How to Run a Site Audit on SEMrush – Perfect for Beginners!

According to statistics from SEO experts, more than 70% of websites have technical problems that directly affect search performance. Meanwhile, many businesses still do not really understand how to detect and handle these errors effectively. One of the most powerful tools today to check the overall health of a website is Semrush Site Audit.

So what is Site Audit? How to use SEMrush to audit a website? In this article, you will be guided step by step through implementing Site Audit with Semrush, from understanding the concept, important indicators to practicing error handling and comprehensive optimization. Get your note-taking tools ready because this will be a useful practical lesson that RankMarket has for you.

What is SEMrush Site Audit Tool?

Site Audit is a comprehensive website audit to detect technical issues that affect search engine visibility. Common errors include: slow loading speed, broken links, indexing issues, duplicate content, incorrect site structure, etc.

For SEO, an effective campaign does not stop at keyword optimization or backlink building. If the website has serious technical errors, all other efforts are almost useless. Therefore, Site Audit is the first important foundation step that needs to be implemented periodically.

👉Learn more: What is SEO Audit? Top 5 best website auditing tools in 2025

So why should you use Semrush to audit your website?

Semrush is one of the world's leading comprehensive SEO platforms, used by more than 10 million experts. This tool provides an “all-in-one” solution including: keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink checking, content optimization, and especially Site Audit.

When using Site Audit in Semrush, you will notice clear advantages compared to other platforms such as:

• Friendly interface, easy to operate.
• Analyze more than 140 technical SEO factors.
• Provide specific reports, clearly dividing errors by level: Error, Warning, Notice.
• Integrate with Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
• Support troubleshooting suggestions and track changes over time.

Benefits of implementing a regular Site Audit with Semrush

• Improve user experience and page load speed.
• Detect and fix errors before being penalized by Google.
• Improve Health Score – an important indicator of the overall health of the website.
• Optimize internal linking structure, indexing and redirects.
• Increase the ability to rank for target keywords thanks to a solid technical foundation.

Step-by-step guide to implementing a Site Audit with Semrush

Step 1: Create a new project (Project)

After logging into Semrush and going to SEO Toolkit → On-Page & Tech SEO → Site Audit, you will be greeted with a very cool interface.

The first thing is to create a New Project for the website you want to audit. This is like opening a medical record so that the doctor can check the “SEO health” of your website. Just enter the domain, select the project name and you're done with the patient information declaration!

Step 2: Set up the crawl scope (Crawl Scope)

Next, you will see the Crawl Scope section appear. There are three important parts to pay attention to:

• Crawl Scope: Do you want Semrush to “check” the entire domain, subdomain, or just a specific subfolder? It’s up to you. For example, if you only want to audit the blog section, you can choose example.com/blog/.
• Limit of Checked Pages: This is the limit of the number of pages that will be checked. Small websites choose 100–500 pages, while large websites can expand to tens of thousands.

• Crawl Source: What pages will Semrush find to crawl? There are 3 options:
  • Website (default, quick)
  • Sitemaps
  • File URLs uploaded by you

Hint: If this is your first audit, just leave the default crawl from the website as it is the most “stable”.

Step 3: Advanced Configuration

If you want to dig a little deeper, open the Advanced Settings section to access:

• Crawler Settings: Select user-agent (bot pretending to be Googlebot, Bingbot…). You can also set crawl delay to avoid “server overload”.
• Allow/Disallow URLs: Helps Semrush know which parts should or should not be checked.
• Remove URL Parameters: Very useful to avoid having multiple versions of the same page due to different URL parameters (eg ?utm_source=xyz).
• Authentication: If you want to check the site in a staging environment or have a password, Semrush supports it!
• Schedule: Set up an automatic audit schedule – daily, weekly, monthly are all available:

Step 4: Run Audit

After the configuration is complete, just click Start Site Audit and Semrush will start “checking” each nooks and crannies of your website.

