Automated SEO audit: the audits SemChat runs for you

An audit tool reviews the site; you decide what to fix. Illustration by Zéro Corvée.

You suspect your site could do better on Google, but you don’t know where to start. An automated SEO audit goes through it for you and hands you a list. You decide what to fix.

This page is part of our SemChat tutorial. It explains what an audit checks and what it returns, then sums up SemChat’s five audit skills, tested on plugkit-avis.com, my other affiliate site. The SemChat buttons on this page are affiliate links: I earn a commission if you subscribe through them.

SEO audit tools: what an automated audit checks

An SEO audit is a review of what helps or holds back your site on Google, ending with a list of fixes ranked by importance. A tool does the collecting. Keep one warning in mind first: “Google doesn’t evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools, and these tools don’t have access to Google’s internal ranking data” (Google Search Central, read October 30, 2026). A tool’s score is the tool’s opinion.

Crawling your pages: links, errors, depth

A crawler visits your pages one by one, the way a search engine would. It flags pages that don’t answer (404 errors), duplicate titles, and how your pages link to each other. In our test, SemChat ran a full site crawl and found a contact page returning a 404 error (October 29, 2026).

Technical coverage: indexing, markup, redirects

Can Google index the page? Is the structured data (the hidden labels that describe an article or a FAQ to Google) in place? Does an old address redirect to the right new one? SemChat’s technical audit read the markup of one of our pages correctly on October 29, 2026.

Page speed and Core Web Vitals

Google gives three marks: “Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) under 200 milliseconds, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) under 0.1” (Core Web Vitals page, read October 30, 2026). To measure them, paste a page address into PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). The scorecard of SemChat’s full audit had no speed metric on October 29, 2026.

Search Console: the baseline Google gives you

Only Google knows how it sees your site, and Search Console is where it shows you. “Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site’s Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results” (about page, read October 30, 2026).

For one page, “The URL Inspection tool provides information about Google’s indexed version of a specific page, and also allows you to test whether a URL might be indexable” (Search Console Help, read October 30, 2026). A third-party tool estimates instead: SemChat labels its organic traffic “estimé” (estimated).

Website audit tools: what you get back, and what they miss

An SEO audit report: scores, a diagnosis, an action plan

1. 1 Indicators Figures on your site: pages, rankings, links, errors.
2. 2 A diagnosis What holds your site back, in words.
3. 3 An action plan The fixes to make, ranked by importance.

On October 29, 2026, one sentence was enough for SemChat to return 8 key metrics on plugkit-avis.com in about 3 minutes, then a five-point diagnosis, “Tes 3 actions immédiates cette semaine” (your 3 immediate actions this week) and an 18-task plan saved on the site’s page. The report was in French, plain-spoken, with no jargon.

A report to check, not a grade to believe

The grid said: organic traffic estimated at 28 visits a month, 61 ranked keywords, a technical score of 99 out of 100, duplicate titles on 100 pages, 1 referring domain, accessibility at 70 out of 100.

Those duplicate titles were real, but they came from the US and UK English versions of the same pages, declared to Google as language variants (hreflang tags). The finding was useful, the alarm around it overdone. Check every line of a report the same way.

Free SEO audit or paid tool: what the price changes

At SemChat, the plans differ only by usage: “Every feature, in every plan. Just pick your monthly usage.” Its plans read Free at €0, Starter at “€20 /mo”, Pro 5x at “€100 /mo” and Pro 20x at “€200 /mo” (pricing page, read October 30, 2026).

Free SEO audit tools: what they give, what they hold back

A free tool often gives the essentials, with a cap. Screaming Frog, a crawler we haven’t tested, says so on its page: “Download & crawl 500 URLs for free” (product page, read October 30, 2026); beyond that, you need its license. Search Console shows Google’s own data on your site, page by page. PageSpeed Insights tests one address at a time.

SemChat’s Free plan at €0: one full audit took 100% of the Free quota

Our full audit of October 29, 2026 used 100% of the Free plan’s monthly quota. The Usage screen said “Usage épuisé” (usage used up), with a reset on November 28. The walkthrough of that free SEO audit, from the diagnosis to the action plan, has its own page.

The split: Documents 39.2%, Site analysis 32%, SEO tools 28.9%. How much of the Starter plan one full audit takes hasn’t been measured: missing data (planned source: a full audit rerun on the Starter plan; not tested on October 30, 2026). On the Free plan, save your full audit for the site that matters.

How to choose an SEO audit tool when you’re not technical

A checklist you follow yourself, or a tool that runs it

You can do it all yourself: inspect your pages in Search Console, read your titles, test your speed. It’s free and slow. A tool is fast, and sometimes wrong. The right split: the tool collects, you decide.

A dashboard to read, or an assistant you talk to

A dashboard shows scores, lists and charts for you to dig through. SemChat answers in a conversation instead, and each step has a “Voir détails” (see details) button that opens the raw data, with a CSV export.

Four questions to choose: Is the report in your language, without jargon? Does the data cover your country? Do you know what one audit costs? Can you check each finding?

Run an automated SEO audit in SemChat with one sentence

Pick the skill yourself, or let SemChat pick it

Open a new chat and say what you want. For our full audit, we typed, in French: “Fais un audit SEO de mon site plugkit-avis.com et donne-moi un plan d’action clair, par priorité.” (Run an SEO audit of my site plugkit-avis.com and give me a clear action plan, by priority.) SemChat recognized the request and started its Full SEO Audit skill on its own.

You can also pick it yourself: the “+” in the message bar, then “Compétences” (Skills). The app writes a template sentence that you complete with your page and what you want back.

