Maintaining your site’s technical health isn’t optional—it’s foundational. Search engines can only rank what they can crawl, index, and understand. Overlook a single misconfigured robots.txt or broken link, and you could be sidelining pages that drive traffic and revenue. In this guide, we’ll walk through the ten critical technical SEO audits every site—big or small—should perform regularly. Implement these checks, and you’ll ensure optimal indexation, faster load times, and a rock‑solid UX that both users and search engines love.
1. Crawl‑Error Audit
What to check:
- Google Search Console’s Coverage report
- Server logs for 4xx/5xx errors
- XML sitemap URLs vs. actual site URLs
Why it matters:
If search bots hit too many errors, they’ll eventually slow down or stop crawling your site, meaning fresh content won’t get indexed and existing pages may drop from results.
How to do it:
- Log into Google Search Console (GSC) and navigate to Coverage.
- Review Error and Valid with warnings tabs. Note pages returning 404 (Not Found), 500 (Server errors), and soft 404s.
- Cross‑reference with your server logs (via AWStats or a log‑analyzer tool) for any spikes at the server level.
- Fix errors by restoring missing pages, redirecting obsolete URLs (301), or correcting server misconfigurations.
2. XML Sitemap Audit
What to check:
- Presence and accuracy of your sitemap (usually at /sitemap.xml)
- Inclusion of only canonical URLs
- Proper <lastmod>, <changefreq>, and <priority> tags
Why it matters:
Search engines rely on sitemaps to discover and prioritize crawl. A malformed sitemap can omit vital pages or include duplicates.
How to do it:
- Fetch /sitemap.xml in your browser or via curl.
- Use an XML‑linting tool (e.g., https://www.xmlvalidation.com/) to catch syntax errors.
- Ensure every URL in the sitemap returns a 200 status code and matches your preferred (canonical) version.
- Limit each sitemap to 50,000 URLs; if more, create a sitemap index that references multiple sitemap files.
- Resubmit the updated sitemap in GSC under Sitemaps.
3. Robots.txt Audit
What to check:
- Proper User-agent, Disallow, and Allow directives
- Absence of unintentional wildcards blocking critical assets
- Crawl‑delay directives (if used) are appropriate
Why it matters:
A misconfigured robots.txt can inadvertently block search bots from crawling your CSS, JS, or entire sections of your site.
How to do it:
- Navigate to /robots.txt.
- Validate using Google’s Robots.txt Tester (GSC).
- Confirm that critical assets (CSS, JS) under /wp‑content, /assets, etc., aren’t disallowed.
- Remove any temporary disallows once testing is complete.
- Monitor GSC’s Crawl Stats to ensure bots are accessing the expected resources.
4. Mobile‑Friendly Test
What to check:
- Google’s Mobile‑Friendly Test tool
- Viewport meta‑tag presence
- Flash usage and font sizes
Why it matters:
With mobile‑first indexing, Google predominantly uses the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing.
How to do it:
- Run pages through Google’s Mobile‑Friendly Test.
- Check for viewport meta-tag (<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1″>).
- Ensure all interactive elements and text are legible on small screens without horizontal scrolling.
- Fix any flagged issues (e.g., unplayable content, button proximity).
- Retest after changes and monitor changes in mobile‐specific performance metrics (e.g., mobile bounce rate).
5. Page Speed & Core Web Vitals Audit
What to check:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- First Input Delay (FID)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- Overall page load time (under 3 seconds ideally)
Why it matters:
Speed is a confirmed ranking factor. Slow load times frustrate users and drive up bounce rates.
How to do it:
- Audit pages with Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse.
- Prioritize LCP (> 2.5 seconds is poor), FID (> 100 ms is poor), and CLS (> 0.1 is poor).
- Optimize images (next‑gen formats and compression), defer unused JS, and leverage browser caching.
- Consider a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to serve static assets faster.
- Reaudit to validate improvements and set up ongoing monitoring (e.g., via Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report).
