Technical SEO Audit

Perform a technical SEO audit focused on site speed, crawlability, indexation, structured data validation, and Core Web Vitals. Produce prioritized findings with fix instructions.

Workflow

Step 1: Crawlability Assessment

Evaluate how effectively search engines can discover and crawl the site:

• Robots.txt analysis: Identify directives blocking important content or allowing access to low-value pages.
• XML sitemap validation: Check for errors, outdated URLs, missing pages, sitemap index structure.
• Crawl depth: Map how many clicks it takes to reach key pages from the homepage.
• Internal link structure: Find orphan pages, broken internal links, excessive link depth.
• Redirect audit: Identify redirect chains (3+ hops), redirect loops, and unnecessary redirects.
• URL parameters: Check for duplicate content caused by tracking parameters or session IDs.
• Crawl budget signals: Large sites should check for low-value pages consuming crawl budget.

Step 2: Indexation Analysis

Check what search engines are actually indexing:

• Index coverage: Compare indexed pages (via site: operator or GSC) to total pages.
• Noindex directives: Verify that noindex tags are only on pages that should be excluded.
• Canonical conflicts: Find pages where the canonical tag contradicts the expected URL.
• Duplicate content: Detect pages with substantially similar content that may compete.
• Thin content: Identify pages with insufficient content to warrant indexation.
• Soft 404s: Pages that return a 200 status but display error-like content.

Step 3: Site Speed and Core Web Vitals

Measure and diagnose performance issues:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Identify the LCP element, check image optimization, server response time, render-blocking resources.
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Check JavaScript execution time, long tasks, event handler efficiency.
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Find elements causing layout shifts -- images without dimensions, dynamically injected content, web fonts.
• TTFB (Time to First Byte): Server response time, CDN configuration, caching headers.
• Resource loading: Unused JavaScript, render-blocking CSS, third-party script impact.
• Compression: Check for gzip or Brotli compression on text resources.
• Caching: Verify cache headers and expiration policies for static assets.

Step 4: Structured Data Validation

Audit schema markup implementation:

• Schema types: Identify all structured data types present on the site.
• Validation errors: Run structured data through schema.org validation.
• Rich result eligibility: Check which pages qualify for rich results and whether markup supports them.
• Missing opportunities: Identify pages where structured data could be added (FAQ, HowTo, Product, Article, BreadcrumbList).
• JSON-LD best practices: Verify placement, nesting, and required properties.

Step 5: Security and Mobile

Check foundational technical requirements:

• HTTPS: Certificate validity, mixed content, HSTS headers.
• Mobile-friendliness: Viewport configuration, responsive design, tap target sizing.
• International SEO: Hreflang correctness, language targeting, regional URL structure.
• HTTP headers: Security headers (CSP, X-Frame-Options), server configuration.

Output Format

## Technical SEO Audit: <domain>

**Audit Date**: <date>
**Focus**: <full / speed / crawl / indexation / structured-data>
**Overall Technical Health**: <score>/100

### Critical Issues
| # | Issue | Impact | Pages Affected | Fix |
|---|-------|--------|---------------|-----|
| 1 | <issue> | <impact on SEO> | <count or URLs> | <specific fix steps> |

### Core Web Vitals
| Metric | Mobile | Desktop | Target | Status |
|--------|--------|---------|--------|--------|
| LCP | <time> | <time> | < 2.5s | Pass/Fail |
| INP | <time> | <time> | < 200ms | Pass/Fail |
| CLS | <score> | <score> | < 0.1 | Pass/Fail |
| TTFB | <time> | <time> | < 800ms | Pass/Fail |

### Crawlability
- Robots.txt: <status>
- Sitemap: <status>
- Redirect chains: <count found>
- Orphan pages: <count found>
- Crawl depth issues: <count pages > 3 clicks>

### Indexation
- Pages submitted: <count>
- Pages indexed: <count>
- Noindex pages: <count>
- Canonical issues: <count>
- Duplicate content: <count groups>

### Structured Data
| Type | Pages | Errors | Warnings |
|------|-------|--------|----------|
| <schema type> | <count> | <count> | <count> |

### Prioritized Fix Plan
| Priority | Issue | Effort | Impact | Owner |
|----------|-------|--------|--------|-------|
| 1 | <issue> | <hours/days> | <impact> | <dev/content/ops> |
| 2 | <issue> | <hours/days> | <impact> | <dev/content/ops> |

Examples

User: "Technical SEO audit of our site before the redesign launch" Action: Full crawl audit, check redirect plan, validate structured data, baseline Core Web Vitals, produce a pre-launch checklist.

User: "Our Core Web Vitals are failing -- diagnose and fix" Action: Run PageSpeed analysis, identify LCP/INP/CLS offenders, trace root causes, provide specific optimization steps.

User: "Check why Google isn't indexing our new blog posts" Action: Verify robots.txt, check for noindex tags, validate sitemap inclusion, inspect canonical tags, check internal linking to new posts.

Best Practices

• Test representative pages from each template, not just the homepage.
• Always check both mobile and desktop. Google uses mobile-first indexing, but desktop issues matter too.
• Prioritize by impact on indexation and rankings, not by issue count.
• Provide specific fix instructions with code examples where applicable.
• Baseline current performance before making changes so improvements can be measured.
• Check Google Search Console coverage report for Google's own view of indexation issues.
• For large sites, focus crawl budget analysis on ensuring high-value pages are crawled frequently.
• Validate structured data changes in Google's Rich Results Test before deploying to production.