Semantic SEO audit: method and tools

What is a semantic SEO audit?

A semantic audit analyses how a site’s content covers its subject. Which queries does each page target? Which intent does it answer, with what vocabulary? How do the pages fit together? It asks a simple question: does the site answer what your audience is really looking for?

It is the second area of a full SEO audit. It assumes a sound technical base. A page that is not indexed is not fixed by better text.

Semantic audit, keyword research, content audit: what are the differences?

Approach	Question addressed	Starting point
Keyword research	Which queries are we targeting?	The market: volumes, suggestions, competitors
Semantic audit	Do existing pages answer the right queries, without duplicates?	The site: pages, Search Console queries, internal linking
Content audit	Are the texts readable, accurate, up to date?	Editorial quality: tone, sources, freshness

In practice, the three overlap. Keyword research feeds the semantic audit, which then says which pages to create, merge or rewrite.

What is a semantic audit for?

• Align each page with one intent: informational, comparative, transactional or navigational.
• Remove cannibalisation: two pages competing for the same query hold each other back.
• Fill the gaps: topics your audience expects that are missing from the site.
• Structure the site architecture and internal linking: group pages by topic, link each supporting page to its pillar page.
• Make pages easier to cite: direct answers, explicit entities, dated sources.

Google does not ask for keywords. It asks for helpful, reliable content made for people (Google guide on helpful content, updated on December 10, 2025). The semantic audit checks that the site’s structure makes it possible to keep this promise.

How do you carry out a semantic audit in 6 steps?

1. List the pages and their queries

From Search Console, export the page × query pairs from the Performance report. Keep impressions, clicks, click-through rate and average position. Then isolate brand queries with the native filter launched in November 2025 (branded queries filter announcement). Semantic work focuses on non-brand queries.

2. Build the query × target page table

Group the queries by intent, then assign a single target page to each group. This table is the central deliverable of the audit.

Query group	Intent	Target page	Competing pages	Decision
“seo audit”, “full seo audit”	Understand and launch an audit	/en/seo/audit/	None	Keep, optimise
“technical audit checklist”	Check point by point	/en/seo/technical-seo-audit/	Old checklist page	Merge, 301
“semantic audit”	Content audit method	/en/seo/semantic-seo-audit/	None	Keep, expand

Qualify each intent from the actual SERP, not from intuition. Look at the types of pages at the top, the questions asked, the presence of an AI answer. Our guide to search intent explains the method in detail.

3. Measure topic coverage

For each target page, compare what it covers with what the query calls for. Rémi Mondina’s five-list method (Réacteur, April 2025) gives this work a structure. It lists entities, secondary keywords, variations, synonyms and contextual terms.

Google’s Cloud Natural Language API extracts the entities from a text. It gives them a salience score (entity analysis documentation). Version 2 of the API, released in August 2023, no longer documents this score (release notes). Stay on v1 and always review the output: the tool gets highly specialised terms wrong.

4. Detect cannibalisation and duplicates

Filter Search Console on one query and see how many pages get impressions. Two URLs that alternate in position on the same query signal cannibalisation. Complete this with the crawl: identical or very similar titles and H1s give away the same problem.

Keep the page that is older, has the links and matches the intent best. Move the useful content into it, then 301 redirect the other one. Google details the consolidation signals in its page on duplicate URLs.

5. Check tags, structure and internal linking

On each target page, check the title, the H1, the subheadings and the anchors of the links leading to it. Google builds its title links mainly from the title tag. It can also draw on subheadings or anchors (title link documentation). Consistent anchors and topic-based internal linking strengthen the signal. This is the principle behind semantic cocoons.

6. Write the editorial action plan

Finding	Decision	Priority
Page in position 4 to 20 with many impressions	Optimise: tags, direct answer, internal linking	High
Many impressions, low click-through rate	Rewrite the title and meta description	High
Two pages on the same intent	Merge and 301 redirect	High
Page indexed with no impressions for months	Retarget, merge or delete	Medium
Searched intent with no target page	Create the page	Depending on potential

Would you rather hand over this analysis? The audit is part of Elev8 Lab’s SEO and GEO services.

Which tools should you use for a semantic audit?

Use	Tools
Real queries and pages	Google Search Console
Volumes and competitors	Semrush, Ahrefs, Haloscan, Keyword Planner
Structure and duplicates	Screaming Frog (title, H1, near duplicates, n-grams)
Entities and lexical field	Cloud Natural Language API v1, YourTextGuru, 1.fr
Users’ questions	Google’s People Also Ask, AnswerThePublic

Which mistakes should you avoid during the audit?

• Reducing the audit to a list of keywords, with no decision per page.
• Aiming for a keyword density: the benchmark of about 1% is an agency convention, not a Google rule.
• Copying competitors’ structure: you end up with a paraphrase of the top 10, with no angle of your own.
• Creating one page per query variant: synonyms and plurals belong to the same intent.
• Forgetting internal linking: a well-written but isolated page stays weak.

Producing pages in bulk to cover every variant also exposes you to Google’s “scaled content abuse” policy. It targets content generated at scale with no added value (spam policies, updated on August 28, 2026).

Does a semantic audit matter for AI engines?

Yes. Answers in AI Overviews or from assistants reuse short, clear, sourced passages. Give each intent its own page, with a direct answer at the top and explicitly named entities. Your passages become easier to cite.

The semantic audit prepares this work. Techniques specific to answer engines fall under GEO optimisation. Once the content is aligned, popularity remains: that is the subject of the backlink audit.