WWhen we hear the word SEO, most of us think about just optimizing websites with keywords or building backlinks. But SEO is so much more than that. In fact, it has grown into dozens of specialized practices-each with its own goals, techniques, and tools.

If you’re a marketer, recruiter, business owner, or content creator, understanding the different types of SEO can help you choose the right strategy for your goals. Let’s break down the 51 types of SEO into categories.

General SEO

These are the foundations of search engine optimization:

1. On-page SEO: Optimizing page content, meta tags, titles, and internal linking.
2. Off-page SEO: Building backlinks, brand mentions, and authority outside your website.
3. Technical SEO: Making sure your website’s backend is search-engine friendly (site speed, indexing, crawlability, etc.).

Technical SEO Variations

Technology shapes how search engines crawl and understand websites. Here are some specialized branches:

4. Mobile SEO: Ensuring websites are mobile-friendly.
5. Accessibility SEO: Optimizing for users with disabilities (e.g., screen readers).
6. Edge SEO: Using server-side optimizations and edge computing.
7. JavaScript SEO: Making JS-heavy websites crawlable.
8. React SEO / Next.js SEO / Headless SEO: SEO for modern frameworks and headless CMS platforms.

Content SEO

Content is still king, but SEO helps it shine:

9. Landing Page SEO: Optimizing pages designed to convert.
10. Blog SEO: Structuring blog content for both readers and search engines.
11. Content SEO: Overall content strategy for keyword ratio relevance.
12. Semantic SEO: Targeting search intent and meaning behind queries.
13. Multimedia SEO: Optimizing images, videos, and infographics.

Local & International SEO

Businesses with physical locations or global reach need specialized strategies:

14. Local SEO: Getting found in Google Maps and “near me” searches.
15. International SEO: Targeting global markets.
16. Multi-lingual SEO: Optimizing websites in multiple languages.

Platform-Specific SEO

Different platforms need different strategies:

17. eCommerce SEO: Optimizing online stores.
18. YouTube SEO: Ranking videos on YouTube and Google.
19. App Store SEO (ASO): Making apps visible in app stores.
20. Amazon SEO / Etsy SEO / Shopify SEO / Squarespace SEO / WordPress SEO / Wix SEO: Tailoring strategies to specific platforms.
21. Social Media SEO: Boosting visibility of social content.
22. News SEO / Google Discover SEO: Getting content featured in news and discovery feeds.
23. Yep SEO : A fun nod to Ahrefs’ own search engine!

Specialized SEO Types

These focus on unique use cases:

24. Image SEO / Video SEO:Optimizing media for search.
25. Programmatic SEO: Scaling SEO with automation.
26. Holiday SEO: Seasonal campaigns (Black Friday, Christmas, etc.).
27. Featured Snippet SEO: Winning position zero.
28. Long-tail SEO: Targeting niche queries with lower competition.
29. SaaS SEO / Enterprise SEO / Niche SEO: Tailored to business models.
30. Voice SEO: Preparing for voice search queries.
31. AI SEO: Leveraging artificial intelligence tools.
32. Taxonomy SEO: Structuring site categories and tags.

SEO Philosophies

Finally, SEO isn’t just about tactics—it’s also about approach:

33. White Hat SEO: Ethical, long-term strategies.
34. Black Hat SEO: Aggressive, often risky tactics.
35. Grey Hat SEO: A mix of both worlds.
36. Negative SEO: Harmful tactics used against competitors.
37. Sustainable SEO: Eco-conscious, long-term strategies.
38. Continuous SEO: Ongoing optimization.
39. DIY SEO: Do-it-yourself SEO for small businesses.
40. Holistic SEO: Looking at SEO as part of a bigger digital ecosystem.

Final Thoughts

SEO is no longer a “one-size-fits-all” discipline. Whether you’re running an online store, growing a SaaS company, or just trying to get more visibility for your blog, there’s a specific type of SEO that can help.

The key is to choose the right mix of strategies, stay updated with trends, and always focus on adding value to your audience.

Introduction

IIf your website isn’t ranking the way it should, it’s probably time for an SEO audit. Think of it like a health check-up for your site—it helps you uncover what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s holding you back in the search results. Whether you’re trying to boost organic traffic, fix indexing issues, or just get a clearer picture of your site’s performance, a thorough SEO audit can uncover powerful opportunities for growth. In this guide, I’ll walk you through 18 essential steps to perform a complete SEO audit—tools included—so you can take action right away.

The tool you need

• Audit tool like Semrush Site Audit
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Google Schema Markup Testing Tool

Basics — The Things You 100% Must Check

• Benchmark your rankings and understand your competitors
• Check for duplicate versions of your site in Google’s Index
• Check your site’s indexed URLs
• Check for manual actions
• Analyze your site’s speed
• Confirm that your site uses HTTPS
• Check for mobile-friendliness issues
• Analyze and resolve further indexation issues
• Understand your site’s page experience
• Audit your on-page SEO

SEO Audit Quick Wins

• Fix broken internal links
• Clean up your sitemap
• Check your redirects

Auditing Content

• Find and fix duplicate content issues
• Identify thin content pages
• Fix issues with orphan pages
• Compare your content to top ranking pages & analyze searcher intent
• Run a Backlink Audit

Conclusion

Doing an SEO audit doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. Once you break it into steps—like we’ve done here—it’s really just about getting a clear picture of how your site’s performing and spotting areas where you can improve. Some fixes might be quick wins, others might take more time, but all of them move you in the right direction.

