Technical SEO Audit Checklist: 20 Checks in Priority Order

Technical SEO makes sure search engines can find, crawl, render and index your pages. Content and links cannot help pages Google cannot see. Here is the checklist our technical SEO team uses, in rough priority order. Google's own SEO Starter Guide is a good companion.

Indexing and crawling

1. Search Console set up as a Domain property, with the Page indexing report reviewed.
2. Important pages indexed: check that key service and product pages appear as indexed, and read the reasons for pages that are not.
3. robots.txt does not block important pages, CSS or JavaScript. Remember robots.txt is not a security tool.
4. No accidental noindex tags on live pages (common after launching from a staging site).
5. XML sitemap lists only canonical, indexable URLs and is submitted in Search Console.

Duplicates and URLs

6. One version of the site: https and one host (www or non-www), with 301 redirects from the others.
7. Self-referencing canonical tags on every indexable page (Google docs).
8. Parameter and filter pages handled so they do not create thousands of near-duplicates.
9. Redirect chains and loops removed; old URLs redirect straight to the final page.
10. Broken internal links (404s) fixed.

Structure

11. Important pages within three clicks of the homepage.
12. Descriptive internal links using normal <a href> links (crawlable links).
13. One H1 per page, unique titles and meta descriptions.
14. Orphan pages (no internal links pointing to them) linked or removed.

Rendering, speed and markup

15. Core Web Vitals passing for most page groups (see our speed guide).
16. Mobile parity: the mobile page has the same content, links and markup as desktop.
17. JavaScript content visible in the URL Inspection tool's rendered HTML.
18. Structured data valid and matching visible content (Organization, LocalBusiness, Product, Article, Breadcrumb).
19. Images with descriptive file names, alt text and modern formats.
20. Security: HTTPS everywhere and no hacked or spam pages in the index.

Turn findings into a plan

Score each issue by impact and effort, fix the high-impact, low-effort items first, and re-check in Search Console after Google recrawls. If you want a prioritised list for your site, request a free audit or see our SEO plans.