTPS problems, missing metadata, and even structured data errors. But it doesn’t stop there. It also tells you how to fix them, step-by-step.

So instead of guessing why your site isn’t growing, you can get clear answers and take action that actually helps your SEO.

 

How to Set Up a Site Audit in Semrush

Step 1: Log into your Semrush account.

Step 2: Go to the “SEO” section and select “Site Audit.”

Step 3: Click “Create Project” and enter your domain name.

Step 4: Choose your crawl scope: full domain, a subdomain, or a specific subfolder.

Step 5: Set how many pages you want Semrush to scan. If you’re on a free plan, you’ll be limited to 100 pages. You can estimate your total by Googling “site:yourdomain.com.”

Step 6: Use advanced settings to customize the audit, like crawling as Googlebot, excluding specific URLs, or scheduling a weekly scan.

Step 7: Start the audit and wait a few minutes.

Once it’s done, you’ll see your audit dashboard.

 

Understanding the Dashboard

The first thing you’ll see is your Site Health Score. This is a percentage score that shows your website’s technical health.

• 90 or above = solid
• 80 to 89 = needs minor work
• Below 80 = needs attention
• Below 60 = serious technical issues

You’ll also see a breakdown of Errors, Warnings, and Notices:

• Errors: These are urgent problems that hurt rankings. Fix these first.
• Warnings: Still important, but not as urgent.
• Notices: Good to clean up, but they won’t hurt your SEO as much.

You’ll also get quick views of issues with your sitemap, robots.txt file, internal links, HTTPS setup, and more.

 

Fixing the Most Critical Errors

Click the “Issues” tab to get a full list. Focus on the red “Errors” first.

Here are common ones you should fix:

• Broken internal links: These send users and search engines to pages that don’t exist. Update or remove them.
• Pages with 4xx or 5xx errors: These are bad for user experience and SEO. Redirect or fix them.
• HTTP instead of HTTPS: If your pages aren’t secure, Google will ding you. Make sure SSL is installed and redirect HTTP to HTTPS.
• Redirect chains: Clean these up by linking directly to the final destination.

For each issue, Semrush tells you why it matters and how to fix it. Follow the instructions, and you’ll be in good shape.

 

Next: Fix the Warnings

Once the major errors are handled, move on to Warnings.

These may include:

• Slow page load times
• Missing or duplicate title tags and meta descriptions
• Thin content or low word count
• Orphaned pages with no internal links

These don’t always tank your rankings, but they can make your site less effective and harder for Google to understand.

 

Cleaning Up the Notices

Notices are suggestions that help improve your site further:

• Empty anchor text
• Pages with only one internal link
• Missing H1 tags
• Images without alt text

If your site is new, some of these may not be a big deal yet. But cleaning them up over time helps with accessibility and SEO.

 

Recrawl and Track Progress

After fixing your site, go back to Semrush and click “Rerun Audit.” It’ll scan your site again and update your Site Health Score. You can also use the “Compare Crawls” feature to see how your score has changed over time. This is great for spotting recurring problems or tracking progress month to month.

 

Extra Tips to Get More From Your Audit

• Connect Google Analytics: Semrush can help you prioritize fixes for your highest-traffic pages.
• Use the Site Structure view: It helps you visualize where the biggest problems are.
• Schedule weekly audits: That way you never fall behind on technical SEO.
• Be careful with hiding issues: Don’t mark problems as “ignored” unless you’re sure they don’t matter.

 

Why This Matters

It’s easy to focus only on content and design. But Google cares about your site’s technical health too. You can have the best blog post in the world, but if your site is full of broken links, redirect issues, and slow pages, it won’t rank. Fixing these issues tells Google your site is clean, easy to crawl, and worth showing to searchers.

 

Start Your Free Semrush Trial

If you haven’t used Semrush before, you can get a free 14-day trial of their Pro plan. It gives you full access to the Site Audit tool so you can scan your entire site, fix problems, and start ranking higher. This tool has helped thousands of creators, bloggers, and small business owners clean up their websites and grow faster. If you’re serious about SEO, this is the place to start.