How to Use This Technical SEO Audit Checklist
This checklist is designed to be worked through systematically. Each section covers a distinct area of technical SEO, and each item can be marked as Pass, Fail, or N/A for your site. All Fail items should be added to your technical SEO fix backlog, prioritized by their potential impact.
For a complete walkthrough of how to perform each audit step, read our technical SEO audit guide. If you'd rather have our team conduct a professional audit, contact us for a free consultation.
1. Crawlability & Robots.txt (15 checks)
☐robots.txt file exists and is accessible at /robots.txt
☐robots.txt does not block Googlebot from crawling CSS files
☐robots.txt does not block Googlebot from crawling JavaScript files
☐robots.txt does not block Googlebot from crawling image directories
☐Crawl directives are correctly formatted (User-agent: Googlebot vs. User-agent: *)
☐XML sitemap is referenced in robots.txt
☐No important page paths are accidentally disallowed
☐robots.txt has been tested with Google's robots.txt Tester in Search Console
☐Crawl-delay directive is not set (can reduce Googlebot's crawl rate)
☐No staging/development environment URLs are leaking into robots.txt
☐Disallowed pages are not being linked to from important pages
☐No critical JavaScript APIs are blocked by robots.txt
☐robots.txt is being served with 200 status (not 404 or 500)
☐robots.txt size is under 500KB (Google's limit)
☐Log file analysis confirms Googlebot crawl rate is appropriate for site size
2. Indexation Health (20 checks)
☐All important pages return 200 HTTP status code
☐No important pages have meta robots noindex tags
☐No important pages have X-Robots-Tag: noindex HTTP headers
☐Indexable URL count roughly matches expected site size
☐No staging/test URLs are appearing in Google's index
☐Google Search Console Coverage report shows no unexpected "Valid" URLs
☐Google Search Console Coverage report shows no unexpected "Excluded" URLs
☐All pages in XML sitemap are indexable (no noindex pages in sitemap)
☐All pages in XML sitemap return 200 status (no redirects or 4xx in sitemap)
☐XML sitemap URLs match the canonical URLs of each page
☐Multiple XML sitemaps use a sitemap index file
☐Sitemap lastmod dates are accurate and maintained
☐Google Search Console shows sitemap processed successfully
☐"Crawled - currently not indexed" URLs have been investigated and addressed
☐"Discovered - currently not indexed" URLs have been investigated
☐Soft 404 pages have been identified and resolved
☐Pagination URLs have correct rel="next"/rel="prev" or are canonicalized
☐Faceted navigation URLs are properly handled (noindex, canonical, or disallow)
☐URL parameters are configured in Google Search Console
☐Hreflang alternate pages are indexable and correctly configured
3. Canonical Tags (10 checks)
☐All important pages have a self-referential canonical tag
☐Canonical tags point to the HTTPS version (not HTTP)
☐Canonical tags use consistent subdomain (www vs. non-www)
☐No canonical chains exist (A→B→C should be A→A)
☐Paginated pages correctly canonical to themselves (not page 1)
☐Print and mobile versions canonical to the main page
☐URL parameter variations canonical to the canonical URL
☐Canonical tags in <head> (not <body>)
☐Canonical URL matches the URL exactly (no trailing slash inconsistencies)
☐No conflicting canonical signals (HTTP header vs. HTML tag disagreement)
4. Site Architecture & Internal Linking (15 checks)
☐No important page is more than 3 clicks from the homepage
☐All important pages have at least one internal link pointing to them
☐No orphan pages exist (zero internal links)
☐Internal links use descriptive anchor text (not "click here")
☐Navigation breadcrumbs exist on all interior pages
☐Breadcrumbs use BreadcrumbList schema markup
☐No redirect chains in internal links (all internal links point to final URLs)
☐No broken internal links (404-returning pages linked from other pages)
☐XML sitemap is well-organized and segmented by content type
☐Footer links include key section pages
☐Related content links exist within article/product pages
☐Category/hub pages exist and link to child pages
☐Crawl depth report shows no important pages at depth 5+
☐Faceted navigation does not create crawl traps
☐Pagination is handled correctly (numbered, infinite scroll, or load more)
5. Core Web Vitals (20 checks)
☐Mobile LCP is under 2.5 seconds (field data in Search Console)
☐Desktop LCP is under 2.5 seconds (field data in Search Console)
☐INP is under 200ms for all measured pages
☐CLS is under 0.1 for all measured pages
☐LCP image is served in WebP or AVIF format
☐LCP image has fetchpriority="high" attribute
☐LCP image is not lazy-loaded
☐LCP image is preloaded in <head>
☐All images have explicit width and height attributes
☐All images are properly compressed (no images over 200KB without justification)
☐No render-blocking JavaScript in <head>
☐Critical CSS is inlined; non-critical CSS is deferred
☐Third-party scripts are loaded asynchronously or deferred
☐Server TTFB is under 600ms
☐A CDN is in use and properly configured
☐HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 is enabled
☐Browser caching is properly configured
☐No layout shifts from unspecified ad/embed dimensions
☐Web fonts use font-display: optional or font-display: swap
☐No JavaScript long tasks over 50ms on mobile devices
6. HTTPS & Security (10 checks)
☐Site serves on HTTPS (all pages return HTTPS URLs)
☐HTTP URLs 301 redirect to HTTPS equivalents
☐No mixed content warnings (HTTP resources on HTTPS pages)
☐SSL certificate is valid and not expired
☐HSTS header is configured
☐Security headers are present (X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options)
☐www redirects to non-www (or vice versa) consistently
☐Trailing slash consistency is enforced site-wide
☐No open redirects exist that could be exploited
☐CSP (Content Security Policy) header is configured
7. Structured Data (15 checks)
☐Organization schema is implemented on homepage
☐BreadcrumbList schema on all interior pages
☐Article/BlogPosting schema on all blog posts
☐Product schema on all product pages (with price, availability, reviews)
☐FAQPage schema on FAQ pages and relevant service pages
☐LocalBusiness schema if applicable
☐Service schema on service pages
☐HowTo schema on instructional content
☐All schema validated with Google Rich Results Test
☐All schema validated with Schema Markup Validator
☐No schema errors or warnings in Search Console Enhancement reports
☐Schema content matches visible page content exactly
☐JSON-LD format used (not microdata or RDFa)
☐No prohibited schema practices (review gating, fake ratings)
☐Video schema on video content pages
Need a Professional Audit?
This checklist covers the most important technical SEO signals, but conducting a thorough audit requires specialist tools and expert interpretation that goes beyond any checklist. Our professional technical SEO site audit service covers all 150+ signals and produces a prioritized, actionable roadmap — not just a list of issues.