A technical SEO audit is a structured review of how easily search engines can discover, render, and index your website and how quickly real users can load and interact with it. The outcome isn’t just a list of issues; it’s a prioritised roadmap that fixes the right problems in the right order to grow organic traffic and conversions.

What exactly is a technical SEO audit?

A technical SEO audit assesses the infrastructure of your site, its code, templates, and delivery, so search engines and users get the best possible experience. It focuses on:

• Crawlability & indexation: robots.txt, meta robots, canonicals, XML sitemaps, parameters.

• Site architecture: URL structure, internal linking, navigation depth, pagination, orphan pages.

• Performance & Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP, CLS, caching, image optimisation, JS/CSS efficiency.

• Rendering & JavaScript SEO: SSR/CSR balance, hydration, blocked assets, link discoverability.

• Duplication & consolidation: canonical signals, parameters, tag/category bloat, soft 404s.

• Internationalisation: hreflang, regional URL strategy, language parity.

• Security & platform hygiene: HTTPS, redirect rules, mixed content, headers.

• Structured data: schema coverage, validation, enhancements.

• Log files & crawl efficiency: how bots actually spend crawl budget.

Why technical SEO matters to the business

Technical SEO turns your website into a reliable growth engine.

When pages are easy to crawl, correctly indexed, and quick to load, they win more impressions, climb the SERPs, and convert more visitors, so you get more qualified traffic without inflating ad spend. The same fixes that lift rankings also improve user experience: faster, stable pages reduce bounce, increase engagement, and nudge more users toward checkout or enquiry. Audits also protect revenue by catching risks early, migration mistakes, duplicate-content loops, JS rendering gaps, before they trigger traffic drops.

Crucially, a good technical SEO audit doesn’t just point at problems, it translates them into clear, prioritised engineering tickets with owners, effort estimates, and expected impact, so teams can ship confidently and measure the results.

• More qualified traffic: If the right pages are crawlable, indexable, and fast, they’re more likely to rank and convert.
• Better UX = better SEO: Faster, stable pages improve engagement, which supports visibility.
• Risk reduction: Audits catch migration pitfalls, duplicate content loops, and rendering issues before they tank performance.
• Developer clarity: A good audit translates SEO into clear tickets with owners, effort, and impact.

What the audit covers (in-depth)

1) Crawlability & indexation

• Validate robots.txt rules and meta directives (noindex/nofollow).

• Ensure XML sitemaps are clean, current, and limited to canonical, indexable URLs.

• Align canonicals, internal links, and sitemaps to send a single, consistent signal.

2) Site architecture & internal linking

• Keep money pages close to the homepage and major hubs.

• Fix orphan pages and circular pagination.

• Tidy faceted navigation and parameter handling to avoid infinite URL spaces.

3) Performance & Core Web Vitals

• Template-level analysis (homepage, category, product, blog, hub pages).

• Improve LCP (media, server time, critical CSS), reduce CLS (dimensioning, font strategy), and cut INP (trim long tasks, defer non-critical JS).

4) Rendering & JavaScript SEO

• Ensure critical content and links are available to crawlers (SSR or reliable prerendering).

• Avoid blocking resources; confirm parity between rendered HTML and what users see.

5) Duplication & consolidation

• De-duplicate near-identical pages with canonicals or redirects.

• Resolve soft 404 patterns and thin tag/category archives.

6) Internationalisation (if applicable)

• Check hreflang completeness, self-references, and correct region mapping.

• Prevent mixed-language duplicates and wrong-region ranking.

7) Security & platform hygiene

• Enforce HTTPS and HSTS, remove mixed content, and shorten redirect chains.

• Standardise trailing slashes and casing.

8) Structured data

• Implement schema for products, articles, breadcrumbs, FAQs, organisation details.

• Validate and monitor for errors and eligibility changes.

9) Logs & crawl budget

• Use server logs to confirm bots reach priority URLs frequently and efficiently.

• Remove dead-ends, tidy legacy folders, and eliminate crawl traps.

How a technical SEO audit is run (step-by-step)

1. Discovery & objectives: Business goals, revenue pages, growth targets, tech stack, release cadence.

2. Data collection: Full mobile-first crawl (JS-rendered where needed), GSC/GA4 exports, CWV/CrUX, server logs.

3. Diagnosis: Map issues to impact (traffic, revenue, risk), identify root causes by template and component.

4. Prioritisation: Now/next/later by impact × effort, with clear owners (dev, content, platform).

5. Fix plan: Write dev-ready tickets, acceptance criteria, and QA steps.

6. Release & QA: Ship in batches, validate in GSC, re-crawl, verify metrics.

7. Measurement: Track rankings, sessions, conversions, and CWV by template.

8. Iteration: Fold learnings into sprints; monitor regressions.

When should you run a technical SEO audit?

• Before or after a migration/replatforming: In order to protect traffic and verify redirects, parity, and coverage. If a move is on the roadmap, partner with a specialist SEO migration agency.

• After a significant traffic drop: You must separate technical causes from algorithmic or content issues.

• On a regular cadence: Every 6–12 months for most sites; quarterly for large or fast-changing estates.

• When scaling internationally: Make sure to validate hreflang and architecture before rollout.

Platform-specific guidance

Shopify

• Manage filter/parameter URLs and collection pagination.

• Audit app bloat and unused scripts.

• Optimise theme assets and image delivery.

For hands-on support, see our dedicated Shopify SEO services.

WordPress

• Control plugin quality and front-end payloads.

• Optimise media, lazy loading, and archive/tag structures.

• Harden redirects and avoid mixed content after site changes.

If you’re on WP, our WordPress SEO services can streamline this.

What you should expect to receive

• Executive summary: what’s broken, why it matters, and projected impact.

• Issue catalogue: grouped by crawlability, architecture, performance, rendering, duplication, international, security, structured data.

• Prioritised roadmap: 90-day view with owners, effort, and deadlines.

• Measurement plan: dashboards and KPIs (rankings, sessions, conversions, CWV, index coverage).

• Implementation support: QA checklists and post-release validation.

How to measure success

• Visibility: rankings for priority keywords and categories.

• Traffic & engagement: organic sessions, CTR, engaged sessions, conversion rate.

• Indexation health: valid indexed pages vs. submitted, error trends in GSC.

• Speed & stability: Core Web Vitals passing rates by template.

• Crawl efficiency: logs show more bot hits on money pages and fewer on junk URLs.

Common pitfalls (and how to avoid them)

• Auditing without objectives: Tie every fix to a business goal and KPI.

• Endless issue lists: Prioritise ruthlessly; don’t block on low-impact edge cases.

• Ignoring templates: Fix the component once, not per-page.

• JS-only navigation: Ensure links are HTML-discoverable or robustly prerendered.

• Uncontrolled facets/parameters: Set rules early; avoid infinite indexation.

• No regression monitoring: Add alerting for 5XX spikes, CWV drops, and coverage errors.

Need expert help?

If you want an audit that turns into ship-ready fixes and measurable growth, we offer technical SEO services that can help, whether you’re in the middle of a replatforming, planning a migration, or scaling a high-growth store. Circulate are a Manchester SEO agency who work locally and nationally with many brands, helping them to improve and maintain their technical SEO