Run a complete technical SEO audit yourself with this step-by-step
guide. Covers crawlability, indexing, Core Web Vitals, schema, mobile,
and more — with a free downloadable checklist.
A technical SEO audit is a systematic review of your website’s technical
health — identifying every issue that prevents search engines from
crawling, indexing, and ranking your content effectively. Done properly, a
technical audit finds the problems you did not know you had and
prioritises them by the impact they have on your rankings.
This guide gives you a complete, step-by-step audit process that our team
at 3wBiz uses with clients — adapted for self-service use. Work through
each section in order and use the checklist at the end to track your
progress.
What Is a Technical SEO Audit?
A technical SEO audit evaluates your website’s infrastructure — not your
content or backlinks — focusing on:
- Crawlability: Can search engine bots access your pages?
-
Indexability: Is Google indexing the right pages and excluding the wrong
ones?
-
Site architecture: Is your URL structure logical and your internal
linking effective?
- Page speed and Core Web Vitals: Is your site fast enough to rank?
-
Mobile usability: Does your site work correctly on mobile devices?
- Structured data: Is your schema markup valid and complete?
-
HTTPS and security: Is your site served securely without mixed content?
-
Duplicate content and canonicalisation: Are duplicate pages properly
handled?
Technical issues in any of these areas can suppress rankings across your
entire site — even for pages with strong content and backlinks.
Tools You Need
You do not need paid tools to run a basic technical audit, though they
help with scale:
Free tools:
- Google Search Console (essential — use this throughout)
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Chrome browser DevTools (F12)
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 URLs)
Paid tools (optional but recommended for larger sites):
For a review of which tools suit which use cases, see our
best technical SEO audit tools guide.
Step 1: Crawl Your Website
Before reviewing GSC data, run a crawl of your site using Screaming Frog
or a similar crawler. This replicates what Googlebot sees when it visits
your site.
How to crawl with Screaming Frog:
- Download and install Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Enter your homepage URL and click Start
-
Let the crawl complete (for small sites, under 5 minutes; for large
sites, longer)
- Export the full URL list
What to look for in the crawl results:
Response codes:
- All 200s = pages loading correctly
-
301s = redirects (check redirect chains — more than 1 hop is
inefficient)
- 302s = temporary redirects (should these be 301s?)
- 404s = broken pages — export this list
- 5xx errors = server problems
Meta robots:
- Pages with noindex — are these intentional?
- Pages with nofollow on the meta robots — is this correct?
Canonical tags:
- Any pages with no canonical tag
- Any pages with a self-referencing canonical (correct)
-
Any pages with a canonical pointing to a different URL — is that the
correct canonical?
Title tags and meta descriptions:
- Missing title tags (pages with no <title>)
- Duplicate title tags (multiple pages sharing the same title)
-
Title tags over 60 characters (will be truncated in search results)
- Missing meta descriptions
- Duplicate meta descriptions
Step 2: Crawlability Audit
Check robots.txt
Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt directly. Verify:
- No Disallow: / for all bots — this blocks your entire site
-
Your Sitemap URL is listed: Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
-
Pages that should be blocked are blocked (/wp-admin/, /checkout/,
/cart/, internal search result pages)
-
Pages that should be crawled are NOT blocked (your main content pages,
product pages, category pages)
See our
full robots.txt guide for GSC
for more detail.
Check Sitemap
Visit yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (or sitemap_index.xml). Verify:
- The sitemap loads without errors
- It contains your most important pages
- It does NOT contain noindex pages, 404 pages, or blocked pages
- Submit the sitemap URL in GSC → Sitemaps if not already done
-
In GSC, check the indexed/submitted ratio — should be above 70% for a
healthy site
Check for Crawl Depth Issues
Pages buried more than 3–4 clicks from your homepage may not be crawled
regularly. In Screaming Frog, the “Crawl Depth” column shows how many
clicks from the homepage each URL is. Any important pages at depth 5+
should be brought closer via internal linking.
Step 3: Indexability Audit
GSC Pages (Coverage) Report
Go to GSC → Indexing → Pages. Review each category:
“Indexed” count: Should include all your important content pages. If the
count seems too low relative to how many pages you have published, check
for mass noindex or crawl blocks.
“Not indexed” — priority categories to address:
Work through this priority list:
-
Crawled — Currently Not Indexed — Your most urgent
content quality issue. See our
full guide on fixing this.
