How Often Should You Do An SEO Audit? | Cadence That Sticks

Guide / By

SEO audit frequency: quarterly for most sites, with monthly technical checks and one deeper review each year.

Search traffic swings, new pages ship, and links change. That’s why an SEO audit isn’t a one-time event. The right cadence keeps crawlability clean, pages indexable, and content aligned with what searchers want. Below you’ll find a practical schedule you can stick to, plus what to check each time so the work pays off.

Recommended Cadence At A Glance

If you only need a quick steer, match your website profile to a rhythm that fits your pace. Then use the triggers in the last column to pull forward an audit when conditions shift.

Site Profile Cadence Pull-Forward Triggers
Small brochure site (≤50 pages) Light check monthly; full review every 6–12 months Launches, theme changes, host moves
Local service site (50–300 pages) Technical check monthly; content & links quarterly Ranking drops, NAP edits, new locations
Blog/publisher (300–5,000 pages) Rolling technical & on-page monthly; section review quarterly; deep audit yearly Traffic slide, ad stack tweaks, layout shifts
Ecommerce (1k–50k URLs) Technical sweep monthly; category & template review quarterly; full crawl biannually Catalog imports, feed errors, out-of-stock waves
Enterprise or news Automated crawls weekly; human review monthly; deep audit twice a year Section launches, CMS releases, index coverage spikes
Startups iterating fast Sprint-end checks biweekly; formal review quarterly Routing changes, feature flags, domain or subdomain tests

How Frequently To Run SEO Audits By Risk And Change Rate

Audit rhythm tracks two knobs: how risky a miss would be, and how often your site changes. Fast-moving sites pick up issues quickly—think stray noindex tags, orphaned pages, or CLS regressions. Slower sites can stretch the gap between full reviews, but still benefit from a monthly sweep for crawl and index basics.

Tooling helps here. Most site crawlers can schedule recurring crawls so you’re not starting from zero each time. That automated baseline shortens the human review and flags regressions early. For context on what search systems reward, see Google’s guidance on creating helpful, reliable content, then tune your checks to prove those qualities in code and copy. For trend monitoring and query-level shifts, the Search Console Performance report gives click, impression, and CTR data with handy time comparisons.

Monthly Checks That Catch Silent Regressions

A monthly pass is short and focused. Think of it as a smoke alarm round. You’re looking for anything that blocks discovery, indexing, or basic usability.

Technical Items

  • Index coverage: Scan Search Console “Pages” and “Video pages.” Fix sudden spikes in excluded or soft 404s.
  • Robots rules: Confirm no accidental blocks in robots.txt or meta robots.
  • Canonical signals: Check canonical tags on templates and large sets (products, articles).
  • Core Web Vitals: Review field data. Target shifts in LCP, INP, and CLS rather than chasing single-URL outliers.
  • Sitemaps: Ensure current, deduped feeds with accurate lastmod.
  • Internal links: Find orphaned or low-linked key pages; fix broken links.

Content & Intent Items

  • Title/meta drift: Spot template glitches, truncation, or duplication.
  • Thin or outdated pages: Mark candidates for refresh or consolidation.
  • Search intent fit: Compare top queries to page purpose; adjust headings and on-page cues.

Link Health

  • Toxic bursts: Look for spammy bursts. Disavow only when clear harm persists.
  • Lost links: Capture reclaimed opportunities with outreach or internal redirects.

Quarterly Reviews That Move The Needle

The quarterly window is roomy enough for real improvement. Use it to tackle deeper fixes, revisit site architecture, and refresh content that earned attention but slipped.

Architecture And Template Pass

  • Navigation: Ensure key sections are reachable in three clicks or less.
  • Faceted paths: Trim crawl waste; set clear canonical paths for filters.
  • Structured data: Validate key types (Article, Product, HowTo, Review) and check error trends.

Content Refresh And Pruning

  • Update evergreen pieces: Add new facts, replace stale screenshots, and merge thin spin-offs.
  • Refocus laggards: If a page ranks on the wrong query cluster, rework headings, examples, and internal links.
  • Prune deadweight: Noindex pages that add noise and attract zero demand.

Measurement And Goals

  • Compare quarters: Use 3- vs 3-month windows in Search Console to separate seasonal shifts from structural progress.
  • Annotate changes: Keep a simple change log for releases that affect crawl paths or templates.

When To Run A Full Deep-Dive

A deep-dive pulls every thread. Plan one annually for most sites, twice a year for complex catalogs or fast-moving publishers. Bring engineering, product, and content leads to the table so fixes stick.

Scope For The Deep-Dive

  • Full crawl: Crawl all reachable URLs, including parameter variants and subdomains.
  • Log sampling: Review server logs for bot behavior and crawl waste.
  • Index parity: Compare crawled set with Search Console indexed set to spot gaps.
  • Template audits: Inspect category, product/article, and landing templates end to end.
  • Content mapping: Align pages to query groups; remove overlap inside clusters.
  • International rules: If relevant, validate hreflang and regional routing.