6. HTTPS & Security Audit
What to check:
- SSL certificate validity and installation (no mixed content warnings)
- HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) header
- Redirects from HTTP → HTTPS
Why it matters:
HTTPS is a lightweight ranking signal and a must for trust and data integrity.
How to do it:
- Visit your site over HTTP to verify it 301‑redirects to HTTPS.
- Use SSL Labs’ SSL Test (https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/) to confirm proper installation and no chain issues.
- Check all pages for mixed content errors via browser console.
- Add or update the HSTS header in your server config (e.g., Strict‑Transport‑Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload).
- Renew the certificate before expiration and retest.
7. Canonicalization Audit
What to check:
- Self‑referencing <link rel=”canonical”> tags on every page
- Consistency between URL versions (www vs. non‑www, trailing slash)
- Canonical vs. paginated URLs
Why it matters:
Incorrect canonicals can dilute ranking signals across duplicate or near‑duplicate pages.
How to do it:
- Inspect a sample of pages and view their source to confirm canonical tags.
- Ensure the canonical URL always matches the preferred version (e.g., https://seotuners.com/ vs. http://seotuners.com).
- For paginated archives, use rel=”prev/next” and point canonicals of page 2+ back to the main hub or leave canonical to itself, depending on strategy.
- Update templates or plugins (e.g., Yoast SEO) to self‑reference canonicals automatically.
- Use GSC’s URL Inspection tool to verify which URL Google has chosen as the canonical.
8. Structured Data Audit
What to check:
- Presence of schema markup for key elements (Organization, Breadcrumb, Article, FAQ)
- No errors in Google’s Rich Results Test
- JSON‑LD format implementation
Why it matters:
Structured data helps search engines understand your content and qualify for rich snippets.
How to do it:
- Identify schema opportunities: local business, breadcrumbs, articles, FAQs, events.
- Implement JSON‑LD in the <head> or just before </body>.
- Run pages through Google’s Rich Results Test.
- Fix any missing required fields and errors flagged.
- Monitor GSC’s Enhancements reports for new issues or opportunities.
9. Link & Redirect Audit
What to check:
- Site‑wide 301 and 302 redirects
- Broken internal links (404s)
- Excessive redirect chains
Why it matters:
Redirect chains and broken links waste crawl budget and diminish link equity.
How to do it:
- Crawl your site with Screaming Frog in “Spider” mode.
- Filter for 3xx and 4xx status codes.
- Shorten chains (e.g., A→B→C becomes A→C) by updating links or redirects at the source.
- Replace or remove internal links pointing to 404 pages.
- Schedule quarterly recrawls to catch new issues.
10. Log File Analysis
What to check:
- Crawl frequency and patterns for Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.
- 200 vs. 404 vs. 5xx hits by bot
- Bot access to JavaScript and CSS files
Why it matters:
Logs show exactly how search bots navigate your site—what they see, index, or skip.
How to do it:
- Export raw server logs (Apache, Nginx) for a representative month.
- Use a log‑analysis tool (e.g., Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer).
- Identify pages Googlebot visits most and least.
- Spot blocked resources (JS/CSS) that could affect rendering.
- Adjust robots.txt or server config to optimize crawl paths and prioritize key pages.
Next Steps
Regular technical audits aren’t a one‑and‑done task—they’re the backbone of an affordable SEO program. We recommend:
- Quarterly deep dives covering all ten audits.
- Monthly spot checks for critical issues (site speed, crawl errors).
- Automated monitoring via Search Console, Uptime tools, and log‑analysis alerts.
By baking these ten audits into your workflow, you’ll build a search‑friendly foundation that scales with your content and business growth.
Contact Us
seoTuners is proudly located in the cities of Agoura Hills and Thousand Oaks in Los Angeles and Ventura County, California. Please feel free to reach out to us by phone or e-mail. We are always available to answer your questions about the many services we provide.