GEO Technical SEO Audit

Purpose

Foundation audit for both traditional search and AI citation. Most critical GEO gates: server-side rendering (AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript) and AI crawler access (sites often inadvertently block AI bots in robots.txt). 8 categories, 100 points.

How to Use This Skill

1. Collect target URL (homepage + 2-3 key inner pages)
2. Fetch each page using curl/WebFetch — get raw HTML + HTTP headers
3. Run through each of the 8 audit categories below
4. Score using the rubric
5. Generate GEO-TECHNICAL-AUDIT.md (template at end)

Sub-check details, fix lists, framework-specific SSR solutions, and the IndexNow protocol explainer are in checks.md alongside this file. Reference it as needed.

Category 1: Crawlability (15 pts)

Sub-checks (detail in checks.md §1):

• 1.1 robots.txt validity — syntactic correctness, sitemap reference
• 1.2 AI crawler access (CRITICAL) — see table below
• 1.3 XML sitemaps — valid XML, <lastmod> accurate, sample-verify 200s
• 1.4 Crawl depth — important pages within 3 clicks of homepage
• 1.5 Noindex management — no erroneous noindex on indexable pages

AI Crawlers — User-Agent Reference

Scoring

Category 2: Indexability (12 pts)

Sub-checks (detail in checks.md §2):

• 2.1 Canonical tags — self-referencing, no conflicts, no chains
• 2.2 Duplicate content — www/non-www, HTTP/HTTPS, trailing slash, params
• 2.3 Pagination — rel="next/prev" or canonical-to-first
• 2.4 Hreflang — reciprocal, x-default, valid ISO codes
• 2.5 Index bloat — indexed pages vs valuable content pages

Category 3: Security (10 pts)

Required HTTP response headers (detail + values in checks.md §3): Strict-Transport-Security, Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff, X-Frame-Options: DENY or SAMEORIGIN, Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin (or stricter), Permissions-Policy.

HTTPS: enforced, HTTP→HTTPS 301, no mixed content, valid unexpired cert.

Category 4: URL Structure (8 pts)

Sub-checks (detail in checks.md §4):

• 4.1 Clean URLs — human-readable, lowercase, hyphens, no session IDs
• 4.2 Logical hierarchy — /category/subcategory/page, consistent
• 4.3 Redirect chains — max 1 hop, all 301, no loops
• 4.4 Parameter handling — canonical/Disallow, GSC + Bing WMT configured

Category 5: Mobile Optimization (10 pts)

Critical: As of July 2024, Google crawls ALL sites exclusively with mobile Googlebot. No desktop crawling.

Sub-checks (detail in checks.md §5):

• 5.1 Responsive design — <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">, no horizontal scroll
• 5.2 Tap targets — minimum 48x48 CSS px, 8px spacing
• 5.3 Font sizes — base ≥ 16px, WCAG AA contrast (4.5:1 normal, 3:1 large)
• 5.4 Mobile content parity — all desktop content visible on mobile

Category 6: Core Web Vitals (15 pts)

Field data (75th percentile) is the ranking signal. Lab data is for debugging.

Without CrUX data, estimate from page characteristics; common fixes for each metric in checks.md §6.

Category 7: Server-Side Rendering (15 pts) — CRITICAL FOR GEO

AI crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, etc.) do NOT execute JavaScript. They fetch raw HTML. Client-rendered content = invisible to AI. Googlebot does execute JS but deprioritizes it (separate rendering queue, days/weeks delay).

Detection Method

1. Fetch with curl (no JS): curl -s [URL]
2. Compare raw HTML to browser-rendered DOM
3. If key content (headings, paragraphs, product info, article text) is MISSING from curl output → client-side rendering

What to Check in Raw HTML

Main content text, headings (H1/H2/H3), navigation, structured data (JSON-LD), meta tags (title/description/canonical/OG), internal links.

SSR solutions per framework + extended scoring detail in checks.md §7.

Category 8: Page Speed & Server Performance (15 pts)

Sub-checks (detail in checks.md §8):

• 8.1 TTFB — target < 800ms (ideal < 200ms). Measure: curl -o /dev/null -s -w 'TTFB: %{time_starttransfer}s\n' [URL]
• 8.2 Resource optimization — total page weight < 2MB (critical pages < 1MB), gzip/brotli on, minified, unused CSS/JS
• 8.3 Image optimization — WebP/AVIF, correctly sized, loading="lazy" below fold (NOT above), explicit width/height
• 8.4 Code splitting — JS bundles < 200KB compressed (warning), < 500KB (critical), async/defer third-party, no render-blocking in <head>
• 8.5 Caching — static assets max-age=31536000 with content-hashed filenames; HTML short cache or no-cache with ETag/Last-Modified
• 8.6 CDN — CF-Ray (Cloudflare), X-Cache (CloudFront), X-Served-By (Fastly)

IndexNow Protocol

Bing/Yandex/Seznam/Naver instant-indexing protocol. Google does NOT support but monitors. GEO relevance: ChatGPT and Bing Copilot both use Bing's index — faster Bing indexing = faster AI visibility.

Check for https://[domain]/.well-known/indexnow-key.txt or CMS plugin. Full explainer in checks.md.

Overall Scoring

Score interpretation bands in checks.md (90-100 Excellent, 70-89 Good, 50-69 Needs Work, 30-49 Poor, 0-29 Critical).

Output Format

Generate GEO-TECHNICAL-AUDIT.md with:

# GEO Technical SEO Audit — [Domain]
Date: [Date]

## Technical Score: XX/100

## Score Breakdown
| Category | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Crawlability | XX/15 | Pass/Warn/Fail |
| Indexability | XX/12 | Pass/Warn/Fail |
| Security | XX/10 | Pass/Warn/Fail |
| URL Structure | XX/8 | Pass/Warn/Fail |
| Mobile Optimization | XX/10 | Pass/Warn/Fail |
| Core Web Vitals | XX/15 | Pass/Warn/Fail |
| Server-Side Rendering | XX/15 | Pass/Warn/Fail |
| Page Speed & Server | XX/15 | Pass/Warn/Fail |

Status: Pass = 80%+ of category points, Warn = 50-79%, Fail = <50%

## AI Crawler Access
| Crawler | User-Agent | Status | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | GPTBot | Allowed/Blocked | [Action] |
| Googlebot | Googlebot | Allowed/Blocked | [Action] |
[Continue for all AI crawlers]

## Critical Issues (fix immediately)
[List with specific page URLs and what is wrong]

## Warnings (fix this month)
[List with details]

## Recommendations (optimize this quarter)
[List with details]

## Detailed Findings
[Per-category breakdown with evidence]