SEO audit in Japan – compare your site with competitors and fix what matters first

Five areas an SEO audit covers

An SEO audit asks two questions: can search engines read your site properly, and does what they read answer the searcher's need? Writing down the state of each area makes the next steps clear.

• Indexing: are your key pages in search results, or blocked by a stray noindex tag or robots.txt rule?
• Technical base: speed, mobile layout, SSL, duplicate URLs, broken links, structured data
• On-page elements: titles, meta descriptions, heading structure, image alt text
• Content: does each page fully answer the keyword it targets?
• Trust signals: clear company details, links from other sites, a consistent Google Business Profile

If indexing or the technical base is broken, even excellent articles struggle to rank, so an audit starts from the foundation. For a deeper look at speed and crawling, see technical SEO.

Signs you need an SEO analysis

If any of these sound familiar, run an analysis before writing more content – it keeps your effort pointed in the right direction.

• Searching your own company or service name does not bring up your site near the top
• You keep publishing articles, yet search traffic barely moves
• Traffic dropped after a redesign or a server move
• You have never opened Search Console, or its warnings make no sense to you
• The same local or industry competitors fill the search results
• You do not know which pages bring in inquiries

Weak search traffic is often linked to design or navigation too. To review usability and the path to an inquiry as well, see our website audit.

A DIY SEO check you can run today

Free tools already reveal a lot before a full audit. Work through these steps and note what you find – it makes any conversation with a specialist much faster.

• Search Console: in the Pages report, check indexed vs. not indexed pages and the reasons for exclusion
• Queries: in Performance, look for keywords with many impressions but few clicks
• Index check: search "site:yourdomain" on Google and compare what appears with what should
• Speed: test the home page and key pages in PageSpeed Insights, focusing on mobile
• Titles: make sure key pages have unique titles that describe the page and include the target term
• Tracking: confirm GA4 records inquiries or purchases and shows where visitors come from

Once you can name your missing key pages, your low-click keywords and your slow pages, half the audit is done. Anything you cannot interpret is fine to bring along as a question.

Competitor analysis for SEO

Looking only at your own site rarely shows what is missing. Pick the three to five sites that actually rank for your target keyword and compare them on the same points.

• Search intent: do top pages focus on prices, comparisons, how-tos or examples?
• Depth: number of headings, topics covered, FAQs, images and diagrams
• Page type: are service pages, blog posts or category pages winning?
• Trust: company details, price guidance, contact options, visible update dates
• Local results: who appears in the map pack for searches with your area name?

The goal is to learn the standard of answer searchers expect. Cover the points the top sites share, then add the experience and specifics only you can offer – that is what makes your page worth ranking.

Turning findings into a prioritized fix list

The classic audit failure is a list of fifty issues that nobody acts on. Sort each finding by impact and effort, and you get a list you can work through from the top.

• Fix now: key pages missing from the index, noindex mistakes, missing redirects – anything that blocks ranking
• Fix soon: titles and headings, pages with high impressions and low clicks, mobile layout issues
• Plan: new pages for missing topics, merging or rewriting old articles, internal links
• Ongoing: more examples and FAQs, mentions on other sites, an active Google Business Profile

Add an owner and a metric to each item so you can review the effect later. Rankings are decided by search engines, so expect to judge changes over weeks to months. For the next steps in detail, see how to improve search rankings.

How UNANOBO runs an SEO audit: findings plus a free demo

Send us your site address and the keywords you want to be found for. UNANOBO reviews your site and the competitors that rank for those terms, sorts the issues into a fix order, and builds a free demo that applies those fixes. Along with the fix order, you can open the improved pages on your computer and phone.

The process is simple: free demo, feedback, launch, growth. The founder handles every project personally, so the person who ran your audit is the one who explains it and carries out the work. Everything runs by message, in Japanese or English. After the demo you receive a structure proposal, a plan and an estimate.