What is a technical SEO audit?
It's a check of everything that affects whether search engines can find, read and index your pages, separate from the words on them. Content and links can't help a page Google can't reach.
A good audit ends with a short list of fixes in priority order, not a hundred-page report. The point is to find the few problems holding the site back.
What should a technical SEO audit checklist cover?
Eight areas, roughly in the order a search engine meets them.
- Crawling: robots.txt, server errors and whether important pages can be reached.
- Indexing: which pages are in Google's index, and why others aren't.
- Duplicates: canonical tags, www and non-www, http and https, trailing slashes and URL parameters.
- Redirects and errors: 301s for moved pages, no chains, no broken internal links.
- Sitemaps: an XML sitemap listing only live, indexable pages, submitted in Search Console.
- Speed and mobile: Core Web Vitals from real visits, and a site that works on a phone.
- Rendering: content and links present in the HTML, not only after scripts run.
- Structured data and internal links: schema that matches the page, and a clear link structure.
How do you check crawling and indexing?
Use Google Search Console. The Page indexing report shows how many pages are indexed and groups the rest by reason, such as "Excluded by noindex tag" or "Crawled, currently not indexed". URL Inspection shows the detail for any single page.
One common mix-up: robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing. If you block a page in robots.txt, Google can't see a noindex tag on it, and the address can still appear in results. To keep a page out, allow crawling and use noindex.
How do you find duplicate pages?
Check that your site answers on one version only, such as https with www, and that every other version redirects to it. Then look at the canonical tag on key pages, which tells Google which address is the main one.
Google treats canonicals as a strong hint, not an order, so they need to agree with your redirects, sitemap and internal links. Search Console's URL Inspection shows which canonical Google actually chose.
How do you run a technical SEO audit step by step?
This is the order we work in. Each step relies on the one before.
- Confirm Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are verified for the right version of the site.
- Crawl the whole site with an SEO crawler and export status codes, canonicals, titles and links.
- Read Search Console's Page indexing report and list important pages that aren't indexed.
- Check robots.txt and noindex tags for anything blocking pages you want found.
- Check one version of the site, canonicals and duplicate URLs.
- List redirect chains and broken internal links, and fix them to point at the final page.
- Check the XML sitemap lists only live, indexable pages.
- Review Core Web Vitals on mobile and test key templates on a phone.
- View the raw HTML of key pages and confirm the main copy and links are there.
- Test structured data with the Rich Results Test and check it matches the page.
- Rank the fixes by impact and effort, then fix, request indexing and recheck.
Which technical SEO fixes come first?
Anything that stops important pages being crawled or indexed comes first, because nothing else matters until that's fixed. Then duplicates and redirects. Then speed, rendering and structured data.
Fix by template where you can. One change to a page template can fix hundreds of pages at once, which is far quicker than editing them one by one.
How often should you run a technical SEO audit?
Run a full audit once a year, and before and after any redesign, platform move or big batch of new pages. In between, check Search Console every month for new errors. Most technical problems arrive with a change nobody checked.