The key is consistency. Don’t just audit once and forget about it—make it part of your regular website maintenance. Over time, you’ll catch issues early, stay ahead of algorithm changes, and keep your content in line with what your audience (and Google) actually wants.

If you’ve got any questions or tips from your own audits, feel free to share—always happy to swap notes.

Crawlability & Indexability

AAchieving strong visibility in search engines starts with a technically sound, content-rich, and user-friendly website. In this comprehensive guide, we walk you through a detailed SEO audit framework that covers everything from crawlability and site structure to content optimization, mobile readiness, and international SEO. Whether you’re uncovering hidden issues in your robots.txt file or fine-tuning your hreflang implementation, this roadmap highlights the most critical technical and on-page SEO elements that can make or break your organic performance.

Robots.txt

• Format errors in robots.txt
• Invalid structured data items
• Issues with blocked internal resources in robots.txt
• Issues with blocked external resources in robots.txt
• Robots.txt not found
• Pages blocked by X-Robots-Tag: noindex HTTP header
• Pages were blocked from crawling

URL Structure

• Malformed links
• Underscores in the URL
• Too many parameters in URLs
• URL is too long
• User-friendly first, then search engine-friendly
• Concise
• Punctuated correctly
• Consistent
• Avoid repeating keywords

Links

• Broken internal links
• Pages with only one incoming internal link source
• Pages that need more than 3 clicks to be reached

Internal Linking

• Identify Orphan Pages
• Fix Redirected / Broken Links
• Relevance
• Anchor Text
• Remove Internal Links to Unimportant Pages
• Internal Link Position

Redirects

• Pages returning 4XX status code
• Pages returning 5XX status code
• WWW domain configured incorrectly
• Redirect chains and loops
• Pages with a meta refresh redirect tag
• Broken canonical link
• Multiple canonical URLs
• Pages with temporary redirects
• Internal links with nofollow attributes
• Too many on-page links
• Broken external links
• External links with nofollow attributes
• URLs with a permanent redirect

Sitemap

• Format errors in sitemap.xml
• Wrong pages found in sitemap.xml
• Sitemap.xml files are too large
• Sitemap.xml not found
• Sitemap.xml not indicated in robots.txt
• Orphaned pages in sitemap
• Orphaned pages from Google Analytics

On-Page SEO

Page Title Optimization

• Compelling and engaging
• Short, sweet, and descriptive
• Unique
• Not too long
• Optimized for your primary keyword
• Add your primary keyword towards the front

Content

• Missing or empty title tags
• Issues with duplicate title tags
• Duplicate H1 and title tags
• Title tag is too long
• Title tag is too short
• Write As You Talk
• Target Your Audience Pain Point
• Analyze the Heading
• Use Sub Headings and Bullet Points
• Use Table of Content
• Avoid Plagiarism
• Write for Content Salesy
• Avoid Keyword Stuffing
• Add Relevant CTA
• Keep the Vocabulary Simple
• Remove Duplicate Content

Heading Optimization

H1 Heading

• Missing H1 heading
• Duplicate H1 and title tags
• You only have one H1 tag
• Your heading describes what your page is about
• They aren’t too long
• They aren’t too short either
• They grab the user’s attention
• Try to include the primary keyword you want to target

H2-H6 Heading

• Are meaningful
• Include long-tail keywords
• Answer subtopics required to answer the main search query
• Accurately summarizes your content
• Are optimized with your primary keyword
• Are engaging
• Aren’t too long

Meta Description

• Duplicate meta descriptions
• Missing meta descriptions

Image

• Broken internal images
• Broken external images
• Images missing alt attribute
• Resources formatted as page link
• Descriptive
• Not too long
• Optimized for your keywords

Technical SEO

Page Speed

• Large HTML size
• Slow page load speed
• Uncompressed pages
• Issues with uncompressed JavaScript and CSS files
• Pages have a JavaScript and CSS total size that is too large
• Pages use too many JavaScript and CSS files
• Issues with unminified JavaScript and CSS files
• Issues with uncached JavaScript and CSS files
• Issues with broken external JavaScript and CSS files

Core Web Vitals

• Pages that take more than 1 second to become interactive

Old Technology

• Frames used
• Doctype not declared
• Incompatible plugin content

Mobile

• Missing viewport tag
• Missing the viewport width value
• AMP pages with HTML issues
• AMP pages with style and layout issues
• AMP pages with templating issues
• AMP pages have no canonical tag
• Issues with broken internal JavaScript and CSS files

HTTP Implementation

• Mixed content
• Non-secure pages
• No redirects or canonicals to HTTPS URLs from HTTP version
• SSL certificate registered to an incorrect domain name
• Old security protocol version
• Expiring or expired SSL certificate
• Subdomains don’t support secure encryption algorithms
• HTTPS pages lead to HTTP page
• Homepage doesn’t use HTTPS encryption
• HTTP URLs in sitemap.xml for HTTPS site
• Subdomains don’t support SNI
• Subdomains don’t support HSTS

International SEO

• Hreflang implementation issue
• Hreflang conflicts within page source code
• Incorrect hreflang links
• Pages with no hreflang and lang attributes
• Pages without character encoding declared
• Hreflang language mismatch issues

A successful SEO strategy starts with a solid foundation. By regularly auditing key areas like crawlability, content, page speed, and mobile performance, you’ll stay ahead of issues that could hurt your rankings. Use this roadmap as your guide, fix what matters most, and keep your site search-engine friendly and user-focused.