A technical SEO audit isn't a mystical agency ritual — it's a systematic pass over the things that stop search engines from crawling, understanding and ranking your site. You can do the core of it yourself. Here's the version I actually run, grouped so you can work top to bottom.
What a technical audit covers
Separate technical SEO from content SEO. A technical audit answers: can search engines reach every page you care about, render it, understand it, and do so quickly? It doesn't judge whether your copy is good — it makes sure good copy isn't being wasted behind a technical wall.
Crawlability & indexing
Start here, because nothing else matters if pages can't be crawled or indexed. Check: is robots.txt accidentally blocking anything important? Is your sitemap current and free of redirects and errors? Are any pages carrying a stray noindex? Do your canonicals point where they should? And in Search Console, what's sitting in "crawled – currently not indexed"?
On-page & content
Next, the per-page signals. Every indexable page needs a unique, well-sized title tag and meta description, a single clear H1 and logical heading outline, descriptive internal links, and images with alt text. Missing or duplicated titles are the single most common finding — and the easiest win.
Performance
Slow pages get crawled less and convert worse. Pull your Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) from real-user data in Search Console, then use Lighthouse to find the causes — oversized images, render-blocking scripts, slow server response. See page speed optimization for the fixes.
Structured data & meta
Confirm your JSON-LD is present, valid, and matches the visible page, and that your Open Graph tags render a proper share card. These don't fix crawling, but they're how you earn richer, more clickable listings once the basics are solid.
A repeatable checklist
The value of an audit is repeating it — after every migration, redesign or CMS change. Work the five buckets above in order, page by page for your key templates. SEO Inspector covers most of the per-page checks in one click — title, meta, headings, canonical, robots, images, links, Open Graph, structured data, HTTP status and sitemap — so a full-page audit takes seconds instead of a spreadsheet.
