How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit: Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

Performing a technical SEO audit is an essential part of optimizing your website for search engines. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on content and keywords, technical SEO deals with the backend elements of your site, such as website structure, speed, security, and user experience. A comprehensive audit ensures your website is technically sound, making it easier for search engines to crawl, index, and rank your pages. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of performing a technical SEO audit step by step, even if you’re a beginner.

“IN TODAY’S WORLD, ENDPOINT PROTECTION IS NO LONGER A LUXURY; IT’S A NECESSITY. FAILING TO SECURE ENDPOINTS IS LIKE LEAVING THE FRONT DOOR OPEN FOR CYBERCRIMINALS, EXPOSING BUSINESSES TO THEFT, DISRUPTION, AND FINANCIAL LOSS.”

Raj Samani, Chief Scientist at McAfee

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO refers to the process of optimizing the technical aspects of your website to help search engines crawl and index your pages effectively. The goal is to ensure that your website is accessible, easy to navigate, and free of errors that may affect search engine rankings. A technical SEO audit evaluates your website’s performance, security, and structure to identify areas of improvement.

Step 1: Crawl Your Website

The first step in a technical SEO audit is crawling your website. Crawling is the process search engines use to explore your website and index your pages. To understand how search engines see your site, you’ll need to use a website crawling tool.

Tools to use:

• Screaming Frog: This tool allows you to crawl your site and generate a report on issues like broken links, missing meta descriptions, or duplicate content.
• Sitebulb: A desktop application that analyzes your site’s SEO health, including site structure and content analysis.

Key things to look for:

• Broken links: Links that lead to 404 error pages can harm your site’s user experience and SEO. Fixing broken links is essential.
• Redirect chains: Multiple redirects (e.g., page A → page B → page C) can slow down your website. They should be minimized to one redirect.
• Orphan pages: These are pages that aren’t linked to by any other pages on your site, making them harder for search engines to find.

Step 2: Check Your Site’s Speed

Website speed is a crucial ranking factor for Google. A slow-loading website can negatively affect user experience and your rankings in search results. Google’s Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, and CLS) measure the user experience related to loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.

How to check site speed:

• Google PageSpeed Insights: This tool provides a score for both desktop and mobile versions of your site and suggests fixes.
• GTMetrix: It analyzes your website speed and offers suggestions to improve performance.
• WebPageTest: A more detailed tool for testing page load times, including suggestions for performance improvements.

Things to check:

• Image optimization: Large images can slow down your site. Use compression tools to reduce file sizes without losing quality.
• Server response time: Ensure your hosting provider offers a fast server response time (under 200ms).
• Minification of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML: Minifying these files reduces their size and boosts site speed.

Step 3: Review Mobile-Friendliness

In today’s mobile-first world, Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites. A mobile-friendly site improves the user experience and is essential for ranking high on search results.

Tools to check mobile usability:

• Google Mobile-Friendly Test: Enter your URL to check if your site is mobile-friendly. If it isn’t, Google will show you issues that need fixing.
• Google Search Console: The Mobile Usability report in Search Console provides detailed issues like clickable elements being too close together or content being wider than the screen.

What to look for:

• Responsive design: Your site should automatically adjust to different screen sizes (mobile, tablet, desktop).
• Touchscreen compatibility: Make sure buttons, links, and other elements are easily clickable on mobile devices.
• Text readability: Text should be legible on all devices, so use an appropriate font size and line spacing.

Step 4: Check for Secure Connection (HTTPS)

Security is not only important for protecting your users but is also a ranking factor for search engines. Websites that use HTTPS are seen as more secure, and Google gives them a ranking boost.

How to check for HTTPS:

• Simply check if your website URL begins with “https://” in the browser address bar. If not, you need to install an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate.

Things to address:

• Mixed content issues: Sometimes, parts of your website (like images or scripts) may still be served over HTTP even if your site is HTTPS. Ensure all content is loaded over HTTPS to avoid security warnings.
• SSL certificate: If your site doesn’t have an SSL certificate, contact your hosting provider to install one. Many hosts offer free SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt.

Step 5: Evaluate Site Structure and Internal Linking

The structure of your website plays a big role in SEO. A well-organized site is easier for search engines to crawl and users to navigate.

Things to check:

• URL structure: URLs should be short, descriptive, and include relevant keywords. For example, www.example.com/seo-guide is better than www.example.com/p12345.
• Breadcrumb navigation: Breadcrumbs are links at the top of your pages that help users and search engines understand the structure of your site.
• Internal linking: Ensure that you are linking to important pages on your site. This helps search engines discover new content and improves the user experience by keeping them engaged.

Tools to help:

• Screaming Frog: You can use it to analyze your internal linking structure and check for orphan pages.
• Google Search Console: The “Links” section provides a breakdown of your site’s internal and external links.

Step 6: Check Your Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml

The robots.txt file tells search engines which pages they can and cannot crawl, while the sitemap.xml file lists all the important pages on your site that you want search engines to index.

Things to check:

• Robots.txt: Ensure your robots.txt file isn’t blocking search engines from crawling important pages on your website. You can test this in Google Search Console under the “robots.txt Tester” tool.
• Sitemap.xml: Make sure your sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console and that it’s updated. The sitemap should include all important pages, such as blog posts, products, and category pages.

Tools to help:

• Google Search Console: Use the “Sitemaps” report to check the status of your sitemap submission.
• XML-Sitemaps.com: A free tool to generate a sitemap if you don’t have one.

Step 7: Review Your Website’s Indexability

A website is only useful if its pages are indexed by search engines. The indexability of your site refers to whether search engines can crawl and index the pages.

How to check indexability:

• Use Google Search Console to view the “Coverage” report. This will show you which pages are indexed and which pages have issues (such as crawl errors).
• Perform a site search in Google by typing site:yourdomain.com. This will show you how many pages are indexed and give you a sense of your site’s visibility in search results.

Common issues:

• Noindex tags: Make sure important pages don’t have a “noindex” directive that would prevent them from being indexed.
• Duplicate content: If Google detects duplicate content, it may choose not to index some pages. Ensure you use canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page.

Step 8: Analyze Structured Data (Schema Markup)

Structured data helps search engines understand your content and can lead to rich snippets in search results (e.g., star ratings, product info, etc.).

How to check structured data:

• Use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to ensure that your pages are properly marked up with schema.org tags.
• Review pages for missing or incomplete structured data, particularly for products, reviews, and events.

Step 9: Monitor and Fix Crawl Errors

Using Google Search Console, you can see any crawl errors that may be affecting your website. Crawl errors indicate that search engines couldn’t access some of your pages.

Common errors:

• 404 errors: These are broken links. Either fix them with redirects or remove them.
• Soft 404 errors: These occur when a page appears to be 404, but the server returns a “not found” response instead of a 404 code.
• Server errors (5xx): These indicate issues with your web hosting. Check with your hosting provider to resolve them.

Conclusion

A technical SEO audit may seem overwhelming at first, but by breaking it down into manageable steps, you can significantly improve your website’s performance, security, and ranking potential. By focusing on factors like site speed, mobile usability, secure connections, and crawlability, you ensure that your website is in top shape for both search engines and users. Regular technical SEO audits will help you stay ahead of the competition and maintain a website that performs well in search engine results.