- Not found (404) — Broken pages losing ranking equity
- Server error (5xx) — Server reliability issues
- Blocked by robots.txt — Check whether blocking is intentional
-
Excluded by noindex — Verify each noindexed page is intentionally
excluded
Check for Noindex on Important Pages
In Screaming Frog, filter for pages with noindex in meta robots. Go
through every result. Common accidental noindex scenarios:
-
The entire site noindexed from a development phase that was never
reversed
-
A WordPress SEO plugin has noindexed a post type (e.g. all WooCommerce
products)
-
Category pages, tag pages, or author pages noindexed that should be
indexed
- A caching plugin serving a stale noindex version
Step 4: Duplicate Content and Canonicalisation Audit
Duplicate content is one of the most common technical SEO issues —
especially on ecommerce sites, WordPress sites with multiple URL variants,
and any site that has grown organically over time.
Identify Duplicate Page Groups
In Screaming Frog → Content tab → check for pages with near-identical
content. Look for:
- Product pages accessible via multiple URL paths
-
Category pages with sort/filter parameters creating additional URLs
(?sort=price, ?colour=red)
-
Pagination pages (/page/2/, /page/3/) that may be competing with page 1
-
www and non-www versions both accessible (should redirect one to the
other)
-
HTTP and HTTPS versions both accessible (should redirect HTTP to HTTPS)
Check Canonical Implementation
For every URL that has a duplicate, verify:
- The canonical URL exists and is the correct preferred version
- The canonical tag on the duplicate points to the canonical URL
- The canonical URL itself has a self-referencing canonical tag
-
Internal links throughout the site point to the canonical URL, not the
duplicate
See our guides on
Duplicate Without User-Selected Canonical
for a complete walkthrough.
Step 5: Site Architecture and Internal Linking Audit
URL Structure
Good URL structure is:
-
Short and descriptive: /google-search-console-errors/not-found-404/ is
good
-
Consistently formatted: all lowercase, hyphens not underscores, no
special characters
-
Hierarchical where appropriate: reflects the site’s topic structure
- Permanent: changing URLs without redirects causes traffic loss
Review your URL patterns for inconsistencies — mixed formats, overly long
URLs with dates and IDs, or flat structures where hierarchy would help.
Internal Linking
In GSC → Links → Internal Links, identify:
-
Orphaned pages — pages with zero or very few internal links. These
receive no authority from the rest of your site and are unlikely to
rank.
-
Over-linked pages — if your homepage or navigation links to a page from
every page on your site, the link loses significance.
Priority fix: Find your most important pages (product pages, service
pages, best articles). Count their internal links. Anything with fewer
than 3–5 internal links from relevant content is underserved. Add
contextual links from your other articles.
Step 6: Core Web Vitals Audit
Go to GSC → Experience → Core Web Vitals. Check the mobile report
(prioritise mobile).
Identify all pages in “Poor” status for each metric:
-
Poor LCP (over 4 seconds): Likely caused by large images, slow server,
or render-blocking resources
-
Poor CLS (over 0.25): Likely caused by images without dimensions,
dynamic content injection, or font loading
-
Poor INP (over 500ms): Likely caused by heavy JavaScript execution or
large DOM
For detailed fix guides, see our articles on LCP, CLS and INP, and
Core Web Vitals overview.
Quick CWV check for any page:
- Go to PageSpeed Insights
- Enter your URL
- Run test on mobile
- Note LCP, CLS, and INP values
- Review “Opportunities” section for specific fixes
Step 7: Mobile Usability Audit
Go to GSC → Experience → Mobile Usability. Address every error listed —
these directly impact how Google evaluates your site under mobile-first
indexing.
Common errors and fix priority:
- Viewport not set (critical — fix immediately)
- Text too small to read (high priority)
- Content wider than screen (high priority)
- Clickable elements too close together (medium priority)
See our complete mobile usability errors guide for fix instructions for
each type.
Step 8: Structured Data Audit
Go to GSC → Enhancements. For each structured data type listed, check for
errors and warnings.