Signals That Your Cadence Should Speed Up

Some events justify an immediate review, no matter where you are in the cycle:

  • Traffic drop: A sharp fall in clicks or CTR across groups.
  • Indexing spikes: Sudden growth in excluded or crawled-not-indexed pages.
  • Site changes: CMS releases, theme redesigns, IA shifts, or domain moves.
  • User complaints: Reports of slow loads, broken pages, or confusing paths.
  • New revenue flows: Changes in ad placements or checkout flow.

Audit Checklist By Frequency

Use this table to plan time and keep each session tight. Adjust to your stack and team size.

Frequency Top Checks Time Budget
Monthly Index coverage, CWV trends, robots and canonicals, sitemap freshness, broken/internal links 60–120 minutes
Quarterly Architecture, faceted crawl rules, structured data validation, content refresh, cluster pruning Half day–1 day
Yearly Full crawl, log sampling, template review, international signals, analytics & goal recheck 2–5 days

Practical Setup So The Schedule Runs Itself

Automate The Crawl Baseline

Set your crawler to run on a schedule. A weekly or monthly crawl gives a diff you can scan in minutes. Keep a saved segment for “new 4xx/5xx,” “pages losing links,” and “title/meta duplication.” That diff is your fast lane through the noise.

Pin Your Core Dashboards

  • Search Console: Performance, Pages, and Sitemaps reports pinned. Build simple comparisons (last 3 months vs previous) for top sections.
  • Analytics: Landing pages by organic traffic, with conversion rate and bounce behavior side by side.
  • Speed: Field data snapshots so you track LCP and INP for real users, not just lab runs.

Keep A Single Change Log

One shared doc with release dates, template edits, redirects, and ad layout changes makes audit findings actionable. When clicks shift, you can line up the chart with a specific change instead of guessing.

Content Refresh Rhythm That Works

Evergreen pages age. Plan a rolling refresh so they earn new queries and links. Pick your top 10% organic landing pages and rotate updates through them every two or three months. Add new data points, current year angles, and improved examples. Retire pages that only steal attention from better sources on the same topic. This is the highest ROI step for most sites.

Setting Cadence By Business Model

Lead Gen And Local

Phone calls and form fills hinge on location queries and service pages. Tighten NAP details, local link citations, and map embeds. Watch for duplicate location pages and dead GMB links. Quarterly is a good beat, with a quick pass each month to keep on-page signals sharp.

Content-Driven Businesses

Publishers ride freshness and internal linking. Use a quarterly section review to cluster content, promote the strongest pieces, and retire anything that no longer helps. Monthly, run an orphan finder and link promising pages into lists, hubs, and seasonal guides.

Online Stores

Catalog edges change daily. Keep a monthly crawl for variant cannibalization, out-of-stock handling, and parameter creep. Quarterly, review category copy and filters. Yearly, re-evaluate information architecture and product template markup.

How To Judge Success Between Audits

  • Trend lines, not blips: Compare similar windows (90 vs 90 days) for clicks, impressions, and CTR.
  • Coverage stability: A flat line in excluded states means fewer surprises for bots.
  • Link quality: Fewer junk domains, more niche-relevant links gained than lost.
  • UX signals: Better CWV pass rates and smoother navigation paths.

Common Timing Mistakes To Avoid

  • Waiting for a crisis: Schedule audits on a calendar, not in reaction to drops.
  • All-or-nothing cycles: Don’t wait a year for a massive project. Small monthly passes stop rot.
  • Ignoring templates: Fixes on single pages rarely stick if templates carry the bug.
  • Skipping release checks: Ship reviews should include robots, canonicals, and performance budgets.

Sample 90-Day Audit Plan You Can Copy

Month 1

  • Run a full site crawl; fix top 10 technical issues by impact.
  • Refresh two high-value pages; add internal links from five related posts each.
  • Validate sitemaps and dedupe feeds.

Month 2

  • Review Core Web Vitals; ship one performance win (image compression, lazy loading, or CSS slimming).
  • Check Search Console query shifts; adjust titles and H2s on three pages.
  • Clean broken links and soft 404s.

Month 3

  • Architecture mini-pass: refine nav labels and hub pages.
  • Prune two low-value pages per cluster; redirect to the strongest match.
  • Document changes and set next quarter goals.

The Bottom Line On Timing

Set a standing monthly check, plan a deeper quarter-end review, and book one full deep-dive each year. Pull the schedule forward when traffic or index signals swing, or when your code and templates change. Keep the cadence predictable and the scope focused, and audits stop being a fire drill and start being a system.