A technical audit checks that search engines can crawl, render and index your site.
1. Crawl the site
Run a site audit in a project. It crawls your pages like a search engine and lists errors, warnings and notices.
2. Check access
- robots.txt does not block important pages (robots.txt checker).
- The XML sitemap is valid and lists only live pages (sitemap checker).
3. Check status codes
Broken pages (4xx), server errors (5xx) and redirect chains. Fix or redirect them.
4. Check duplicates
Duplicate titles, descriptions and content; missing canonical tags.
5. Check speed and mobile
Page speed checker, TTFB checker and mobile-friendly test on key templates.
7. Check structured data and metadata
Look for missing or duplicate titles and descriptions, missing H1s, invalid JSON-LD and missing canonical tags. Site audits list each of these with the affected pages.
8. Check internal linking
Orphan pages and pages more than three clicks deep are hard for crawlers to reach. Add links from relevant pages.
How often to audit
- After every launch, redesign or migration.
- After installing plugins or changing templates.
- Monthly for active sites, quarterly for small static ones.
Prioritising
Not every issue matters equally. Fix anything that blocks crawling or indexing first, then errors that affect many pages (often a template problem), then individual pages.
Keep a record
Export each audit to CSV and note what you fixed. The health chart shows the result over time.
6. Check security
HTTPS, the HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect, mixed content and security headers.
Fix errors first, then warnings, then run the audit again and compare health.
0 comments