Your website’s performance in search engines isn’t just about keywords and backlinks. Technical SEO is the foundation that supports your entire SEO strategy. If your site isn’t optimized on a technical level, even the best content might struggle to rank. Performing a comprehensive technical SEO audit is essential for identifying and fixing issues that could be holding your site back from its full potential.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the key steps to perform a technical SEO audit, ensuring your website runs smoothly and meets modern search engine optimization standards.
1. Crawl Your Website for Errors
The first step in any technical SEO audit is to crawl your website. A website crawler simulates how search engine bots navigate your site, allowing you to see what they see. Tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Semrush are perfect for this task. When crawling, you’re mainly looking for:
- 404 Errors: These occur when a page no longer exists or the URL is incorrect. Too many 404 errors can signal to Google that your site isn’t well-maintained.
- Redirect Loops: When pages redirect multiple times, it can confuse search engines and slow down the user experience.
- Broken Links: Internal and external broken links harm user experience and can prevent search engines from crawling certain parts of your site.
Once you identify these issues, it’s crucial to resolve them. Update or remove broken links, set up proper redirects (preferably 301 redirects), and ensure every page can be properly crawled.
2. Analyze Site Speed and Performance
Site speed has become a vital ranking factor for search engines. Users also prefer fast-loading websites—any delay beyond three seconds can lead to higher bounce rates. To check your website’s speed, tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix will give you detailed reports on areas for improvement.
Look for suggestions like:
- Image Optimization: Compress images without losing quality. Tools like TinyPNG or ShortPixel can reduce image sizes, which will help improve loading times.
- Leverage Browser Caching: Caching stores parts of your website locally on users’ devices, making subsequent visits faster.
- Minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript: This reduces the size of your site’s files, helping them load quicker.
Ensure you address any performance issues found in these reports to provide users with a faster, more responsive site experience.
3. Ensure Mobile-Friendliness
With mobile traffic surpassing desktop in many industries, it’s critical that your website is fully optimized for mobile devices. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your site to determine rankings. You can test your site’s mobile usability using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
During the audit, check for:
- Responsive Design: Your site should automatically adjust to different screen sizes and resolutions.
- Clickable Elements: Buttons and links should be large enough to be easily tapped on a mobile screen without zooming in.
- Text Readability: Ensure that text on mobile devices is legible without users having to zoom in or scroll sideways.
If your site isn’t fully mobile-friendly, not only will you lose rankings, but you’ll also miss out on potential traffic from mobile users.
4. Check Your Site’s Indexability
If search engines can’t index your pages, they won’t appear in search results, no matter how well-optimized the content is. An often overlooked but vital part of a technical SEO audit is to ensure your website is indexable by search engines.
Start by reviewing your robots.txt file. This file tells search engines which parts of your site they can and cannot crawl. Ensure you’re not accidentally blocking important sections of your website from being indexed.
Next, check your XML sitemap. A sitemap helps search engines understand your site structure and find all your important pages. Make sure your sitemap is up to date and submitted to Google Search Console.
Lastly, check Google Search Console for indexing errors. If certain pages aren’t being indexed, the Console will provide specific reasons, such as “noindex” tags or crawl errors. Correct these to ensure your site’s content is fully visible to search engines.
5. Review URL Structure and Clean Up Duplicate Content
A clean and well-organized URL structure is essential for both users and search engines. Each URL should be simple, descriptive, and include relevant keywords. Avoid long, confusing URLs with random strings of numbers or symbols.
Duplicate content is another factor that can hurt your SEO performance. Search engines struggle when multiple pages with similar or identical content exist, as they don’t know which one to prioritize. Use tools like Siteliner or Copyscape to identify duplicate content on your site. Once found, you can either consolidate similar pages or use canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of the content.
6. Implement Structured Data
Structured data, or schema markup, helps search engines better understand your content, leading to improved visibility in search results. For example, adding structured data can make your site eligible for rich snippets, such as star ratings, FAQs, or event information.
Use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to create and validate structured data on your site. Common types of schema include:
- Article schema for blog posts and news articles
- Product schema for ecommerce sites
- Review schema for star ratings and user feedback
Structured data won’t directly improve your rankings, but it can boost your click-through rates and provide a richer user experience on the SERPs.
7. Evaluate HTTPS and Security
Website security has become an essential ranking factor, especially with Google now labeling non-HTTPS sites as “Not Secure.” Make sure your website is protected with an SSL certificate, which encrypts data and ensures secure connections for your users.
An HTTPS website also helps with user trust and privacy, critical elements in today’s digital landscape. After implementing SSL, check that all pages are accessible via HTTPS and that there aren’t any mixed content warnings, where some page elements still load over HTTP.
8. Audit On-Page SEO Elements
While not strictly a technical element, on-page SEO still deserves attention during your audit. This involves reviewing:
- Title tags: Are they unique, descriptive, and contain relevant keywords?
- Meta descriptions: While they don’t directly impact rankings, well-written meta descriptions can increase click-through rates.
- Header tags (H1, H2, etc.): Ensure proper use of headers to structure content and improve readability.
- Alt text for images: Search engines can’t “see” images, so alt text helps describe them, contributing to better image search rankings and accessibility.
By optimizing these elements, you make it easier for both search engines and users to navigate and understand your site’s content.
9. Monitor and Fix Site Errors Regularly
A one-time technical SEO audit won’t suffice in the ever-changing world of SEO. Make it a habit to regularly monitor your website using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or Semrush. These tools provide real-time updates on issues, allowing you to fix them before they escalate.
Regular audits also ensure that any updates to your website—whether from new content, plugins, or structural changes—don’t unintentionally cause issues that could harm your SEO.
Conclusion
Performing a technical SEO audit might seem daunting, but it’s an essential task for maintaining the health and performance of your website. From crawling for errors to ensuring mobile-friendliness, speed optimization, and security, each step plays a critical role in how search engines view and rank your site.
Remember, technical SEO isn’t a one-and-done process. It’s a continual effort to improve your site, adapt to new SEO trends, and ensure your content is easily accessible to both search engines and users. By performing regular audits, you can stay ahead of potential problems and keep your website optimized for long-term success.