You can audit 80% of your website's SEO health in 60 minutes using only free tools like Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights
Most agency SEO audit PDFs are automated tool dumps with no prioritisation, and they are designed to overwhelm you into hiring the agency
The 7 most common issues costing Singapore businesses organic traffic include missing H1 tags, duplicate title tags, slow mobile speed, no Google Business Profile, thin service pages, keyword cannibalization, and no post-publish SEO
Page 2 Push-Up strategy: keywords at positions 11 to 20 in Search Console are your fastest wins, each one pushed to page 1 can double or triple its click-through rate
Keyword cannibalization (two pages competing for the same keyword) is more common than most businesses realize and can be detected in 5 minutes using Search Console
DIY everything you can, then hire a professional specifically for technical crawl issues, site migrations, or penalty recovery
Before you pay anyone $2,000 for an SEO audit, spend 60 minutes doing this yourself. Seriously. You will know more about your website's health than most "comprehensive audit" PDF reports ever tell you.
I have reviewed hundreds of Singapore business websites. The pattern is consistent: the businesses spending the most on SEO audits are often the ones with the least clarity on what actually needs fixing. Not because their consultants are bad at SEO. Because most audit reports are not designed to give you clarity. They are designed to give you volume.
There is a smarter way. And it starts with understanding what you actually need to look at, in what order, and what you can handle on your own before you decide whether professional help is worth it.
I am going to share the exact 20-point checklist I use with every new client, plus two strategies that most SEO guides completely ignore: the Page 2 Push-Up method and keyword cannibalization detection. By the end, you will know exactly what to fix first, what can wait, and what actually needs a professional.
Why Most SEO Audits Fail
I am going to say something controversial for an SEO consultant: most SEO audits are designed to confuse you.
Here is how the typical agency audit works. You fill in a contact form. A salesperson calls and asks about your website goals. A week later, a 50-page PDF lands in your inbox. It has hundreds of "critical errors," dozens of charts, technical jargon in every paragraph, and a proposal at the end for a $1,500 per month retainer to fix all of it.
The PDF is not the product. The PDF is the sales pitch. The agency runs your URL through an automated tool like Screaming Frog or Semrush, exports the report, slaps their logo on it, and sends it over. They give you a terrifying-looking report so you feel like you need to hire them to sort it all out.
Tyler Ang
Digital Marketing Consultant
After consulting with 255+ businesses, Tyler discovered most do not need more traffic. They need someone to look at their business properly first. He built sportifate.com to 6,800+ organic users with zero ad spend, proving the research-first system works.
Every month you run ads, post content, or pay for SEO without knowing what is actually working is another month of budget leaking, and in one conversation I can pull up your Google Ads, Search Console, and Analytics to show you exactly where the hole is and which underutilised areas deserve your attention first.
What you get from a 30-minute strategy call:
Full Platform Audit
A full breakdown of your current numbers across Google Ads, Meta, Search Console, and Analytics, showing where your money is going, what it is returning, and which underutilised areas could produce results faster
Biggest Constraint
The single biggest constraint holding your business back right now, identified from your actual platform data rather than guesswork
The problem is that most of those "errors" do not matter. An automated tool will flag missing alt text on a decorative spacer image with the same severity as a robots.txt file blocking your entire site from Google. Both show up as red. Only one is catastrophic. Without context and prioritisation, the report is noise.
A useful audit fits on one page. It tells you: here are the 5 things hurting your traffic the most, here is the priority order, and here is what each fix will cost in time or money.
60-Minute DIY Audit
Grab a coffee. Open these three tabs: Google Search Console (GSC, Google's free tool that shows how your pages perform in search), PageSpeed Insights, and your own website. That is all you need.
If you do not have Google Search Console set up, stop here and do that first. It is free, it takes 10 minutes to verify your site, and it is the single most valuable SEO tool you have access to. Everything else comes after.
Check 1: Are Your Pages Actually Indexed? (5 minutes)
Open Google Search Console and navigate to Pages (under Indexing in the left menu). You will see two numbers: indexed pages and not-indexed pages.
Click into the "Not indexed" tab. Look for these specific reasons and treat them as urgent if they affect pages that should be ranking.
"Discovered, currently not indexed": Google knows the page exists but has not crawled it. Often a crawl budget issue or weak internal linking.
"Crawled, currently not indexed": Google has seen the page but decided not to include it. Usually thin content or a duplicate content problem.
"Excluded by noindex tag": Someone has told Google not to index this page. Fine if intentional. A disaster if it ended up on your homepage by accident.
"Blocked by robots.txt": Google cannot access the page at all. Check this immediately if important pages appear here.
The target: every page that should be ranking should be in the indexed column. Anything important sitting in the not-indexed section is invisible to Google right now.
