Crawling and indexing
Check that important pages return a 200 status, are not blocked by robots.txt or a noindex tag, and appear in your XML sitemap. Use canonical tags to point duplicates at one preferred URL.
- One canonical URL per page
- XML sitemap with only indexable URLs
- No redirect chains or loops
- A helpful custom 404 page
Speed and Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals measure loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS). Compress and properly size images, load fonts efficiently, and ship less JavaScript.
- Serve modern image formats and responsive sizes
- Prioritise the largest above-the-fold image
- Avoid layout shifts by reserving space for images and embeds
- Defer scripts that are not needed immediately
Structured data
Add JSON-LD that matches the visible page content: Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList, Service, FAQPage and Article where they apply. Validate it before launch.
Internal linking and architecture
Keep important pages within a few clicks of the home page and link between related pages with descriptive anchor text. A clear hierarchy helps both users and crawlers.
Migrations
When changing domains or URL structures, map every old URL to its closest new equivalent with a 301 redirect, keep titles and content equivalent, and monitor Search Console closely after launch.
How to run an audit step by step
A thorough audit follows a sequence, so that each finding is understood in context.
- Crawl the whole site and list status codes, redirects, titles, headings and canonicals
- Compare crawled pages with the sitemap and with Search Console's indexing report
- Check robots.txt and meta robots for accidental blocks
- Measure Core Web Vitals on real devices and in field data
- Test structured data for errors and warnings
- Review internal links, orphan pages and click depth
- Check mobile usability, security and HTTPS
- Prioritise issues by impact and effort
The problems that matter most
Not every warning deserves attention. Pages that cannot be indexed, wrong canonical tags, redirect chains, soft 404s and pages blocked from crawling directly affect whether content can rank at all, so they come first. Speed problems that affect the largest content element on mobile come next, followed by structured data errors that remove eligibility for rich results.
Cosmetic items such as a long meta description or a missing alt text on a decorative image rarely change results. Spending a week on them while an indexing issue goes unfixed is a common and expensive mistake.
Keeping technical health over time
Technical SEO is not a one-off project. New plugins, redesigns and content changes introduce regressions, so it helps to set up monitoring: weekly crawls for large sites, alerts when pages drop out of the index, and a check of key templates after each release.
A short release checklist is often enough: do the new pages return 200, are they in the sitemap, do they have one H1 and the right canonical, and did page speed change? Teams that ask these questions each time rarely need a large clean-up later.
Crawl budget and large sites
Search engines allocate a limited amount of attention to each site. On small sites this rarely matters, but on large ones, such as stores with many filter combinations or sites with thousands of generated pages, wasted crawling means important pages are visited less often. Reduce waste by blocking or consolidating low-value URLs, fixing redirect chains, keeping the sitemap clean, and linking to important pages prominently.
Server speed matters here too. A site that responds quickly can be crawled more thoroughly in the same time.
JavaScript and rendering
Modern sites often rely on JavaScript to display content. Search engines can render it, but it takes extra time and can go wrong. The safest approach is to deliver the main content and links in the initial HTML through server-side rendering or static generation, and to use JavaScript for enhancements.
Check what search engines actually see with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console, and compare the rendered page with what a user sees. Differences are a warning sign.
International and multi-location setups
Sites serving several countries or languages need extra care.
- Use hreflang correctly for genuine language or country versions
- Give each version its own indexable URL
- Avoid automatic redirects based on location that block crawlers
- Localise content properly instead of relying on machine translation alone
- Keep currency, contact details and legal information correct for each market
- Make sure each location has consistent details in its profile and page
Core Web Vitals in plain language
Largest Contentful Paint measures how long the biggest visible element, usually an image or heading, takes to appear. Interaction to Next Paint measures how quickly the page responds when someone taps or types. Cumulative Layout Shift measures how much content jumps around while the page loads. Good scores mean the page feels quick and stable.
The usual causes of poor scores are predictable: oversized images, fonts that load late, heavy third-party scripts, unreserved space for ads or embeds and large amounts of JavaScript running on load. Fixing them one by one, starting with the largest element on your most visited pages, tends to produce the biggest improvement for the least work.
Security and trust signals
Security is part of technical SEO because insecure or compromised sites lose rankings and customers.
- Serve every page over HTTPS and redirect HTTP to it
- Keep the CMS, plugins and libraries up to date
- Use strong passwords and two-factor sign-in for admin accounts
- Back up the site regularly and test that restores work
- Set sensible security headers
- Monitor for malware and unexpected changes
- Remove unused plugins and old admin users
A simple monthly technical routine
Once the big issues are fixed, a short monthly routine keeps the site healthy. Review Search Console for new errors and for pages dropping out of the index. Check Core Web Vitals for the main templates. Crawl the site to find broken links, redirect chains and missing metadata. Test the key forms and checkout steps. Review the list of recent changes to see whether any could have introduced problems.
Keeping a log of changes and findings makes patterns visible. Many recurring problems turn out to come from the same source, such as a plugin that is updated badly or a template that is edited without testing.
Working with developers on technical SEO
Most technical fixes need a developer, and the best results come from making their work easy. Give each issue a clear ticket: what is wrong, where it appears, an example URL, why it matters and what a correct result looks like. Attach evidence such as a crawl export or a Search Console screenshot, and mark the priority.
Agree a regular rhythm rather than sending a long list once. A short monthly session to review progress, discuss trade-offs and plan the next items keeps technical SEO moving without overloading the team. Developers also appreciate understanding the reason behind a request: explaining that a redirect chain slows crawling and wastes link value makes it more than a chore.
Finally, build checks into the release process. A short list that asks whether new pages are indexable, have one heading, return the right status and load quickly prevents most regressions, and costs only a few minutes per release.
Prioritising fixes when everything looks urgent
An audit often returns hundreds of items, and trying to fix them all at once is how projects stall. Sort them by two questions: how many important pages does this affect, and how much does it block indexing, speed or conversion? Problems that affect many pages and block indexing come first, such as an accidental noindex, a broken canonical template or a redirect loop.
Next come issues that slow the pages that earn money, then structural improvements such as internal linking and structured data. Cosmetic items go last. Writing the plan as a short, ordered list with an owner and a date for each item turns an overwhelming report into a sequence of manageable tasks, and it lets you show progress to people who do not read crawl reports.
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