Technical SEO audit checklist: 10 checks for any business website

Great content cannot rank if search engines cannot crawl, render and index it. A technical audit finds the blockers before you invest in more pages.

Use the Pages report and the URL Inspection tool to see which important pages are indexed and why others are not.

Make sure you are not accidentally blocking important pages or resources. See Google's robots.txt guide.

List every page you want indexed and submit it in Search Console. Follow Google's sitemap guide.

Use canonical URLs so Google knows the preferred version of similar pages, such as with and without tracking parameters.

Measure loading, interactivity and visual stability with Core Web Vitals. Compress images and remove heavy scripts.

Most visitors are on phones. Check text size, tap targets and that nothing spills off the screen.

Fix links to missing pages and replace chains of redirects with a single permanent redirect.

Each page needs a unique, descriptive title and one main heading. Duplicate titles make pages compete with each other.

Add Organization, LocalBusiness, Product or FAQ markup where it genuinely fits, such as LocalBusiness structured data for local firms.

Important pages should be linked from your menu or related pages. Orphan pages with no links are hard for search engines to find.

After the audit, prioritize fixes by impact. Our SEO services start with this audit, and the local SEO checklist covers the local side. You can also request a free audit.

Most audits find dozens of issues. Fix in this order: anything that stops important pages being crawled or indexed, then problems on your highest value pages such as services and products, then site wide improvements like speed and internal links.

Cosmetic warnings from tools, such as slightly long meta descriptions, rarely matter as much as an important page being blocked or missing from the index.

If your site relies heavily on JavaScript, use the URL Inspection tool to view the rendered page and confirm the main content and links appear. Content that only loads after user interaction may be missed.

Every page should load on HTTPS, and the http and www versions should redirect permanently to one preferred address. Mixed versions split signals between duplicate URLs.

Pages with very little content, or many near identical pages, dilute your site. Merge similar pages into one stronger page and redirect the old addresses, or improve them so each serves a distinct purpose.

After fixing the big issues, check Search Console monthly for new indexing problems, crawl errors and Core Web Vitals changes. Run a full crawl after any redesign, migration or major content change.

Google Search Console shows indexing, Core Web Vitals and search performance for your own site at no cost. PageSpeed Insights tests speed on individual pages. A site crawler, free for small sites, lists broken links, redirects, missing titles and duplicate pages. Together they cover the essentials for most business websites.

Record what you find in a simple sheet with the issue, the affected pages, the fix and who owns it, then mark items done as you go.

Bring in a specialist before a site migration, a redesign, a change of domain or platform, or when important pages drop out of the index without an obvious reason. These are the moments when technical mistakes cost the most traffic and are hardest to undo afterwards.