Technical SEO Audit Service

This is the technical SEO audit checklist I work through on every project. You can use it to run a quick self-check before hiring anyone. If you find more than a handful of problems, a full technical SEO audit service will usually save you time.

1. Indexing and coverage

• Open Google Search Console and go to Pages. Note how many pages are indexed and how many are not.
• Read every reason listed under “Why pages aren’t indexed”. “Excluded by noindex tag”, “Crawled, currently not indexed” and “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” are the ones that matter most.
• Search site:yourdomain.com in Google and compare the count with the number of pages you expect.
• Check that your homepage and main service or category pages are all indexed.

2. Robots.txt and meta robots

• Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Make sure it doesn’t block important folders, CSS or JavaScript.
• Confirm the robots.txt file lists your sitemap.
• On WordPress, check Settings → Reading and make sure “Discourage search engines” is unticked. I still find this left on after launches more often than you’d expect.
• View the source of a few key pages and look for noindex in the meta robots tag.

3. XML sitemap

• Your sitemap should only list pages that return a 200 status, are indexable, and use the canonical URL.
• Remove redirected, noindexed and thin archive pages from it.
• Submit it in Google Search Console and in Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing matters more now because several AI assistants use its index.

4. Redirects and broken links

• Crawl the site with a tool such as Screaming Frog and filter for 404 errors and redirect chains.
• Every old URL should redirect once, directly to its final destination, with a 301.
• Update internal links so they point to the final URL instead of passing through a redirect.

5. Canonicals and duplicates

• Each page should have one self-referencing canonical tag.
• Check that HTTP redirects to HTTPS and that only one of www or non-www loads.
• Look for URL parameters, tag pages and print versions that create duplicate copies of the same content.

6. Site speed and Core Web Vitals

• Test your main templates in PageSpeed Insights on mobile, not desktop.
• Aim for LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds and CLS under 0.1.
• Compress images, serve them in WebP or AVIF, and set width and height so the layout doesn’t jump.
• Remove plugins and scripts you no longer use. Page builders often load far more CSS and JavaScript than a page needs.
• Use page caching and, ideally, a CDN.

7. Mobile usability

• Open your key pages on a real phone. Check that text is readable without zooming and buttons are easy to tap.
• Make sure pop-ups don’t cover the main content on small screens.

8. Structured data

• Run key pages through the Rich Results Test.
• Add Organization or Person, Breadcrumb, and the type that fits each page, such as Service, Product, Article or FAQ.
• Fix any errors and warnings the test reports.

9. Site structure and internal links

• Important pages should be reachable within three clicks from the homepage.
• Find orphan pages, the ones with no internal links pointing to them, and link to them from relevant pages.
• Use descriptive anchor text rather than “click here”.

10. AI crawler access

• Check that robots.txt doesn’t block GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot or Google-Extended unless you have a reason to.
• Make sure the main content of each page is in the HTML, not loaded only after JavaScript runs.
• Consider adding an llms.txt file that points AI tools to your most important pages.