What a technical SEO audit checks, in plain English

A technical SEO audit checks whether search engines can find your pages, read them, understand them and trust them. It covers crawling, indexing, redirects, speed, mobile display, structured data, internal links, security and international settings, and it ends with a prioritised list of fixes ranked by impact and effort.

Why does technical health come first?

Search engines can only rank what they can reach and read. A page blocked by a stray robots rule, buried six clicks deep, or slow enough to frustrate users will lose to a weaker page that works properly. Technical problems are also common after redesigns, migrations and plugin changes, and they are easy to miss because the site looks fine to a human.

What does the audit check?

1. Crawlability: can search engines get to your pages?

• robots.txt does not block important sections.
• The XML sitemap exists, lists only canonical, indexable URLs and is submitted in Search Console.
• Important pages are reachable through links, not only through search boxes or scripts.
• Crawl budget is not wasted on endless filter, search or calendar URLs. This matters mostly for large sites.

2. Indexing: are the right pages in Google's index?

• The Page indexing report in Search Console shows which pages are indexed and why others are not.
• noindex tags are on pages you want hidden and not on pages you want found.
• Canonical tags point to the preferred version, so duplicates do not compete.
• Thin, duplicate or parameter-based pages are handled.

3. Status codes and redirects

• Important pages return 200.
• Removed pages return 404 or 410, or redirect to a close match.
• Redirects are single steps, not chains, and use 301 for permanent moves.
• Soft 404s, which show an error message but return 200, are fixed.

4. Site speed and Core Web Vitals: Google's published thresholds for a good experience are Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, at the 75th percentile of real visits. The audit uses field data from the Chrome User Experience Report and lab tools such as Lighthouse, and identifies the heavy images, scripts and fonts behind slow scores.
5. Mobile experience: Google uses the mobile version of a page for indexing. The audit checks that content, links and structured data on mobile match desktop, that text is readable and that tap targets are usable. Most Indian visitors arrive on phones.
6. Rendering and JavaScript: if content or links appear only after JavaScript runs, a crawler may miss them. The audit compares the raw HTML with the rendered page and flags content that is not in the first response. Server-rendered pages are the safest route.
7. Structured data: is the markup valid, relevant and matched to what is on the page? See schema markup that helps a service business.
8. On-page technical elements: unique titles and meta descriptions, one clear H1 per page, sensible heading order, image alt text, and clean URLs.
9. Internal linking: key pages get links from other relevant pages. Orphan pages, which nothing links to, are found and either connected or removed. Anchor text describes the target.
10. Security and trust: HTTPS across the site with no mixed content, valid certificates, no malware warnings, and visible business details such as an About page and contact information.
11. International and multi-region setup: if you serve India and the Gulf or other regions with separate pages, hreflang tags and sensible URL structure tell search engines which version to show.
12. AI crawler access: whether the crawlers used by AI search products can reach your content, or are blocked by robots rules, firewalls or bot protection. See how to show up in ChatGPT and AI Overviews.

What tools does an audit use?

Google Search Console is the starting point, because it shows what Google itself sees. A crawler such as Screaming Frog simulates a search engine and maps the whole site. PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse measure performance. Browser developer tools reveal rendering issues. Server logs show what crawlers actually request. No single tool tells the full story, and a human has to read the results together.

What should the report look like?

A useful report is short enough to act on:

1. A summary of the main findings in plain language.
2. A prioritised list with each issue, where it appears, why it matters, how to fix it, and the effort involved.
3. Evidence such as screenshots, URL lists and numbers from Search Console.
4. Quick wins you can fix in a day.
5. Larger projects that need development time.
6. A re-check plan so you know when to measure again.

Be wary of a report that is a pasted tool export with hundreds of warnings and no ranking. Most warnings do not matter. A few do.

What do audits often find?

• Staging or test sites left open to indexing.
• A migration that left chains of redirects or old URLs returning errors.
• Pages with noindex added during development and never removed.
• Duplicate versions of the site under www and non-www, or http and https.
• Large images and unused scripts slowing every page.
• Key service pages that no menu or page links to.
• A sitemap full of redirecting or error URLs.
• Structured data that contradicts the visible page.

What are the trade-offs?

Not every finding is worth fixing. A small business with a hundred pages does not need to worry about crawl budget. Focus on issues that block indexing or hurt real users first.

Fixes can affect other parts of the site. Changing URL structures or templates carries risk, so test on staging and monitor Search Console afterwards.

An audit is a snapshot. Without follow-through, the issues return. Assign an owner and a re-check date.

Where does TechSum fit?

We run technical SEO audits, hand over a ranked list, and fix what we find on the development side where the site is ours to change. See the technical SEO audit page and the Search and Answer Visibility pillar. If the main issue is speed, the Core Web Vitals page is relevant. The free health check and the Digital Health Check are quick first steps.