A Step-by-Step Technical SEO Audit You Can Run This Week

This checklist is built for four types of practitioners:

• In-house SEOs running quarterly or post-launch audits on sites they own
• Agency teams onboarding new clients and needing a repeatable audit framework
• Developers handing off a site build who want to verify it's search-ready before go-live
• Founders and operators who manage their own site and want a structured process without hiring a consultant for every check

The checklist is organized by category rather than by tool, so you can work through it with whatever combination of free and paid tools you currently have. A tool-mapping section at the end shows which checks map naturally to specific platform capabilities if you want to automate repetitive items.

One honest note on scope: this checklist focuses on technical SEO — the infrastructure layer. It does not cover on-page content optimization, link building, or keyword research. Those are separate workstreams. Technical SEO is the foundation; the other disciplines build on top of it. If your foundation has cracks, fixing content and links first is working in the wrong order.

Crawlability is the starting point. If Googlebot can't access a page, nothing else matters for that URL.

Robots.txt

• Confirm robots.txt is accessible at /robots.txt
• Check for accidental disallow rules blocking CSS, JS, or key page templates
• Verify the sitemap URL is declared inside robots.txt
• Test with Google Search Console's robots.txt tester if you have access

XML Sitemap

• Sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
• Sitemap contains only indexable, canonical URLs (no noindex pages, no redirects)
• Sitemap last-modified dates are accurate and updating on publish
• Large sites: sitemap index file in place, individual sitemaps under 50,000 URLs or 50MB

Internal Linking & Crawl Depth

• Key pages are reachable within three clicks from the homepage
• No orphan pages — every important URL has at least one internal link pointing to it
• Pagination is handled correctly (no rel=next/prev issues on paginated archives)
• Crawl budget is not being wasted on faceted navigation, session IDs, or URL parameter variations

Crawl Errors

• Google Search Console Coverage report reviewed for server errors (5xx) and not-found errors (4xx)
• Soft 404s (pages returning 200 but showing no-content states) identified and resolved
• Redirect chains longer than two hops consolidated into single redirects

Crawlability and indexation are related but distinct. A page can be crawled and still not indexed — usually because of a signal telling Google not to store it.

Meta Robots & X-Robots-Tag

• No production pages carrying a noindex directive unintentionally
• Staging or dev environments are noindexed or blocked at the server level
• X-Robots-Tag HTTP headers checked on PDFs, images, and non-HTML resources if indexation of those assets matters

Canonical Tags

• Every indexable page has a self-referencing canonical tag
• Canonicals point to the correct URL variation (HTTPS, trailing slash, www vs. non-www consistently)
• Paginated pages are not canonicalized back to page one (this suppresses the paginated content)
• Cross-domain canonicals, if used, are intentional and verified

Duplicate Content

• HTTP and HTTPS versions resolve to a single canonical URL
• www and non-www versions redirect to one consistent root
• URL parameters (sorting, filtering, tracking) are handled via Google Search Console parameter tools or canonical tags
• Thin or near-duplicate pages identified and either consolidated or differentiated

Index Coverage Audit

• Run a site: query in Google to check approximate index status
• Compare crawled URL count against indexed URL count — large gaps warrant investigation
• Search Console Coverage report: Valid, Excluded, Warning, and Error buckets all reviewed

Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal. More practically, slow pages lose users before they convert. Both reasons are sufficient to prioritize this category.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

• LCP element identified using Chrome DevTools or PageSpeed Insights
• LCP image (if applicable) is preloaded using rel=preload in the document head
• Server response time (TTFB) is under 600ms — slow TTFB directly delays LCP
• LCP target: under 2.5 seconds on mobile for a Good score

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

• Images and video embeds have explicit width and height attributes set
• Web fonts are not causing layout shift — use font-display: swap or preload font files
• Ad slots and dynamic content have reserved space to prevent reflow
• CLS target: under 0.1 for a Good score

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

• JavaScript execution time audited — long tasks blocking the main thread identified in DevTools Performance panel
• Third-party scripts (chat widgets, analytics, tag manager payloads) reviewed for main-thread impact
• INP target: under 200ms for a Good score

General Speed Checks

• Images compressed and served in next-gen formats (WebP or AVIF)
• Render-blocking CSS and JS deferred or inlined as appropriate
• Caching headers set correctly for static assets
• CDN in place for sites serving international audiences or high traffic volume

Structured data gives Google machine-readable context about your content. Valid markup increases the probability of rich results — sitelinks, FAQs, review stars, and breadcrumbs in SERPs. Errors don't cause penalties, but invalid markup simply doesn't qualify for those enhancements.

Markup Presence

• Organization or LocalBusiness schema on the homepage
• Article or BlogPosting schema on editorial content
• Product and Offer schema on e-commerce product pages
• FAQ schema on pages containing question-and-answer content
• BreadcrumbList schema on all interior pages
• SiteLinksSearchBox schema if you want site search in branded SERPs

Markup Validation

• All structured data validated using Google's Rich Results Test
• Schema.org validator used for non-Google schema types
• No required properties missing from any active schema type
• No deprecated schema properties in use (schema.org versioning changes periodically)

Common Errors to Check

• Review schema with aggregate ratings that don't reflect real, first-party reviews — this violates Google's spam policies
• FAQ schema on pages where answers aren't actually visible on-page (hidden markup is against guidelines)
• Nested schema conflicts — multiple incompatible types applied to the same entity

In our experience, the highest-ROI structured data implementations for most sites are BreadcrumbList (easy to add, broadly applicable) and FAQ schema on high-traffic informational pages. Start there before implementing more complex types.

Not every technical issue carries equal weight. Here's how to sequence your remediation work:

Fix Immediately (Blocking Issues)

• Robots.txt blocking Googlebot from key templates or the entire site
• Noindex tags on pages you intend to rank
• Canonical tags pointing to wrong URLs or creating loops
• 5xx server errors on important pages
• Site not resolving to a single canonical domain (HTTP/HTTPS, www/non-www conflicts)

Fix This Sprint (High Impact, Low Complexity)

• Missing or broken XML sitemap
• Orphan pages with no internal links
• LCP images not preloaded
• Images missing explicit dimensions (CLS contributor)
• Missing or invalid structured data on high-traffic page types

Schedule in Backlog (Important but Lower Urgency)

• Redirect chains that are two hops rather than one
• Render-blocking JavaScript on secondary page types
• Thin or near-duplicate content on low-traffic pages
• Third-party script performance optimization
• Full schema coverage across all page types

The sequencing logic here is straightforward: blocking issues actively suppress rankings and should be resolved before anything else. High-impact, low-complexity items deliver the best return on engineering time. Backlog items improve the site but are unlikely to move rankings materially until the first two tiers are clean.

Industry benchmarks suggest that most sites have at least a handful of Tier 1 issues present after a major CMS update or redesign — so even well-maintained sites benefit from re-auditing after significant changes.