The complete technical SEO auditIn the order we actually run it.

QUICK ANSWERFetch robots.txt, confirm no Disallow rule blocks important paths or the CSS and JavaScript needed to render them, and confirm your sitemap is declared. Then crawl internal links to find errors and redirect chains.

IN DETAILStart with robots.txt. A single over-broad Disallow: can block more than you intend, and blocking a URL stops Google re-crawling it, so it can’t even see a noindex you add later. Confirm your important paths aren’t blocked and that your sitemap is declared. Then check for broken internal links and redirect chains that waste crawl budget.

QUICK ANSWERA page is indexable when it returns HTTP 200, has no noindex in its meta robots tag or X-Robots-Tag header, isn’t blocked in robots.txt, and has a self-referencing canonical.

IN DETAILA page is indexable only if it has no noindex tag or X-Robots-Tag header, isn’t blocked in robots.txt, has a self-referencing canonical, and returns HTTP 200. The classic outage is a stray noindex on a shared template that ships to production and deindexes a whole section. Search Console’s Pages report is the source of truth for what’s indexed and why the rest isn’t.

QUICK ANSWEREvery indexable page should carry one canonical tag pointing to itself. Any canonical that points elsewhere must resolve directly to a live, indexable 200 URL: never a redirect or a 404.

IN DETAILEvery indexable page should self-reference its canonical. The common bug is a canonical pointing to a redirect or 404, Google ignores it and picks its own, or every paginated page canonicalising to page 1, which deindexes the rest. Keep canonical, hreflang and internal links all pointing at the same URL.

QUICK ANSWEROnly canonical, indexable URLs that return 200, at most 50,000 URLs per file, declared in robots.txt and submitted in Search Console.

IN DETAILYour XML sitemap should contain only canonical, indexable, 200-status URLs, no redirects, 404s or noindex pages. Declare it in robots.txt and submit it in Search Console. For large sites, use a sitemap index pointing to child sitemaps (50,000 URLs max each). Also flag indexable pages missing from the sitemap, they may be under-crawled.

QUICK ANSWERPoint every redirect straight at its final destination with a single 301, then update internal links so they reach the final URL without any redirect at all.

IN DETAILCollapse redirect chains (A→B→C should be A→C) and fix redirects that land on 404s. Use 301s for permanent moves so backlink equity transfers, and update internal links to point at the final URL directly. After HTTP→HTTPS or trailing-slash migrations, re-check that canonicals and sitemaps reference the new URLs.

QUICK ANSWERA unique, descriptive title of about 50–60 characters, a meta description under about 160 characters, and one H1 that matches the page’s subject.

IN DETAILEach page needs a unique, descriptive title (~50–60 chars), a meta description under ~160 chars, one H1, and a sane heading hierarchy. These are quick wins that affect click-through and clarity. Make sure the body has real depth too, not thin content, and that every image carries useful alt text.

QUICK ANSWERParse every JSON-LD block and check the required properties for its type. For hreflang, confirm every language version lists every other version, itself and an x-default, using valid ISO codes.

IN DETAILValidate any JSON-LD: invalid schema can throw errors in Search Console and block rich results (a frequent one is aggregateRating on an unsupported type). If you’re multilingual, hreflang is the most error-prone area: reciprocal return tags, a self-reference on every page, valid language/region codes (don’t confuse en with en-US), an x-default fallback, and targets that return 200 and match their own canonical.

QUICK ANSWERAt the 75th percentile of real visits: LCP of 2.5 seconds or less, INP of 200 milliseconds or less, and CLS of 0.1 or less: measured on mobile, for your key templates.

IN DETAILSpeed is a ranking factor and the first thing users feel. Optimise LCP (compress the hero image, preload it, cut TTFB), CLS (set image dimensions, reserve space, font-display: swap), and INP (break up long JS tasks, defer non-critical scripts). Test your key templates on mobile, not just the homepage.