Technical SEO Audit Checklist: Find and Prioritise Website Issues
Key Takeaways
- Start with access, indexing and important customer journeys.
- Validate findings on real URLs before proposing a fix.
- Structured data and performance scores do not guarantee rankings.
A technical SEO audit checks whether search engines can access, interpret and index the pages you want customers to find. Its useful output is a prioritised list of verified problems, affected URLs, proposed fixes and validation steps.
1. Establish the pages that matter
List your main services, useful articles and conversion pages. Compare the sitemap, navigation, internal links and Search Console. Identify pages receiving relevant impressions as well as pages that should be discoverable but have little visibility. Absence of traffic alone does not prove a technical fault.
2. Check access and indexability
Inspect HTTP status codes, robots directives, noindex settings and the content returned to a browser. A page can return a successful status while displaying an error or almost no useful information. Use URL inspection to understand what Google reports for an affected page.
Do not remove all crawling controls indiscriminately. Administration, account and internal search pages may need different treatment from public service content. Record the intended behaviour before changing it.
3. Review canonical URLs and redirects
Confirm the preferred domain, HTTPS version and URL format. Important pages should identify the intended canonical version. Redirect old addresses to their closest relevant replacement, and avoid sending every removed page to the homepage.
For a planned platform change, our WordPress to Next.js migration checklist explains how to inventory URLs and test mappings.
4. Follow the internal links
Look for broken destinations, confusing anchors and useful pages with no meaningful incoming links. Add links where they help readers take a logical next step. A sitemap helps discovery, but does not replace a sensible site structure.
5. Measure the actual user experience
Test important pages on mobile devices and realistic connections. Inspect large images, layout movement, interaction delays and third-party scripts. Distinguish laboratory diagnostics from real-user measurements. A single performance score is not a complete assessment and does not predict a fixed conversion increase.
Our website conversion diagnostic connects technical symptoms with the customer journey.
6. Validate metadata and structured data
Check unique, descriptive titles, relevant descriptions, article dates and canonical tags. Structured data should accurately describe visible content and use appropriate types. A valid schema result does not guarantee a rich result or an AI citation. Google’s Search Essentials is the baseline for technical and content eligibility.
Prioritise by impact and evidence
| Priority | Example | Verification |
|---|---|---|
| Urgent | Important service pages accidentally noindexed | Inspect rendered directives and Google’s report after recrawl |
| High | Broken internal links to a valuable article | Follow every corrected destination |
| Planned | Heavy below-fold images | Measure page transfer size and user experience |
What should you receive from an agency?
Ask for evidence, affected URLs, ownership, effort estimates and acceptance criteria. Separate confirmed defects from hypotheses. Keep a change log and recheck the affected pages after deployment; repeating a full audit without validating fixes creates work without progress.
Will fixing every warning increase traffic?
Not necessarily. Some warnings are low impact or do not apply to your site. Technical fixes support discovery and usability, while demand, content and competition still matter.
Request a technical website review from Ananas IT. Include your URL and the specific traffic, indexing or enquiry problem you are seeing.