Check 2: How Fast Is Your Site on Mobile? (5 minutes)
Open PageSpeed Insights and enter your homepage URL. Wait for the analysis to run, then look at the Mobile tab first. Desktop performance is secondary.
Below 50: Urgent. Your site is likely losing rankings to faster competitors right now.
50 to 70: Needs work. You are probably not being penalised, but you are not competing at full strength.
70 to 89: Acceptable. Focus on higher-impact issues before this one.
90 and above: Excellent. Move to the next check.
The biggest speed killers I see on Singapore business websites are uncompressed images (a single homepage hero image can add 3 to 4 seconds of load time), render-blocking JavaScript from chat widgets and analytics scripts, and no browser caching configured for static assets.
Check 3: Core Web Vitals (5 minutes)
In Google Search Console, go to Experience and then Core Web Vitals. You will see a graph showing your pages categorised as Good, Needs Improvement, or Poor.
Focus on LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) first. It measures how long it takes for the main content on your page to appear. Google considers under 2.5 seconds good, 2.5 to 4 seconds needs improvement, and above 4 seconds poor. LCP is the metric that correlates most strongly with ranking performance.
If you have a significant number of pages showing as Poor or Needs Improvement in Core Web Vitals, that is a signal worth prioritising. It affects the majority of your pages, not just one or two.
Check 4: Title Tags and Meta Descriptions (15 minutes)
Open a new browser tab and type "site:yourdomain.com" into Google (replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain). Browse through the results.
You are looking for these specific issues on your top 10 most important pages.
Missing title tags: the page shows the URL or domain name as the clickable heading in search results instead of a proper title.
Duplicate title tags: multiple pages showing the same title in search results. Google will often rewrite these, which means you lose control of your first impression.
Titles cut off in search results: if your title is longer than about 60 characters, Google truncates it with an ellipsis. The key information should come first.
Generic descriptions: "Welcome to our website" or "Contact us today" in the snippet below the title. These are missed opportunities to communicate value and earn a click.
Check 5: Can You Reach Every Page in 3 Clicks? (10 minutes)
Start from your homepage. Try to navigate to every important service or product page using only the links on the page. Count the clicks.
If any page takes more than 3 clicks from the homepage, your internal linking needs work. Google uses internal links to discover and understand the structure of your site. Pages buried deep in your site structure get crawled less frequently and tend to rank lower, even if the content is excellent.
Check 6: Schema Markup (5 minutes)
Go to Google's Rich Results Test (search "Google Rich Results Test" and paste your homepage URL). It will tell you whether your site has any structured data that Google can use to display rich snippets in search results.
For Singapore businesses, three types of schema matter most. LocalBusiness schema tells Google your address, opening hours, and service area. FAQ schema turns your frequently asked questions into expandable dropdowns directly in search results. Article schema helps blog posts appear with publication dates and author info.
If the test comes back with zero structured data items, you are missing free real estate in Google search results. Rich snippets take up more visual space and get higher click-through rates than plain blue links.
Check 7: GA4 (Google Analytics 4) and Search Console verification in five minutes
This sounds basic, but I have seen Singapore businesses running paid ads for months without GA4 installed, or with Google Search Console unverified. Open GA4, go to Realtime, then visit your own website on your phone. If you do not see yourself appear within 30 seconds, tracking is broken.
For Search Console, check the Performance tab. If the last 7 days show data (clicks, impressions, position), you are good. If it says "No data available," either the property is not verified or there is a configuration issue.
Check 8: Sitemap Submission (2 minutes)
In Google Search Console, click Sitemaps in the left menu. If no sitemap is listed, submit one now. Type "sitemap.xml" at the end of your domain (most CMS platforms generate this automatically). If it loads in the browser, submit that URL in Search Console.
A sitemap does not guarantee indexing, but it tells Google exactly which pages you want indexed and when they were last updated. Many Singapore businesses never submit one and then wonder why new pages take weeks to appear in search results.
The Professional Checklist
Here is the complete 20-point checklist broken down by category, difficulty, and whether it is something you can handle yourself or when you should bring in a professional.
The 20-point SEO audit checklist: every item an SEO consultant checks and whether you need a professional
Check
Category
DIY or Pro?
