How to Audit Your Website for SEO and AI Search in One Hour

You can audit a business website for SEO and AI search in one hour with free tools: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, PageSpeed Insights, the Rich Results Test, a few site: searches and the AI assistants themselves. Work through six 10-minute blocks, from "can crawlers reach the site?" to "what do ChatGPT and Gemini say about us?", score each check, and you'll finish with a ranked list of what to fix first.

This won't replace a full marketing audit, but it will catch the problems that matter most. Many of the serious ones are simple: a blocked crawler, a missing page, a wrong phone number repeated by an AI assistant.

What do you need before you start?

Have these open before you start the clock:

• Access to Google Search Console for your site. If you don't have it, setting it up is your first fix.
• Access to Bing Webmaster Tools. You can import your sites from Search Console in a few clicks.
• A spreadsheet with three columns: Check, Score (0, 1 or 2), Note.
• Your five most important pages: usually the homepage, two or three service or product pages, and the contact page.
• Five questions your buyers ask, written the way they'd say them. "Who installs CCTV for offices in Accra?" not "CCTV services".

0 to 10 minutes: Can search engines and AI crawlers reach your site?

The first check is whether crawlers are allowed in, because nothing else matters if they're blocked.

1. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt. Look for Disallow: / under User-agent: * or under any named crawler. That line blocks the whole site.
2. Check the AI crawlers by name. Look for rules for OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, Bingbot and Googlebot. OpenAI's documentation says sites that block OAI-SearchBot won't appear in ChatGPT search answers, and Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot can reduce visibility in Claude's search results. Blocking training crawlers such as GPTBot or Google-Extended is a separate choice: Google says Google-Extended doesn't affect inclusion in Google Search.
3. Check Search Console's AI setting. In Search Console, open Settings and find Search generative AI. Google's Help says the default is Include, and a site set to Exclude won't appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Make sure it says Include.
4. Check your sitemap. In Search Console, open Sitemaps and confirm a sitemap was submitted and read successfully. Do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools.

For reference, MediaWura's own robots.txt names and allows the main search and AI crawlers and blocks only /api/, /studio and /thank-you. See where AI assistants get their information for which crawler feeds which assistant.

10 to 20 minutes: Is Google indexing the right pages?

The second check is whether your important pages are actually in Google's and Bing's indexes, because a page that isn't indexed can't rank or be cited.

1. Run a site: search. Type site:yoursite.com into Google and then into Bing. Do your service pages appear? Are there junk pages you didn't expect, such as test pages, tag archives or old promotions?
2. Open Search Console's Page indexing report. Note the number of indexed and not-indexed pages, and the main reasons given for exclusion.
3. Inspect your five key pages. Paste each URL into Search Console's URL Inspection tool. You want "URL is on Google". Then do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools' URL Inspection.
4. Check the Performance report. Compare the last three months with the previous three. Which queries and pages bring clicks? A service you sell that brings no impressions at all usually means it has no page of its own.

If you have one page listing eight services, that's a finding. Each main service needs its own page to be found for searches about it. See SEO for small businesses in Ghana.

20 to 30 minutes: Is the site fast and usable on a phone?

The third check is speed on mobile, because many Ghanaian buyers browse on phones and mobile data, and slow pages can lose them before they read a word.

1. Run PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) on your homepage and your most important service or product page. Look at the Mobile tab.
2. Read the field data first. If the "Discover what your real users are experiencing" section has data, that's what real visitors get. Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds for "good" are Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint within 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift below 0.1.
3. Check Search Console's Core Web Vitals report for groups of URLs marked Poor or Need improvement.
4. Open the site on your own phone over mobile data. Can you find the price, the WhatsApp button and the phone number in under ten seconds?

The usual culprits are huge uncompressed images, too many plugins and heavy sliders. See why website speed matters on Ghanaian mobile data.

30 to 40 minutes: Are your structured data and business facts right?

The fourth check is whether machines can read who you are, and whether your facts match everywhere.

