No matter how good your content is, technical SEO problems can keep it from ever ranking. Search engines must be able to crawl, understand and index your pages - and many sites fail this quietly. Here is a 15-point technical SEO audit you can run yourself.

Table of Contents

Crawlability and Indexing

  1. Submit an XML sitemap and check it in Search Console.
  2. Review robots.txt - make sure it is not blocking important pages.
  3. Fix 404 errors and set up proper redirects for moved pages.
  4. Check for duplicate content and set canonical tags.
  5. Confirm important pages are indexed; request indexing for new ones.

Speed and Mobile

  1. Test Core Web Vitals on mobile and desktop.
  2. Ensure your site is fully mobile-friendly (Google is mobile-first).
  3. Check that images and videos are compressed and lazy-loaded.
  4. Enable HTTPS everywhere and fix any mixed-content warnings.
  5. Use fast hosting with caching to keep speeds high.

Content and Structure

  1. Confirm clean, logical URL structure with keywords.
  2. Check heading hierarchy - one H1, logical H2/H3.
  3. Ensure title tags and meta descriptions are complete and unique.
  4. Add structured data (schema) for articles, products, FAQ and breadcrumbs.
  5. Review internal linking - every page should be reachable within a few clicks.

Frequently Asked Questions

What tools can I use for a technical audit?

Google Search Console is free and essential. Screaming Frog (free for 500 URLs), PageSpeed Insights and a crawl tool like Sitebulb cover most checks.

Which technical issue hurts SEO most?

Unindexable pages and slow Core Web Vitals hurt most. Fix coverage errors first, then speed, then the rest.

Your technical foundation decides how much of your content effort pays off. Audit it, fix the issues, and let every other SEO effort actually count.