Difficulty
Impact
Indexation status
Technical
DIY
Easy
High
Mobile speed
Technical
DIY
Easy
High
Core Web Vitals
Technical
DIY
Medium
High
Title tags
On-Page
DIY
Easy
High
Meta descriptions
On-Page
DIY
Easy
Medium
Header hierarchy (H1/H2/H3)
On-Page
DIY
Easy
Medium
Internal linking
On-Page
DIY
Medium
High
Image alt text
On-Page
DIY
Easy
Low
Duplicate content
Content
Pro
Hard
High
Thin content pages
Content
DIY
Medium
High
Broken links (404s)
Technical
Pro
Medium
Medium
XML sitemap
Technical
Pro
Medium
Medium
Robots.txt
Technical
Pro
Medium
High
Backlink profile
Off-Page
Pro
Hard
High
Google Business Profile
Local
DIY
Easy
Very High
URL structure (2nd level, no deep nesting)
Technical
DIY
Easy
Medium
Schema markup (LocalBusiness + FAQ + Article)
Technical
Pro
Medium
High
GA4 + GSC connected and verified
Technical
DIY
Easy
Very High
Post-publish indexing (submit URL to GSC)
Technical
DIY
Easy
High
Keyword cannibalization audit
Content
Pro
Hard
Very High
Notice that the majority of high-impact items in this checklist are DIY. You do not need a professional to fix your title tags, improve your mobile speed, or set up your Google Business Profile. You need a professional for the technical crawl issues that require server-level access, and for the off-page work that requires industry relationships and specialised tools.
After reviewing hundreds of Singapore business websites across industries including F&B, healthcare, legal, e-commerce, and professional services, the same five issues come up again and again. Fix these and you will be ahead of most of your local competitors.
Issue 1: Missing or duplicate H1 tags. Many Singapore business websites have no H1 tag on their homepage at all, or they have multiple H1s fighting each other for attention. The H1 is the single most important on-page signal telling Google what your page is about. Fix: one H1 per page, include your primary keyword naturally, make it describe the page accurately.
Issue 2: Duplicate title tags across multiple pages. Every page needs a unique title. "Home" is not a title tag. Your company name alone is not a title tag. If Google sees the same title on 10 different pages, it has no idea which one to rank for which search query. The result: all 10 pages rank lower than any of them would on its own.
Issue 3: Slow mobile speed. Many Singapore business websites load in 5 or more seconds on mobile. Singapore users are on fast networks and expect fast results. A 1-second delay in page load time can significantly reduce the number of people who stay on your page. Slow sites rank lower, convert less, and drive more visitors to your competitors.
Issue 4: No Google Business Profile, or an incomplete one. This is the single highest-ROI fix for any local Singapore business. A complete, well-managed Google Business Profile puts you in the map pack results that appear above the regular organic listings. For searches with local intent ("dentist in Tampines," "plumber Jurong"), the map pack gets more clicks than the organic results underneath it.
Issue 5: Thin service pages with 100 words of generic copy. Google needs substance to rank your pages confidently. A service page with "We offer professional cleaning services in Singapore. Contact us for a quote." tells Google almost nothing about who you serve, what problems you solve, or why someone should choose you. Aim for 500 or more words of genuinely helpful content per service page: what the service includes, who it is for, what the process looks like, and answers to common questions.
Issue 6: Keyword cannibalization. Two or more pages on your site competing for the same search term. Google splits the ranking signals and neither page performs. More common than most businesses realize, and the symptoms (plateauing rankings, fluctuating positions) look like something else entirely. We cover this in detail below.
Issue 7: No post-publish SEO. Publishing content and never touching it again. The first 4 weeks after publishing are critical for indexing, internal linking, and verifying the right page ranks. Without a post-publish process, new content can take months to get indexed or, worse, an older page steals the keyword you intended for the new one.
The on-page SEO guide for Singapore covers each of these issues in detail, including specific copy frameworks for writing service pages that rank. If Issues 4 and 5 resonate, start with the on-page SEO guide before doing anything else.
The biggest mistake people make after an audit is trying to fix everything at once. That approach stalls. Nothing gets done well. The right approach is sequential: start with the highest-impact, lowest-effort items and work your way down.
Priority order for SEO fixes based on impact and effort. Start at 1 and work down.
Priority
Fix
Impact
Effort
Do This
1
Google Business Profile
Very High
Low
This week
2
Title tags and meta descriptions
High
Low
This week
3
Fix missing or duplicate H1s
High
Low
This week
4
Improve mobile speed
High
Medium
Next 2 weeks
5
Expand thin service pages
High
Medium
Next month
6
Internal linking improvements
Medium
Medium
Ongoing
7
Fix broken links
Medium
Medium
Next 2 weeks
8
Backlink audit
High
High
Hire professional
9
Technical crawl fixes
Medium
High
Hire professional
10
Site architecture restructure
High
Very High
Hire professional
11
Add schema markup (FAQ + LocalBusiness)
High
Low
This week
12
Run keyword cannibalization audit
Very High
Medium
Next 2 weeks
Start at the top. Work your way down. Stop when you hit "hire professional."
Items 1 through 3 can realistically be done in a single focused afternoon. A complete Google Business Profile, updated title tags across your top 10 pages, and corrected H1 tags are all text changes inside your CMS or in a free Google tool. No developer required. No budget required. Just focused time.
