How to do a technical SEO audit

A technical SEO audit starts with crawling your client's entire website using tools like Screaming Frog, Semrush, or Ahrefs. You're looking for crawl errors, broken internal links, duplicate content, and pages that aren't being indexed. Run the crawler against the live site and compare it to what Google Search Console shows as indexed. Any significant discrepancy means Google is having trouble accessing or understanding parts of the site. Pay attention to redirect chains, 4xx errors, and pages blocked by robots.txt or noindex tags that shouldn't be. Also check for thin content, missing title tags, and duplicate meta descriptions—these are quick wins that affect rankings.

Next, audit your site architecture and URL structure. Look at how pages are organized and whether the structure makes sense hierarchically. Check that internal linking is strategic, not random—important pages should get more internal links and be closer to the homepage. Verify that XML sitemaps are properly formatted and submitted to Google Search Console, and that they only include pages you want indexed. Test mobile responsiveness thoroughly, since Google prioritizes mobile-first indexing. Run pages through Google's PageSpeed Insights and check Core Web Vitals metrics like Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift. Slow sites with poor metrics will struggle to rank.

Finally, check the technical foundation: verify HTTPS is implemented site-wide, test that hreflang tags are correct if the site targets multiple countries or languages, and ensure structured data markup (schema.org) is implemented where appropriate and validated through Google's Rich Results Test. Look for JavaScript rendering issues by checking how Googlebot sees the page versus how a browser renders it—use Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool for this. Test canonicalization across similar pages, check for parameter handling issues that create duplicate content, and verify that important resources aren't being blocked or delayed by issues with CSS, JavaScript, or image loading. Document everything in a spreadsheet organized by priority, separating critical issues that prevent indexing from moderate issues affecting user experience and minor issues that have minimal impact. This structured approach lets you present findings clearly to clients and create a logical roadmap for fixing problems.