How Do You Perform a Technical SEO Audit? A Beginner’s Guide
If you’re a business owner trying to boost your website traffic, you’ve probably heard about SEO. But beyond keywords and backlinks lies a more complex, often overlooked layer: technical SEO. So, how do you perform a technical SEO audit? While many guides stick to the basics like page speed and mobile-friendliness, there’s more under the hood you need to check if you want your site to thrive in Google’s ecosystem. This guide will walk you through the steps to perform a detailed technical SEO audit, with insider tips and overlooked tactics that most websites won’t tell you.
What Is a Technical SEO Audit?
A technical SEO audit is a comprehensive process that evaluates the technical aspects of your website that impact its visibility and crawlability by search engines. Think of it as a digital tune-up, ensuring search engines can access, interpret, and index your content efficiently. Without this audit, even the best content and backlink strategy might go unnoticed.
According to Ahrefs, 90.63% of content gets no traffic from Google. Why? Because technical SEO errors often block or bury that content in the search abyss. It’s not about how good your product is—it’s about whether Google can even find and understand it.
Step 1: Start With a Crawl Report
Before diving deep, you need to crawl your website like a search engine would. Tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Ahrefs Site Audit simulate how search bots move through your site.
What to look for:
- Broken links (404 errors)
- Redirect chains and loops
- Missing metadata
- Duplicate content
- Crawl depth (how many clicks it takes to reach a page)
Pro Tip Most Guides Skip:
Check your crawl budget. Google doesn’t crawl every page of your site every day. If you have thousands of pages, wasted crawl budget on useless URLs (like filtered search pages or expired products) can hurt important page discovery.
Step 2: Review Your Robots.txt and XML Sitemap
The robots.txt file tells search engines which pages they should or shouldn’t crawl. A mistake here could block essential content.
Checklist:
- Make sure important pages are not disallowed
- Confirm that your sitemap is listed in the robots.txt
- Test your robots.txt in Google Search Console
Your XML sitemap should:
- Be updated regularly
- Contain only canonical URLs
- Match your current site structure
According to SEMrush, 8% of websites have issues with their sitemap URLs not matching canonical versions, which can cause indexing problems.
Step 3: Assess Site Architecture and Internal Linking
A flat and logical site structure helps both users and search engines. Pages should be reachable within 3 clicks from the homepage.
Look for:
- Orphan pages (pages with no internal links pointing to them)
- Overloaded navigation menus
- Deep links that require too many clicks
Use structured internal links with keyword-rich anchor text—but avoid repeating the same anchor on every page. Mix things up while keeping relevance.
Step 4: Check Mobile Usability
With Google’s mobile-first indexing, your mobile version is the main version that Google uses to index and rank your site.
Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test or Search Console’s mobile usability report.
Common issues:
- Clickable elements are too close together
- Text is too small to read
- Viewport not set
- Horizontal scrolling
Test your site on a real mobile device—not just emulators. Often, layout issues only appear in actual mobile environments.
Step 5: Evaluate Site Speed and Core Web Vitals
Page speed is a confirmed ranking factor. But today, it’s more about experience metrics.
Focus on these Core Web Vitals:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Should be under 2.5 seconds
- First Input Delay (FID): Under 100 milliseconds
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Under 0.1
Tools to use:
- PageSpeed Insights
- GTmetrix
- WebPageTest.org
Bonus Insight: Use lazy-loading for images and defer unused JavaScript. According to Google, reducing unused JS can improve load time by up to 41% on average.
Step 6: Audit Indexability and Canonicalization
Not all pages should be indexed. Some may be duplicates, others may be thin content.
What to check:
- Canonical tags are properly set (especially on e-commerce or CMS sites)
- Avoid meta “noindex” on important pages
- Eliminate duplicate title tags or meta descriptions
Look at your indexed pages vs. submitted pages in Google Search Console. A mismatch here often indicates technical errors or canonical tag misfires.
Step 7: Use Structured Data and Schema Markup
Structured data helps search engines understand your content better, and can increase your chances of getting rich snippets.
Use Schema.org to mark up:
- Products
- FAQs
- Local business info
- Articles
- Events
If you’re a local business, adding @id tags to your JSON-LD schema can strengthen your brand entity in Google’s Knowledge Graph, especially when paired with consistent local citations.
Step 8: Secure Your Site and Fix HTTPS Issues
If your site isn’t running on HTTPS, you’re in trouble. But even secure sites often have mixed content issues where HTTP elements (like images or scripts) are loaded over HTTPS pages.
Test using:
- WhyNoPadlock.com
- SSL Labs Security Test
Also, ensure your site redirects from HTTP to HTTPS, and from non-www to www (or vice versa), consistently.
Step 9: Fix Crawl Errors and Monitor Logs
Use Google Search Console to identify crawl errors and fix them. But go deeper by analyzing server logs (most people skip this!).
Why server logs matter:
They tell you exactly what pages Googlebot visits, how often, and where it hits errors. You’ll uncover:
- Crawl frequency issues
- Bot traps
- Unintentional redirect loops
Underrated Insight: If high-value pages aren’t crawled frequently, Google may not consider them important. You can use internal linking and XML sitemaps to boost their crawl priority.
Step 10: Don’t Forget About International SEO and hreflang (if applicable)
If your site targets users in different countries or languages, hreflang tags are essential.
Tips:
- Make sure every variation has a self-referencing hreflang
- Avoid pointing multiple versions to the same canonical
- Check implementation using tools like Sistrix Hreflang Validator
Even if you only serve Canada or the U.S., make sure your language declaration (lang=”en-CA” or lang=”en-US”) is correct in your HTML.
Looking for Expert Help? Meet Click Typhoon
Conducting a technical SEO audit is no small feat, and missing just one element could be costing your business thousands in lost traffic.
If you’re a business owner in Markham or the surrounding area, Click Typhoon offers comprehensive Markham SEO services designed to fix these issues at the root. Our team specializes in technical SEO, on-page strategies, and local optimization that actually moves the needle.
We’ve helped countless businesses improve their rankings, increase conversions, and future-proof their digital assets. Whether you’re just starting out or need a complete overhaul, we’ve got the tools and expertise to get your site back on Google’s radar.
Key Takeaways
- A technical SEO audit ensures that search engines can crawl, index, and rank your website effectively.
- Commonly overlooked issues include crawl budget optimization, server log analysis, and hreflang misconfiguration.
- Tools like Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, and WebPageTest are essential to uncover hidden technical issues.
- Structured data and schema markup enhance visibility in search features and rich results.
- Click Typhoon can help business owners in Markham perform thorough technical SEO audits and implement effective fixes.
Ready to Take Action?
If your website isn’t performing the way it should, don’t let technical issues be the bottleneck. Let Click Typhoon help you unlock your site’s full potential with our expert Markham SEO services. We’re here to demystify SEO and bring clarity to your digital strategy. Whether you’re launching a new site or cleaning up an old one, we’ll guide you every step of the way. Get ahead of your competitors by making your site faster, smarter, and search-friendly.
Reach out today to schedule your free SEO consultation with Click Typhoon.
Follow us on our socials here:
Check out some of our blogs to help your SEO needs:
What Is Included in Technical SEO