After a few minutes, you'll see the Site Health Score appear – a number from 0 to 100 that represents the overall health. The closer to 100, the healthier it is. You'll also see:

• Errors (red): Critical errors
• Warnings (orange): Moderate errors
• Notices (blue): Gentle notifications

Your job? Fix errors from severe to mild, step by step.

Step 5: Prioritize handling by Top Issues

You will see a list of Top Issues in the Overview tab – these are the most common issues and have the most impact on your site's SEO. Start here for maximum effectiveness.

Each error has:

• Description of the cause
• Specific troubleshooting instructions (“Why & How to fix it”)

For example:

• Broken internal links
• Missing meta descriptions
• Duplicate content
• Slow page load…

Step 6: Explore Thematic Reports

Semrush divides the Audit into report categories – like a general checkup but can look into each agency in detail:

• Crawlability: The ability of bots to access and “understand” the website.
• HTTPS: Analyze problems when converting from HTTP to HTTPS.
• International SEO: Check hreflang tags – super important for multilingual sites.
• Core Web Vitals: Including LCP, TBT, CLS – Google really cares!
• Performance: Loading speed, file minification, active time…
• Internal Linking: See if any pages are orphaned or too far from the homepage.
• Markup: Evaluate structured data – an important factor for rich results.
• Issues Report: Summarize all errors – you can filter, hide, localize or export file.

Step 7: Explore Crawled Pages – Closely examine each URL

The Crawled Pages tab gives you a complete list of pages that have been crawled by Semrush's bot. You can:

• See details of each URL that has errors
• Click “Re-audit URL” to check again after fixing
• View Site Structure to analyze the overall structure of the website

Step 8: Compare Crawls – Track Progress

The Compare Crawls tab is like a graph. You will see how your site has “grown” after each error fix. This tab helps you:

• Compare Errors, Warnings, Notices between audits
• Clearly see improvement progress
• Encourage devs like: “Look, your fix is ​​so effective!”

Step 9: Read the Statistics tab carefully

In this tab, you will be able to admire:

• Crawl depth (how many clicks to reach the page)
• HTTP status codes
• Canonical vs duplicate
• AMP links, Sitemap vs actual crawl
• Internal links in vs out
• Hreflang usage

With the detailed instructions above, you can completely deploy a comprehensive Site Audit with Semrush in just a few steps. More importantly, you will know how to analyze the results, identify errors that need to be prioritized, and plan sustainable optimization for your website.

Top Tips for a High Health Score on Semrush

Want a Health Score of 90%? Here are some tips from the pros:

Prioritize fixing “Errors” first

• Errors labeled Errors (like broken links, unindexed pages) have the biggest impact on SEO. Fix them immediately.
• For example, if Semrush says “33 pages are more than 3 clicks deep”, move these pages closer to the homepage or delete them if they are not needed.

Monitor regularly and set up alerts

• Set up a weekly audit schedule to detect new errors.
• Use Semrush’s alert feature to get notified when your Health Score suddenly drops.

Integrate Site Audit with other Semrush tools

• Use On Page SEO Checker to optimize each page by keyword.
• Integrate Backlink Audit to check backlink quality and remove toxic links.
• Use Content Audit to find pages that need updating or deleting.

Semrush Site Audit Tool FAQs

Conclusion

Site Audit with Semrush is the “golden compass” to help you optimize your website, increase rankings, and attract organic traffic. From detecting technical errors, improving speed, to optimizing internal links, Semrush helps you do it all easily. For beginners, start by running an audit, prioritizing fixing Errors, and monitoring regularly. Don't let a “sick” website stop you from reaching the TOP of Google!

Don't hesitate! Sign up for Semrush at RankMarket and run a Site Audit today. A healthy website is the foundation for any successful SEO campaign. Are you ready? Share your first audit results in the comments!

References:

• How to begin with auditing your website? – Semrush: https://www.semrush.com/kb/1184-audit-your-website