Five audit skills, all tested on a real site

SemChat groups its know-how into 17 skills (app check, October 29, 2026). Five of them audit your site: full, technical, on-page, EEAT and accessibility.

	What it reads	Our test
Full SEO audit	the whole site: pages, rankings, links, competitors	tested October 29, 2026, Free plan
Technical audit	robots.txt, llms.txt, text without JavaScript, markup	tested October 29, 2026
On-page audit	one page against Google's top results	tested October 29, 2026
EEAT audit	about, author, contact and legal pages	tested October 29, 2026
Accessibility audit	text contrast, WCAG rules	tested October 30, 2026, Starter plan

A sixth audit, the link audit, sorts the links that point to your site from elsewhere. It belongs with SemChat’s link building tool skills, and we tested it on October 30, 2026: the count was right, the “risk-free” verdict was false.

Our test ran in French, on French search data

Every test on this page ran in French, on a French site, with the interface in French. How SemChat words its audits in English is missing data (planned source: test T36). For France, its keyword data comes from Haloscan (email from Adrian Delmarre of Haloscan, October 29, 2026); outside France, from a mix of keyword data providers that aren’t named (same email).

Website SEO audit tools: what SemChat’s full audit found on a real site

The French sentence above made SemChat pull pages, rankings, backlinks and competitors, then return a scorecard, a diagnosis, 3 actions and an 18-task plan, in about 3 minutes. Two findings held up when we checked them the same day: a contact page returning a 404 error, and duplicate title tags. One went too far: those titles came from the US and UK English versions, declared to Google as language variants, not “pages miroir” (mirror pages). Cost: 100% of the Free plan’s monthly quota. The step-by-step is on our website SEO audit tools page.

Technical SEO tool: robots.txt, llms.txt and markup read by SemChat

We picked the Technical Audit skill and asked, in French, whether ChatGPT, Copilot and Perplexity could read one page of our site. It read the robots.txt, the llms.txt and the markup correctly, with line-by-line proof. It also put PerplexityBot on line 13 instead of 12, offered a single top fix (naming Bingbot) that changes nothing about access, and quoted a claim about Copilot with no source. The quota this test used wasn’t recorded: missing data (planned source: a new Technical audit test on the Starter plan; not tested on October 30, 2026). The details are on our technical SEO tool page.

On page audit tool: what SemChat checks on a single URL

From the template “Fais un audit on-page de l’URL” (run an on-page audit of the URL), filled in with the page, its keyword and three fixes at most, it spotted a title tag and a main heading (H1) that contradicted each other. Once we pasted the Search Console figures as text, it put internal links first, which was the right priority. It also erased a limit written on the page, missed 11 card subheadings and blamed the page for a banner that runs across the whole site. Its first answer used 1.3 points of the Starter plan’s monthly quota. The full test is on our on-page audit tool page.

EEAT checker tool: what SemChat’s trust audit saw, and what it got wrong

The starting question, “Mon site inspire-t-il confiance ?” (does my site earn trust?), plus the pages to read, gave an accurate verdict on who speaks, why to believe them and how to reach them. SemChat even warned: “mon outil lit le texte, pas les images” (my tool reads the text, not the images). Yet its top gap, no photo on the author page, was false: the photo is there. Its own cost is missing data (6.3 points of the Starter plan for this audit and the next lesson together). How to check it yourself is on our EEAT checker tool page.

Accessibility testing software: test your site, read the score, know the limits

We tested this skill on October 30, 2026, on the Starter plan, with one sentence in French: “Vérifie l’accessibilité de plugkit-avis.com et dis-moi quoi corriger en premier.” (check the accessibility of plugkit-avis.com and tell me what to fix first). SemChat picked the right skill on its own, reused the previous day’s crawl (189 pages) and read 3 pages. In under a minute it returned a score of 70, a single issue (text contrast, 8,390 times across the 189 pages, none at level A) and three steps to fix it.

What it got right: its page language finding, checked the same day. What it missed: it points to WordPress’s “Customizer” on a site that doesn’t run WordPress, and names no specific element. The score of 70 hasn’t been cross-checked with WAVE or Lighthouse yet: missing data. Cost: 1.4 points of the Starter plan’s quota (56.4%, then 57.8%). The full test is on our accessibility testing software page, which also shows how to test your site with public tools.

What no audit tool sees for you: the final check is yours

The four October 29, 2026 tests share one thing: SemChat is fast, but every report held at least one finding that was false or overstated.

• The duplicate titles came from declared language variants, not mirror pages.
• The author photo was there all along: its tool reads text, not images.
• The banner blamed on one page ran across the whole site.
• The PerplexityBot crawler sat on another line of the robots.txt.

The fifth, the October 30, 2026 accessibility audit, said nothing false in what we could check, but its advice was written for WordPress on a site that doesn’t use it.

The method takes three moves. Open the page it cites. Find the exact sentence or line. Fix only what you’ve seen yourself.

Once the fixes are decided, they still need writing. SemChat’s writing skills (briefs, refreshing an old post) are covered with our SEO content tool page. To turn an audit into a plan over several months, see automated SEO with SemChat.

Run it again on a schedule, and watch what changes

An audit describes your site on the day it runs. Our contact page returned a 404 error on October 29, 2026; it answered the next day. Google gives a sense of timing: “Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months,” and “you likely want to wait a few weeks” before judging (SEO Starter Guide, read October 30, 2026). Run a new audit after a real change, then compare the same figures.

My verdict: an automated SEO audit saves you the collecting. SemChat’s audit ranks its findings by priority, in plain words, from one sentence, and it got the essentials right on a real site. But each of the four audits we tested held at least one false or overstated finding: check before you fix. Our full test is in our SemChat review, and the plans are on our SemChat pricing page.