Item 4 (mobile speed) typically requires a developer to compress images, configure caching, and optimise JavaScript loading. It is not conceptually difficult, but it requires technical access that most business owners do not have. The same applies to Item 7 (broken links) if you have a large site.
The Page 2 Push-Up Strategy
Most SEO guides focus on finding new keywords to target. But the fastest ranking wins are usually hiding in plain sight inside your own Google Search Console data.
Keywords sitting at positions 11 to 20 are your lowest-hanging fruit. Google already considers your page relevant enough to rank on page 2. It just needs a small push to cross onto page 1, where the real clicks happen. The difference between position 11 and position 8 can mean a meaningful jump in traffic for the exact same page (CTR drops sharply past the first results page, per Backlinko's click-through-rate study).
Most Singapore businesses have 5 to 15 keywords sitting on page 2 right now without realizing it. The push-up strategy identifies these keywords, prioritizes them by business impact, and applies a specific optimization sequence to move them onto page 1. It is the single fastest way to increase organic traffic without creating any new content.
Want to know which of your keywords are sitting on page 2? An SEO consultant can run this analysis in 15 minutes and show you exactly which pages to prioritize.
Keyword Cannibalization: The Problem Nobody Talks About
Keyword cannibalization is when two or more pages on your own website compete for the same search term. Instead of one strong page ranking well, Google splits the ranking signals between them and neither performs at its full potential.
It is one of the most common and most damaging SEO problems I see on Singapore business websites, and most businesses do not even know they have it. The symptoms look like something else entirely: rankings that plateau for no clear reason, pages that fluctuate between position 8 and position 25 week to week, or new content that fails to rank despite being well-written.
There is a systematic 6-checkpoint audit process that catches cannibalization at every stage, from initial keyword research through to monthly monitoring. It is one of the first things I run during a professional audit because fixing it often produces the biggest and fastest ranking improvements.
If your rankings have been stuck or fluctuating despite good content, cannibalization is the first thing worth investigating. Get a free audit and I will check for cannibalization issues across your entire site.
What Most Businesses Skip After Publishing
Publishing content and never touching it again is one of the most common SEO mistakes. The first 4 weeks after publishing are critical, and there is a specific post-publish sequence that determines whether your content actually ranks or just sits there collecting dust.
The sequence covers indexing acceleration, internal link building, ranking verification, and ongoing cannibalization monitoring. Each step builds on the previous one. Skip the verification step, for example, and you might not realize for months that the wrong page is ranking for your target keyword.
DIY vs Hiring a Consultant
The line is simpler than most people think.
DIY everything you can fix by editing text, clicking buttons in your CMS, or making changes inside free Google tools like Search Console or Google Business Profile. This includes title tags, meta descriptions, H1 tags, page copy, internal links, image alt text, Google Business Profile setup and optimisation, and basic site structure changes.
Hire a professional for anything that requires touching server configuration files, .htaccess or nginx rules, redirect chains, canonicalisation across hundreds of pages, site migrations, Google penalty recovery, or competitive backlink analysis. These are situations where getting it wrong can make your rankings significantly worse, not just leave them unchanged.
The most common scenario I see: a business owner or their web developer makes a well-intentioned change (updating the site's URL structure, switching platforms, adding a new www or non-www version) without properly setting up redirects. Google sees the same content on two different URLs, splits the ranking signals, and the site drops on every affected keyword. That kind of issue requires professional diagnosis and a carefully sequenced fix.
If after running through the checklist above you find issues that clearly need professional diagnosis, the SEO consultant Singapore page covers how to evaluate consultants and what a proper engagement should look like.
For businesses with a physical location or serving specific Singapore neighbourhoods, the local SEO services page is worth reviewing before you finalise your Google Business Profile strategy.
Ahrefs covers keyword research fundamentals, an essential part of any SEO audit
There Is Your Checklist. Now Use It.
There is your checklist. 20 items, 3 advanced strategies, and 60 minutes for the DIY portion. And now you know exactly which fixes to handle yourself and which ones justify bringing in help.
The businesses that wait for a perfect, comprehensive audit before taking any action are still on page 3 six months later. The businesses that audit, prioritise, and start fixing the highest-impact items this week are the ones that show up on page 1 by the time their competitors finally get around to opening Search Console.
You have enough information now to take action today. Run the 5 DIY checks. Look at the priority matrix. Pick the top 3 items and block 2 hours this week to fix them. That is it.
The best SEO audit is not the longest one. It is the one that tells you the 5 things that actually matter, in the order you should fix them, with honest clarity about what you can handle and what you cannot.
If you ran through this checklist and found issues you are not sure how to prioritise, or if you hit the "hire professional" line on the matrix and want a second opinion, I am happy to take a look. Get in touch and I will review your top-priority issues with you, no pitch required.
