How to Run a Technical SEO Audit Properly

A technical SEO audit has one core job: make sure no technical issues prevent or interfere with crawling and indexing. Everything else, from scores to checklists, is support for that goal. Tools find issues; experience and expertise decide which issues matter for the site in front of you.

What Is a Technical SEO Audit?

A technical SEO audit is a structured review that confirms no technical issues prevent or interfere with crawling and indexing of a website. It uses checklists and guidelines as a starting point, but adapting those guidelines to the audited site requires experience and expertise. Generic scores and limits on numbers, Martin Splitt notes in the Google Search Central Lightning Talk from November 2025, are often hard to interpret and may not make sense at all.

The audit is only useful when findings are evaluated in the context of the specific website. A high number of 404 responses, for example, is expected right after a large content removal; an unexplained rise in 404s is worth investigating. Same signal, different meaning.

The Three Steps of a Technical SEO Audit

A technical SEO audit needs to do three things, in this order:

1. Identify potential issues using tools and guidelines, adapted to the site's technology basis.
2. Create a tailored report that makes sense of the data for the specific site.
3. Make recommendations based on that site's actual needs.

The sequence matters. You first need to understand how the site works at the technology level, then examine it with the right tools, and only then judge and prioritize what you found. Tools and guidelines identify issues; experience decides whether an issue is a problem for this particular site.

What to Check During the Audit

The specific checks vary by site, but the November 2025 Lightning Talk names a core set of areas every audit should cover. Each has a natural tool:

Check	What it reveals	Where to look
Routing and network issues	Server and connectivity problems	Browser, server logs
HTTP headers and metadata	Certificate validity, response headers	Browser developer tools
Redirect chains and loops	Wasted crawl budget, slow redirects	Crawling tools
Canonicalization and linking	Duplicate content, broken link structure	Crawling tools
Crawler interaction	How the server responds to Googlebot	Search Console Crawl Stats report
Markup and rendering	JavaScript and structured data problems	Rendering tools, browser

Crawling tools identify redirect chains, loops, and linking issues quickly. HTTPS certificates and header information can be checked directly in your browser. Google Search Console, Google's free toolset for site owners, offers the Crawl Stats report to see how your server interacts with Google bots.

Why Tool Scores Alone Do Not Work

Audit tools often output a graphic overview with scores and priority ratings, and sometimes long reports with arbitrary limits on numbers. Splitt's warning is direct: do not follow your tools blindly. A finding only becomes actionable once you can explain what it means for the website in question.

Two examples show the difference. A spike in 404 responses after removing a lot of content is a normal consequence, not a problem. An unexplained rise in 404s is a signal to investigate: where does it come from, and how can it be fixed? The tool reports both the same way; the auditor separates them.

Prioritizing Fixes by Effort and Impact

Prioritization is what turns a findings list into a plan. The method from the talk groups findings according to two dimensions: the amount of effort a fix requires and the amount of impact it will have. Low-effort, high-impact fixes come first; arbitrary report ordering never does.

Talking to the people who know the site and its technology helps here. They can confirm whether an evaluation makes sense given how the site is actually built, which prevents the audit from recommending fixes that are impossible or pointless in the current architecture.

Audits for Specific Site Types

There are more aspects to check than any single audit lists, and the specifics depend on the site. An international site with different language versions should include an hreflang audit, verifying that the language and regional annotations are correct. A single-language website gains nothing from that check.

The same logic applies everywhere: pick checks that match the site's technology and audience. An audit that copies a universal checklist without this filtering produces noise, not priorities.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What are the three steps of a technical SEO audit? Identify potential issues with tools and guidelines, create a report tailored to the specific site, and make recommendations based on that site's needs. Understanding the site's technology comes before all three steps.

• Which tools does Google recommend for a technical SEO audit? Martin Splitt points to crawling tools for redirect chains, loops, and linking issues, the browser for HTTP headers and certificate checks, and the Search Console Crawl Stats report for how the server interacts with Google bots.

• Are many 404 errors a problem in an audit? Not automatically. A high number of 404s is expected after removing a lot of content. An unexplained rise in 404 responses is what deserves investigation.

• Does every site need an hreflang audit? No. An hreflang audit makes sense for international sites with different language versions. For a single-language website it adds nothing and should be skipped.

• How should audit findings be prioritized? Group them by the effort a fix requires and the impact it will have, starting with low-effort, high-impact fixes. Talking to people familiar with the site helps confirm the evaluation makes sense.

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