What to do first: audit or links
A common question for beginners: where to start - with a technical audit or immediately with links. The answer depends on one factor that is easy to check.
The deciding factor
Does the page have impressions in search. If the page is showing and has positions at least in the top hundred - the technical base is working, and links will have an effect. If there are no impressions at all, links won't help: first, you need to figure out why the page is not participating in search.
| Situation | Where to start | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Page in top-50, impressions exist | Links | Lacking authority, everything else is in place |
| Page not in index | Audit | Links to a non-indexable page are useless |
| Site is slow, markup errors | Audit | Technical issues hinder both users and bots |
| Traffic dropped suddenly | Diagnostics | See traffic drop |
| New site without history | Content, then links | Nothing to promote until there are pages under demand |
Reasonable order for most
- Check the indexing of promoted pages - it's free and takes minutes.
- Run a technical audit and fix only the findings at the "Error" level: there are usually only a few.
- Ensure that the page matches the request in format.
- After that, launch links - and already meaningfully, for the page at the threshold of the top.
What if the site is not cited by AI search
The audit report has a block "Visibility in AI search": the audit asks Perplexity questions about the site topic and shows whether the answer refers to you and whom AI cites instead of you. Here the same logic of "obstacles or authority" applies.
- Obstacles - an audit task. AI bots are blocked in robots.txt, content is visible only after executing JavaScript, there are no pages with direct answers to customer questions - this is fixed on the site itself.
- Authority - work outside the site. In the audit recommendations, the main signal for AI is mentions of the site on authoritative platforms. Publications with links on third-party platforms are one way to get them, but no one can guarantee that AI will start citing the site.
Where does Shield fit in
Security checks are a separate story, not directly related to ranking growth. They are needed when there is suspicion of hacking or when the site is critical for business: Security Shield. It affects ranking indirectly - through infection and dropping out of the index.
How long each path takes
A technical audit and fixing critical errors take days, rarely weeks, and the result is visible immediately: pages start to be indexed, speed increases. Link promotion takes months, and the result appears gradually. Therefore, all else being equal, first do the quick and cheap, and then the long and expensive.
Common mistake: endless audit
The audit report contains dozens of remarks, and most of them are at the "Remark" level. Fixing everything at once can take months without gaining a single additional position. A reasonable approach: close the errors that hinder indexing and speed, and postpone the rest. How to prioritize - how to read the audit report.