1. Run the Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results) on your homepage and one service or product page. Note which items it detects, such as Organization, Local business, Breadcrumb, Product or Review snippet, and any errors.
2. Run the Schema Markup Validator (validator.schema.org) on the same pages. It checks all schema.org types, including ones Google doesn't show as rich results.
3. Know what changed. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026, so the Rich Results Test won't report FAQ as a rich result. FAQPage markup is still valid schema.org, and the FAQ content is still useful to readers and AI answers.
4. Compare your facts. Put your business name, address, phone number, opening hours and services side by side from your website, Google Business Profile, Facebook page, Instagram bio and any directories. Every difference is a fix.

Google's AI features documentation also says your structured data should match the visible text on the page. Markup that claims something the page doesn't show is a problem, not a boost. See schema markup for small businesses, and if your Google Business Profile is the weak link, how to set up Google My Business in Ghana.

40 to 50 minutes: Do your key pages answer buyers' questions?

The fifth check is content: whether your most important pages answer the questions buyers ask, clearly enough to be quoted.

For each of your five key pages, check:

1. The title tag. Look at how it appears in your site: search. Does it say what the page is and where, such as "Office CCTV Installation in Accra | Brand"?
2. The first paragraph. Does it say what you do, for whom and where, in two or three sentences? Or does it open with "Welcome to our website"?
3. Specifics. Are there prices or price ranges, delivery areas, timelines and payment options such as MoMo? Or only adjectives?
4. Questions. Is there a short FAQ answering real follow-up questions?
5. Trust. Is there a named person or team, real reviews and an about page with clear company facts?
6. Freshness. Are blog posts dated, and are prices, phone numbers and addresses current?

See how to write content that AI answers quote for the patterns that fix most of these.

50 to 60 minutes: What do AI assistants say about you?

The final check is the one most audits skip: asking the AI assistants directly what they know and recommend.

1. Ask your five buyer questions in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google (look for an AI Overview, or try AI Mode). Use a private window. Note whether you're named, in what order, and which competitors appear.
2. Ask about your brand by name. "What is [your business]?" and "Is [your business] reliable?" Check every fact: location, services, founding year, phone number.
3. Note the sources. Perplexity and ChatGPT search usually show where an answer came from. Those directories, lists and articles are where you need to be.
4. Check Search Console's Generative AI report. Google says it shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date. It may not appear on a site with very few AI impressions.
5. Check Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report. Microsoft says it shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, plus sample grounding queries.
6. Check Google Analytics 4 for the AI Assistant channel under Traffic acquisition.

Don't panic over one bad answer, because AI answers vary between runs. A wrong fact that appears in several assistants, though, is urgent. For a repeatable version of this step, see how to measure your visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

How do you score the audit?

Score each check 0 (failing), 1 (partly there) or 2 (good). Twelve checks give a maximum of 24.

Read the total like this:

• 0 to 10: Fundamentals are broken. Fix crawling, indexing and facts before anything else.
• 11 to 18: A working base with clear gaps. Content and AI visibility are usually where the gains are.
• 19 to 24: Strong. Your next step is earning mentions on the sites AI assistants already trust in your category.

What should you fix first?

Fix problems in the order they block everything after them:

1. Anything blocking crawlers or excluding the site from AI features.
2. Key pages that aren't indexed.
3. Wrong business facts, especially where an AI assistant repeats them.
4. Missing service or location pages.
5. Mobile speed failures.
6. Thin, vague content on key pages.
7. Missing or broken structured data.

For the full technical list, see the technical SEO checklist.

Common questions

How often should I run this audit?

Every quarter, and after any website redesign, platform move or change of address or phone number. The AI assistant step is worth repeating monthly.

Can I do this without Search Console access?

Partly. The site: searches, PageSpeed Insights, Rich Results Test and AI checks work for any website. Indexing, Performance and the Generative AI report need Search Console, so setting it up is worth the 15 minutes.

Why check Bing if most people use Google?

Bing's index powers Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, and Bing Webmaster Tools now reports AI citations directly. It's a free view into AI search that Google doesn't give you.

What if the AI assistants say something wrong about my business?

Find the source of the wrong fact, usually an old directory listing, social profile or your own outdated page, and correct it there. Then make the correct fact clear and consistent on your website.

Will fixing everything guarantee AI recommendations?

No. Nobody controls what an AI assistant says. A clean audit removes the reasons not to recommend you and helps make your business a clear, credible option.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes, book a free strategy call. We'll go through your site and your AI visibility with you and show you what we'd fix first.