03SEO audit
Academic / conceptual case-study project
upGrad — a content & technical SEO teardown of the US-market homepage.
Missing H1, absent robots.txt, 6.65s page load, 2.2 MB unminified JS, and keyword focus diluted by Indian-city signals. Here's what to fix, and in what order.
Role
SEO Analyst
Timeframe
Solo audit · upGrad
Toolkit
SEMrush · Google Search Console · SEO Keyword Planner
Overview
upGrad's US homepage was under-performing on organic. I ran a full content + technical audit and delivered a prioritised roadmap — the on-page fixes that unlock relevance, and the infrastructure fixes that unlock crawl and speed.
6.65s
Page load
253
HTTP requests
2.2 MB
Unminified JS
0
H1 on page
01
Content findings
- No H1 on the homepage — the single strongest on-page ranking signal.
- Keyword focus for the US market was diluted by Indian city-name signals (Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune) inherited from global templates.
- Meta descriptions were generic and did not reflect US-specific programs or price points.
02
Technical findings
- robots.txt was absent — no crawl guidance for Googlebot.
- 253 HTTP requests on a single page load, ballooning render time.
- 2.2 MB of unminified JavaScript with active JS rendering errors visible in console.
- Total time-to-interactive: 6.65 seconds on a warm cache.
03
The prioritised roadmap
- Ship an H1 targeting the primary US intent keyword.
- Publish robots.txt + sitemap with clear allow/disallow.
- Geo-segment content — separate US templates from IN templates.
- Cut & minify JS — target <120 requests and <900 KB shipped.
- Fix rendering errors so Google can execute the page.
04
The takeaway
SEO isn't only content or only engineering. When you sit at the seam and read both, the fixes get obvious — and the roadmap writes itself.