Technical SEO Audit: Step-by-Step Guide

Tools Needed

You do not need an exhaustive list of tools, most SEO professionals rely on:

• Google Search Console – insights into how Google sees your site, along with any crawling and indexing errors, core web vital reports, and manual actions taken
• Google Page Speed Insights – measures core web vitals using user data
• Ahrefs and SEMrush Site Audit – useful for larger sites or consistent monitoring
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider – mimics how search engine crawlers move through your site, identifying broken links, redirect chains, duplicate content, missing tags, and crawl depth issues.

Step-by-Step Technical SEO Audit

Technical SEO audits can be conducted following our step-by-step guide:

1. Crawlability

This ensures search engines can gain access to your website. Start with yourdomain.com/;robots.txt and identify that nothing important has been accidentally blocked. This is not that uncommon, especially if you have recently migrated your website.

In Google Search Console, go to Settings – Crawl Stats to identify any errors, along with frequency. This will show you any pages excluded by Google.

2. Indexing

Now that you know your pages can be crawled, you need to ensure that they are being indexed, along with ensuring some pages you don't want on the internet are not being indexed.

For this, use Google Search Console Coverage Report, focusing on pages categorised as “crawled but not currently indexed” and “discovered by currently not indexed.” These means that Google found the pages, but they were not included in the index.

Canonical tags are often the cause of indexing issues. They tell Google what URL is the preferred version. If they are not configured correctly, they can pint to the wrong URL, create circular references and be absent where they should exist. Always check the self-referencing canonical tags, ensuring they are placed on unique pages and that they are not pointing away from the page you want to rank.

3. Site Architecture

This is how your site is structured, which impacts how Google navigates your site. This means your URLs should be consistent, descriptive, and clear, while you should have clear hierarchy, such as your Homepage – Category – Subcategory – Page. Audit your internal links, ensuring that they point to relevant pages. 

4. Broken Links and Redirects

Broken pages make it harder for search engines and users to efficiently navigate your website. You can use Google Search Console's Coverage Report to identify 404 errors that Google has encountered. If you have 404 errors on pages that have produced organic traffic or backlinks in the past, do not delete them. We recommend you redirect those pages with a 301 redirect.

5. Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

Page speed is essential to your online success and core web vitals is how Google measures your speed. These include:

• Largest Contenfful Paint (LCP) – how fast the main content loads, ideally under 2.5 seconds
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) – how quickly your page responds to a users input, aiming for under 200 milliseconds
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – how much your pages move while loading, ideally under 0.1.

Here you can use Googles Search Console Core Web Vitals Report. This relies on real user data across your site. At the same time, Page Speed Insights provides data and recommendations for individual web pages.

6. Mobile Friendliness

Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing, meaning the mobile version of your site is what the search engines crawls and uses when making ranking decisions. For this step you will want to run key pages through Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. Go to Google Search Console and look at Mobile Usability for site wide problems.

7. Site Security

It's essential that your website is secure with HTTPS, improving user trust. You must verify that y our pages load over HTTPS and your SSL certificate is valid and not expired. Visit SSL labs for a certificate and configuration check.

Conclusion

Technical SEO audits are not something you want to ignore or forget about. They provide valuable insights, helping you ensure your website is crawlable and indexable. Do you need help carrying out a technical SEO audit? The Genie Crawl team are on hand to assist. Contact us now to find out more.