Additionally, test your most important pages in Google’s Rich Results
Test:
- Enter your page URL
- Run the test
- Note which rich result types are detected
- Fix any validation errors shown
Priority schema for most sites:
- Article (with author and datePublished)
- FAQPage (for all FAQ sections)
- Organisation (for homepage and about page)
- BreadcrumbList (for all content pages)
- Product (for ecommerce product pages)
Step 9: HTTPS and Security Audit
Check HTTPS:
-
Visit your site — does the browser show a padlock/security indicator?
-
Check that http://yourdomain.com redirects to https://yourdomain.com
-
Check that https://www.yourdomain.com and https://yourdomain.com both
work and one redirects to the other (to avoid duplicate content)
Check for mixed content: If your site is on HTTPS but loads any resources
(images, scripts, stylesheets) over HTTP, you have mixed content. Browser
DevTools → Console shows mixed content warnings.
Fix mixed content:
-
Update all resource URLs from http:// to https:// in your content and
templates
-
For WordPress: the Better Search Replace plugin can find and update all
HTTP references in the database
Check GSC Security Issues: GSC → Security & Manual Actions → Security
Issues. Should show “No issues detected.”
Step 10: Redirect Audit
Check for redirect chains: A redirect chain is when URL A redirects to URL
B which redirects to URL C. Each additional hop wastes crawl budget and
loses a small amount of link equity. Screaming Frog → Redirects tab shows
all redirect chains.
Fix redirect chains: Update the first redirect to point
directly to the final destination, bypassing the intermediate URL.
Check for redirect loops: URL A → URL B → URL A (infinite loop). These
cause the page to fail to load and show as redirect errors in GSC.
Check that old, important URLs have redirects: Use GSC’s “Not found (404)”
list to identify previously-indexed URLs now returning 404s. Add 301
redirects for any that had ranking history.
The Complete Technical SEO Audit Checklist
Crawlability
- Robots.txt reviewed — no unintentional blocks
- Sitemap submitted in GSC and returning no errors
- Important pages within 3 clicks of homepage
- Crawl errors in Screaming Frog reviewed and actioned
Indexability
-
GSC Pages report reviewed — all error types actioned by priority
- No important pages with accidental noindex
- No important pages blocked by robots.txt
- Sitemap indexed/submitted ratio above 70%
Duplicate Content
- Canonical tags implemented on all duplicate/variant URLs
- www/non-www redirect in place
- HTTP to HTTPS redirect in place
- Faceted navigation URLs handled (noindex or blocked)
Architecture and Internal Linking
- URL structure consistent and descriptive
- No orphaned important pages (0 internal links)
- Service pages and conversion pages have 5+ internal links
- Internal links use descriptive, keyword-relevant anchor text
Core Web Vitals
- Mobile CWV report — no “Poor” pages
- LCP under 2.5s on mobile
- CLS under 0.1 on mobile
- INP under 200ms on mobile
Mobile Usability
- Viewport meta tag present on all pages
- No mobile usability errors in GSC
- Text readable without zooming on mobile
Structured Data
- Rich Results Test passing on key pages
- No structured data errors in GSC Enhancements
- Article, FAQ, and Org schema implemented
Security
- HTTPS active and working
- No mixed content warnings
- GSC Security Issues report clean
Redirects
- No redirect chains over 1 hop
- No redirect loops
- All important deleted/moved pages have 301 redirects
After the Audit: Prioritisation
Not every issue needs to be fixed with equal urgency. Prioritise by this
framework:
Fix immediately (ranking risk):
- robots.txt blocks on important pages
- Server errors (5xx)
- Accidental noindex on key pages
- Security issues
Fix this month (significant impact):
- 404 errors on previously-ranked pages
- Crawled — currently not indexed (content quality)
- Core Web Vitals — poor LCP on high-traffic pages
- Canonical tag issues on high-value pages
Fix this quarter (incremental gains):
- Schema markup improvements
- Internal link additions to orphaned pages
- Redirect chain cleanup
- Mobile usability error resolution
Getting a Professional Technical SEO Audit
A self-service audit catches most common issues. But the most impactful
technical problems — crawl budget issues on large sites, complex canonical
conflicts, JavaScript rendering issues, and log file analysis — require
specialist tools and experience to identify and fix correctly.
Our team at 3wBiz conducts professional technical SEO audits using
enterprise tools and delivers a prioritised action plan. Most clients see
measurable ranking improvements within 30–60 days of implementing our
recommendations.
Request a free audit quote
Related reading:
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