Think great content is enough to rank at the top? Not if technical SEO is working against you. If search engines struggle to crawl, index, or understand your site, your rankings will take a hit – no matter how good your content is.
The problem is that you might not even know what’s holding you back. Slow load times, broken links, and indexing issues could be quietly hurting your SEO. The good news? Fixing them can quickly improve your website’s search visibility.
In this guide, we’ll walk you step by step through a technical SEO audit, covering everything you need to analyse. We’ll also share tools to make the audit easier and suggestions to fix problems, keep your site optimised and boost your rankings.
These seven checks cover the most critical factors affecting your SEO performance and user experience. You might find additional recommendations elsewhere, but focusing on these will have the biggest impact on your site’s visibility, speed, and overall usability.
If you need a broader SEO audit beyond just technical aspects, then check out our detailed guide on performing an SEO audit. Meanwhile, if you’re short on time and need quick wins, our 30-minute SEO audit guide has you covered.
Technical SEO audits can feel overwhelming, especially with so many things to check. But don’t worry – we’ve got you covered. Follow these simple steps, and you’ll be able to spot issues, fix them, and keep your site running at its best without the headache.
If search engines can’t crawl and index your site properly, your pages won’t appear in search results. This means your content could go completely unnoticed, no matter how valuable it is.
To check for crawlability issues, review the Page Indexing Report in Google Search Console for blocked or unindexed pages. Also, scan your robots.txt file using WebYes to ensure it’s not blocking search engines from crawling your website.
📌 Actionable Tips:
noindex tags from important pages.robots.txt file isn’t blocking key content.A well-structured site helps search engines understand your content and improves navigation for users. If your structure is poor, important pages may be buried, making them harder to find. Weak internal linking also limits link authority, lowering ranking potential.
To analyse your site’s structure, use Screaming Frog to generate a visual map of your internal links. Check that important pages are well-linked and that no pages are orphaned (without internal links pointing to them).
📌 Actionable Tips:
A slow website leads to frustrated visitors, higher bounce rates, and lower rankings. Plus, Google considers page experience a ranking factor, so if your site loads too slowly, it may not perform well in search results.
Use Google PageSpeed Insights or WebYes to check your website’s load time and CWV metrics. These tools analyse your site’s performance and highlight factors slowing it down, such as large images, unoptimised code, or server delays.
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Most people browse the web on their phones, so your site needs to work well on mobile. Plus, Google’s mobile-first indexing ranks your site based on its mobile version, meaning a poor mobile experience can hurt your rankings.
Use WebYes to check how well your site performs on mobile and whether it meets mobile usability standards. Also, test your Core Web Vitals using PageSpeed Insights or WebYes to spot issues affecting user experience.
📌 Actionable Tips:
Your website should be using HTTPS instead of HTTP. HTTPS means your site has an SSL certificate, which encrypts data and makes it secure. Google favours secure sites, and visitors are more likely to trust your website.
Check your HTTPS status in Google Search Console or WebYes to verify that your SSL certificate is correctly installed. Also, look for mixed content errors, which occur when some elements of your site still load over HTTP.
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Broken links create a poor user experience and can waste SEO value if important pages are no longer accessible. Meanwhile, redirect issues, like redirect chains and loops, can also slow down your site and confuse search engines.
Use Screaming Frog or Ahrefs Site Audit to scan your site for broken links and redirect issues affecting SEO. These tools highlight 404 errors from missing pages and excessive redirects that can slow down your site.
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Structured data helps search engines understand your content better and can enhance your search results with rich snippets (like star ratings, FAQs, or event details). Without it, your content may not stand out in search results.
Use Google’s Rich Results Test to check if your structured data is correctly implemented. These tools can highlight errors in your schema markup and help you ensure Google is interpreting your data correctly.
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Performing a technical SEO audit often requires multiple tools – one for checking crawlability, another for speed, and others for security, and mobile-friendliness. Since no single tool covers all seven major checks, audits can quickly become time-consuming and complicated.
A more streamlined approach is to use a tool that automates multiple checks in one place, making the process faster and easier. WebYes, for example, covers four out of seven key areas, allowing you to scan your entire website with just one click.
Instead of juggling multiple platforms, WebYes streamlines the process, helping you quickly identify critical technical SEO issues. This means less time spent diagnosing problems and more time optimising your website for better performance.
Try WebYes today and see how effortless technical SEO can be.
A technical SEO audit should be performed every 3 to 6 months to ensure your site remains optimised. However, the ideal frequency depends on various factors. Check out our guide on how often you should audit your website for SEO for a detailed breakdown.
Common tools include Google Search Console (for indexing and errors), Screaming Frog (for crawling issues), and PageSpeed Insights (for performance checks). However, WebYes simplifies the process by performing multiple checks with one click.
Technical SEO focuses on site structure, crawlability, indexing, speed, security, and mobile-friendliness – ensuring search engines can access and understand your site. On-page SEO is about optimising content, keywords, meta tags, and internal linking to improve rankings.
Fixing critical technical issues (like site speed, indexing, or security problems) can lead to improvements within days or weeks. However, ranking changes from an audit may take a few months, depending on the competition and the type of fixes made.
Article by
Melwyn holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and has been writing professionally for over 4 years. He has a strong background in SEO and is certified in web accessibility from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). When he's not writing about website optimisation, you can find him enjoying a game of FIFA or exploring the open world of GTA.
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