How-To Guide

How to Run a Site Audit in Ahrefs

Set up and run a technical SEO site audit in Ahrefs. Crawl configuration, interpreting results, and fixing critical issues.

How to Run a Site Audit in Ahrefs

1

Create a project

Go to your Projects dashboard and click 'New project'. Enter your domain, verify ownership (via DNS, HTML file, or Google Search Console integration), and configure project settings.

2

Configure the audit

Set the crawl scope: full site or specific subdirectories. Choose the crawl speed (respect server limits for shared hosting). Enable JavaScript rendering if your site uses client-side rendering.

3

Run and review results

Start the crawl and wait for completion. The overview shows a Health Score (0-100), total issues found, and categorization by type: Performance, HTML tags, Social tags, Content, Links, Images, and more.

4

Fix issues by priority

Work through issues in order: Errors first (broken pages, server errors, redirect loops), then Warnings (duplicate titles, missing meta descriptions), then Notices (minor optimizations).

Pro tips

  • *

    Schedule weekly recrawls to catch new issues early — especially after site updates or deployments

  • *

    Use the 'Internal pages' report to find orphan pages that aren't linked from anywhere on your site

  • *

    Compare audit results over time using the 'Progress' tab to demonstrate SEO improvements

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