According to Search Engine Journal, 49% of marketers believe organic search delivers the best return on investment. However, most companies lack this potential because of technical issues that render their website uncrawlable and, hence, invisible in search engine results pages (SERPs).
While on-page search engine optimization (SEO) addresses the content and off-page SEO addresses backlinks, technical SEO focuses on your site’s backend elements. It handles how the site will be crawled and indexed right by the search engines with optimized sitemaps, page speed, URL structure, navigation, and other backend elements.
It doesn’t matter if a site is well-designed and contains good content because it will never be able to reach its audience without technical optimization.
Our comprehensive technical SEO audit checklist will help identify and fix these issues.
Site Architecture and URL Strategy
A clear hierarchy and well-connected pages make it easier for visitors to find information. Plus, intuitive and logical navigation elements like breadcrumbs reflect this structure and guide users smoothly.
A Komarketing survey found that over 30% of users leave sites due to poor navigation and design. This emphasizes the need for a good site structure.
Search engine spiders rely on internal links to crawl and index your site. Link equity, or “link juice,” is the authority passed between pages through these links. When a high-authority page links to another, it boosts that page’s visibility.
SEO expert Ethan Smith stresses the importance of linking lower-traffic pages closer to high-authority “crawl points”—high-performing pages with substantial traffic and authority. That way, these lower-traffic pages can benefit more from link equity and rank higher.
Additionally, addressing broken links and orphaned pages is vital for maintaining smooth link equity flow and overall SEO health.
A clear and consistent URL structure also helps users and search engines easily follow and understand your content. You can use subdirectories or subfolders to show page locations.
Enhancing Page Load and Performance Metrics
Google has confirmed that page speed impacts search rankings, particularly regarding page experience. This means that a fast-loading site retains visitors and improves SEO, while slow-loading pages drive users away and result in a high bounce rate.
Page speed is important for achieving smooth site performance. Some of the most critical metrics to judge page performance are from Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV):
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): It measures how much content shifts during a load. Scores under 0.1 prevent noticeable shifts.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): It measures how much content shifts during a load. Scores under 0.1 prevent noticeable shifts.
- First Input Delay (FID): A metric measuring how long a user can input something and when a site reacts. The mark to hit is under 100 milliseconds.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): A metric of measuring time between an interactive user action and the next paint. Its target is less than 200 milliseconds.
The following are some ways to improve these metrics:
- Improve LCP through file size reduction.
- Use stable animations to reduce CLS.
- Use server-side rendering (SSR) to improve FID.
- Implement smaller task chunks that improve INP.
Vodafone’s 2021 case study shows real-life value from CWV optimization. By improving CWV, Vodafone saw a 31% boost in LCP and an 8% boost in sales.
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Crawling and Indexing Capabilities
Enhancing crawling and indexing on your site will improve your search engine rankings and visibility for important keywords.
The robots.txt file instructs the crawlers with commands regarding what part of your site to access and what not to access. For instance, “Disallow:/” blocks the entire site, while “Disallow: /login/” restricts specific directories.
Be cautious with robots.txt, as it can unintentionally block all pages if not configured correctly, affecting content accessibility. To fully exclude a page from organic search results, use the robots meta tag “<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />.”
As Ahrefs expresses, the robot’s meta tag is a piece of HTML code in the <head> part that tells the search engines how to treat a page.
Applying such tags properly guarantees that search engines process your site how you want them to. This optimizes your crawl budget and the number of pages a bot crawls and indexes over time.
Maximize your crawl budget further by updating your XML sitemap and removing low-value URLs, such as low-quality or spam content, faceted navigation, and infinite spaces and proxies.
Mobile Optimization
As of July 2024, a staggering 59% of global web traffic is mobile, according to Oberlo. This triggers the urgent need for mobile-friendly websites to maintain visibility in search rankings.
Google’s switch to mobile-first indexing in 2016, favouring mobile versions for indexing and ranking, makes mobile optimization non-negotiable. Sites lacking mobile friendliness risk poor search result placement.
Responsive web design is an effective strategy that lets your website adapt to different orientations, screen sizes, and devices through flexible images, layouts, and media queries so that it looks and functions well everywhere.
