Every SEO engagement I take on starts the same way: with an audit. Not a tool export, a structured, manual review of the twelve areas that decide whether Google can crawl, index and trust a website. Across my career this process has surfaced and resolved 100+ technical issues, and it is always step one, because content and links cannot save a site that search engines cannot properly read.
of websites pass all three Core Web Vitals on mobile. The other 52% hand their competitors a free ranking advantage on every page that fails, and most of those sites have no idea which pages are failing.
Source: HTTP Archive, 2025 Web Almanac
1. Crawlability
I check robots.txt for accidental blocks, review crawl stats in Google Search Console, and make sure important pages are reachable within a few clicks from the homepage. If a crawler cannot reach a page efficiently, that page is competing with one hand tied behind its back.
2. Indexation
Next: what is actually in the index versus what should be. I compare the sitemap against indexed URLs, look for index bloat (thin, duplicate or parameter pages), and check that canonical tags point where they should.
3. Site speed and Core Web Vitals
Slow pages lose rankings and visitors. I measure Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift on real templates (homepage, service pages, blog posts) not just the homepage in isolation.
4. Mobile usability
With mobile-first indexing, the mobile version is your website as far as Google is concerned. Tap targets, viewport settings, responsive images and text legibility all get checked on real device sizes.
5. Site architecture and internal linking
Important pages should receive internal authority. I map the internal link structure, find orphan pages, and rebuild the hierarchy so link equity flows to the pages that need to rank.
6-12. The rest of the pass
- HTTPS and redirects: mixed content, redirect chains and loops
- Duplicate content: titles, meta descriptions, near-duplicate pages
- Structured data: schema errors and missing opportunities (schema work has lifted CTR by 18% on sites I’ve managed)
- Broken links and errors: 4xx/5xx pages wasting crawl budget and users
- URL structure: readable, consistent, keyword-relevant slugs
- Image optimization: file weight, dimensions and alt text
- Log-level signals: status codes and crawl frequency patterns in Search Console
One of the twelve checks above finds the problem on most sites I audit, and it is rarely the one the owner expected. Run the list in order before you spend another dollar on content or links.
What happens after the audit
An audit is only useful if it ends in a prioritized fix plan: issues ranked by impact and effort, quick wins first. That is the document my clients get: not a 200-row spreadsheet of red warnings, but a clear order of work. Technical foundations first, then content, then authority. That sequence is what turns audits into the kind of growth I measure across projects, organic traffic up 25-60% within six months.
- Can Google reach every important page within a few clicks of your homepage?
- Do your key templates pass Core Web Vitals on mobile, not just on desktop?
- Is your sitemap free of thin, duplicate, or parameter pages?
If you answered “I don’t know” to any of these, that is exactly where the audit starts.
Frequently Asked Questions about technical SEO audits
What is a technical SEO audit?
A technical SEO audit is a full check of how search engines crawl, render, and index your website. It looks at crawlability, indexation, site speed, mobile usability, and site architecture, then lists the issues in order of impact. I run a 12-point version of it on every site I touch.
How to perform a technical SEO audit?
Start with a crawl of the whole site, then check indexation, page speed, mobile usability, and internal linking in that order. Fix the issues that block crawling and indexing first, because nothing else matters until Google can reach and read your pages. My 12-point checklist in this post is the exact order I follow.
What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit is a full review of why a website ranks where it does and what is holding it back. It covers technical health, content, keywords, and backlinks, and it ends with a prioritized list of fixes. A technical audit is the technical half of that review.
How to do an SEO audit?
Work through the site in layers: technical health first, then content, then keywords and links. Use a crawl tool for the technical side and your own judgment for content quality, then write every fix down in order of impact. The checklist in this post covers the technical layer step by step.
What is a technical audit?
A technical audit is a check of the systems behind a website: servers, code, speed, and structure. In SEO, it means checking that search engines can crawl, render, and index your pages without errors. It does not judge your content, only the technical foundation it sits on.
Related reading: How to Do a Content Audit · Keyword Mapping
If your rankings have stalled and you don’t know why, the answer is almost always inside these twelve points. Get in touch and I’ll run the same audit on your website.
