How to run your first site audit and ship the fixes

Updated October 13, 2026 · First published August 24, 2026 · 3 min read

A list of a hundred things wrong with your site is not a plan. This guide runs one audit and takes two items all the way to done, one finding and one structural problem, then proves both on the next run. Allow about an hour.

Note

Before you start: a verified site. How to add your website and get it working covers that. Search Console is optional here, but it roughly doubles what the audit can see.

Step 1: Run the audit

Press Audit again at the top right of the SEO section. On a site that has never been audited, it reads Run the site audit. Then leave it.

The audit control at the top of the SEO workspace — The same control sits at the top of every SEO tab.

One run does everything: it reads your pages, maps the links between them, runs the checks, scores health, and looks up search data, competitors and authority. Findings are worked out last, because most of them need that data first.

Step 2: Read four numbers

The SEO overview with the figures across the top and the recommendation below — Health and fixes to do across the top, the recommendation underneath.

Write down Site health, because you'll compare against it shortly. Expect the Fixes count to be bigger than you hoped; the audit counts every page. If this isn't your first run, Since your last audit gives the health move and how many findings are new.

Step 3: Take one fix all the way

Press Fix the top issue now on the Fixes card. It opens the job worth the most, with its steps and the pages it covers.
On the first page in the job, press Add to my list.
Press Copy AI prompt. It copies a prompt holding that page's real data, such as its current title and the searches it appears for. Nothing runs inside Rankbench.
Paste it into the assistant you use, and edit the answer. It doesn't know your house style.
Publish the change in your CMS, then press Mark as done.

A finding opened with its figures, steps and evidence — A typical finding: a page shown thousands of times at position six that almost nobody clicks. The ranking is fine. The title isn't.

Step 4: Fix one structural problem

Open the Fixes tab.
Filter by Links.
Pick a grouped row, such as broken links to dead pages.

The kind filters with their counts above the fix list — Filtering by kind gives you a session of similar work.

A fix opened beside the list, with its numbered steps and evidence — The detail lists every page affected, so one row becomes a work order.

Fix each link in your CMS, or remove it if the page is gone. Then mark the fix done.

Tip

Grouped rows are the best hour on the list: one decision, applied to every page the row covers, with no risk of making things worse.

Step 5: Prove it happened

Run the audit again. Since your last audit now compares the two runs, and the fixes you marked done should stop being reported.

If one comes back, the change was probably made in a preview and never published, or made to a template that page doesn't use. The check is against your live page, which is what makes marking things done worth anything.

The past audits list with the steps of a recent run — Every run is kept, so you can see exactly what changed between them.

Step 6: Keep a twenty-minute weekly habit

The audit only runs when you press it. Two things happen overnight without you: findings are re-checked, and Search Console syncs.

Filter the Fixes tab to On my list and clear what you can.
Work one job at a time. For wording fixes, Copy prompts in the ⋯ menu hands a whole batch over at once.
After you ship something, run an audit and read the comparison line.

The Fixes tab filtered to On my list — Your accepted queue. Don't try to empty the whole list: every audit finds more, and the top is always the best use of an hour.

What to do next

Still stuck?

Open Rankbench and the page this article describes — most screens explain themselves as you go.