It also keeps things simple by using the same URL for all content, with CSS adjusting the display to fit each device’s screen.
Response Code Analysis
When a browser requests a page, the server responds with a code telling the search engines and the users what’s up. These signals from your server are known as HTTP status codes.
As stated by Moz, some codes have a huge impact on SEO. They influence everything from site visibility to user experience. Thus, you have to treat them effectively and correctly, as they may mean the effectiveness of your site.
HTTP Status Code 404 – Not Found
The 404 code signals the server that it can’t find the requested page. To improve usability, instead of redirecting all pages with 404 errors to your homepage, implement 301 redirects of useful pages and tailor-made 404 error pages.
HTTP Status Codes 301 and 302 – Redirects
A 302 redirect will temporarily move a page, but it may not pass link equity. On the other hand, a 301 redirect permanently moves a page to a new URL. It guides users and bots well while transferring link equity to the new page.
Refining On-Page Elements
A technical SEO audit optimizes basic on-page SEO elements to boost site performance and keyword relevance. Much like fine-tuning a car engine, even top sites can get buried in organic search results without such improvements.
Your title tags, which are clickable headlines that appear in organic search results, should summarize what is on the page. They should be at most 60 characters in length, and the keywords should be placed early. Also, avoid keyword stuffing and make sure that the title actually reflects the purpose of that page.
Additionally, focus on meta descriptions. These brief summaries, appearing under the title in organic search results, should capture the page’s essence in 160 characters or fewer. Include the main keyword and make it compelling to encourage clicks.
Although meta descriptions don’t directly impact rankings, a well-crafted one can boost click-through rates by up to 6%, according to Moz. Leaving this field blank means Google will choose a description that may not be as effective.
Content Analysis and Enhancement
Index bloat is a major culprit when addressing technical issues related to a website’s indexable content. It’s a scenario where search engines index far too many unnecessary URLs. This is common in sprawling sites like e-commerce platforms, where it’s all too easy for the index to get cluttered. The fallout? Wasted crawl budgets, diluted keyword relevance, and eventually, a dip in visibility.
Keyword cannibalization is one of the primary factors contributing to index bloat. This issue arises when multiple pages compete for the same keyword, leaving them all struggling to rank.
Addressing this issue might involve updating competing pages, redirecting the weaker ones, or combining several into a single, more powerful resource. HubSpot prominently tackled this by merging similar blog posts into more comprehensive guides.
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Common Tools for Technical SEO Audits
Technical SEO tasks, such as ensuring your site meets Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV), require specialized tools that provide accurate data and reduce guesswork. Some of the most widely used tools for technical SEO audits include Google Search Console (GSC), Screaming Frog SEO Spider, SEMrush’s Site Audit. Each of these tools offers unique features that help identify and address key SEO issues, from crawl errors to site performance optimization.
Google Search Console
For technical SEO, a free tool like GSC is invaluable. It offers an in-depth look at your website’s performance. GSC helps you keep track of keyword rankings, evaluate backlinks, and spot any indexing issues.
For example, the Index Coverage Report shows which pages are indexed by Google and highlights problems like an ‘excluded by noindex tag,’ meaning a page’s HTML is blocking it from showing up in the SERPs.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a multi-purpose desktop app that smoothly handles everything from basic website crawls to complex tasks like analyzing JavaScript and resolving nuanced issues such as canonicalization and hreflang.
The app also enables custom data extraction using XPath, automatically generates XML sitemaps, and integrates effortlessly with Google Analytics and GSC.
SEMrush’s Site Audit Tool
SEMrush’s Site Audit tool dives deep into every page of your website. It provides reports on crawlability, site performance, internal linking, and more. You’ll also receive a prioritized list of issues with straightforward recommendations on how to fix them. With export options, sharing this information with your team or clients is a breeze.
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Key Takeaways
Terms such as “technical,” “crawling,” and “indexing” tend to intimidate and cause many people to avoid technical SEO altogether. However, that is less than threatening buzzwords for what can be pretty overwhelming.
Those behind-the-scenes elements are often the unsung heroes of your digital dominance. Our detailed SEO audit checklist underlines the important yet often unnoticed pieces that mould and shape your site’s visibility, user experience, and business growth.
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