Running a website is cool, but sometimes the site becomes slow, pages do not appear in search results, or visitors leave quickly. Many website owners focus only on content and design, but forget the technical side of SEO. This is where a technical SEO audit becomes very important. A technical SEO audit helps you find hidden issues that affect your website performance, search engine ranking, and user experience.
It checks things like website speed, mobile friendliness, indexing, crawl errors, and website structure. When these technical issues are fixed, your website becomes faster, easier to use, and easier for search engines to understand. In this guide, you will learn everything about the technical SEO audit and how it helps improve your site performance and SEO rankings step by step.
How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit?
Performing a technical seo audit using CrawlHunt is a structured process that helps you analyze your website’s technical health, performance issues, crawlability, indexing problems, and SEO errors in one place. Instead of manually checking each page, CrawlHunt automates the entire audit and provides a complete overview along with detailed issue reports, page insights, and performance metrics.
Below is a step-by-step guide explaining each step in detail so you can understand not only what to do, but why you are doing it during a technical seo audit.
Step 1: Login or Sign Up
The first step in performing a technical seo audit is to log in or sign up on CrawlHunt. Once you create an account and log in, you will land on the dashboard. This dashboard is where all your SEO audit projects, reports, and crawl history will be stored. Think of this dashboard as the control panel for your entire technical seo audit process.
The dashboard allows you to manage multiple websites, run new audits, re-run audits after fixing issues, export reports, and monitor SEO score improvements over time. This is very useful because SEO is not a one-time process. A proper technical seo audit should be performed regularly to track improvements and detect new issues.
When you log in for the first time, the dashboard will be empty, and you will need to create a new project to start your audit.
Step 2: Create a New Project
After logging in, the next step in the technical seo audit process is to click on “Create New Project.” This step is very important because here you configure how the crawler will scan your website.
When creating a project, you will see several configuration options such as Website URL, Pages to Crawl, Crawl Schedule, Crawl Policy, and When to Start. Each of these settings determines how deep and accurate your technical seo audit will be.
First, you need to enter your Website URL, which is the domain you want to audit. Then you select Pages to Crawl, and it is recommended to select All Pages so that the crawler scans the entire website instead of just a few pages. A full crawl is essential for a complete technical seo audit because technical issues often exist on multiple pages across the site.
Next, you will set the crawl limit, for example, 50 pages, 100 pages, or more, depending on your website size. If your website is large and you crawl only a few pages, your technical seo audit will not be complete, so always try to crawl as many pages as possible.
Then you choose the Crawl Schedule, which can be one-time only or scheduled regularly. Scheduling weekly or monthly crawls is a best practice because technical SEO issues can appear anytime due to updates, plugins, theme changes, or server issues.
Step 3: Configure Crawl Policy Settings
After setting up the project basics, the next step in your technical seo audit is to configure the crawl policy. CrawlHunt, the best SEO audit tool, provides different crawl policies that control how the crawler navigates your website.
If you choose Everything, Follow all links, the crawler will scan all pages it finds through internal links. This is the best option for a complete technical seo audit because it ensures no page is missed.
If you choose robots.txt, Respect disallow rules, the crawler will follow your robots.txt file just like Google does. This is useful when you want the audit to reflect how search engines see your website.
If you choose sitemap.xml – Sitemap pages only, the crawler will only scan pages listed in your sitemap. This is useful for quick audits, but not ideal for a full technical seo audit because some pages may not be included in the sitemap.
After selecting the crawl policy, you choose when to start the crawl. You can either run it immediately or schedule it for later. Once everything is configured, click Create Project, and your technical seo audit crawl will begin.
Step 4: Run the Crawl and Review Results
Once the project is created, CrawlHunt which is an all in one SEO tool will start scanning your website. The crawler analyzes multiple technical SEO factors such as response codes, page speed, internal linking, images, headings, metadata, security headers, and more.
After the crawl is complete, you will see the results. If you feel the crawl did not capture everything properly or if you made changes to the website, you can click Run Again to re-crawl the site. Re-running the crawl is a common practice during a technical seo audit because after fixing issues, you need to verify whether the issues are resolved.
When the crawl results look correct, click View to open the full audit report and dashboard overview.
Step 5: Analyze the Overview Dashboard
The overview dashboard is one of the most important parts of a technical seo audit because it gives you a summary of your entire website’s technical health.
In the overview section, you will see metrics such as:
- SEO Score
- Total Pages Crawled
- Pages with Issues
- Broken Links
- Duplicate Content
- HTTPS Coverage
- Mobile Friendliness
- Average Response Time
- Site Health Score
The SEO Score represents the overall health of your website. For example, if your score is 69%, it means your website has several technical issues that need improvement. The Pages with Issues metric tells you how many pages have technical SEO problems. The Broken Links section shows pages that lead to 404 errors, which negatively affect user experience and SEO.
The Mobile-Friendly score is extremely important because Google uses mobile-first indexing. If your website is not mobile-friendly, your rankings may suffer even if your desktop version is perfect. This is why checking mobile usability is an important part of a technical seo audit.
The Average Response Time shows how fast your server responds. A slow server response time can negatively affect both user experience and search engine rankings.
Step 6: Review Crawled Pages and Site Structure
The next step in your technical seo audit is to review the crawled pages section. This section shows how many pages are healthy, broken, redirected, or have issues. You can also use the On page SEO audit report to analyze individual page performance and identify issues affecting your overall site structure.
For example, the report may show:
- Healthy pages
- Broken pages
- Pages with issues
- Redirect pages
- Blocked pages
If there are too many redirects, it may indicate redirect chains or outdated URLs. If there are many pages with issues, it means your website needs technical optimization. This section helps you understand your website structure and technical health during the technical seo audit.
Step 7: Analyze the Issues Section
After reviewing the overview, the next step in the technical seo audit is to click on the Issues section. This section shows a complete list of all SEO issues found during the crawl.
The issues are categorized into:
- Errors (High Priority)
- Warnings (Medium Priority)
- Opportunities (Low Priority)
High-priority errors include things like internal client errors (4xx), slow response time, and missing meta descriptions. These issues should be fixed first because they directly impact SEO performance.
Warnings include issues like missing security headers, duplicate headings, and multiple H2 tags. These issues are important, but not as critical as errors.
Opportunities include improvements such as missing alt text, long meta descriptions, and missing canonical tags. These are optimization opportunities that can improve SEO performance further.
This issues section is the core part of a technical seo audit because this is where you identify what needs to be fixed.
Step 8: View URLs and Page-Level Details
When you click View URLs next to any issue, CrawlHunt shows all pages affected by that issue. This allows you to perform a page-level technical seo audit.
For each page, you can see:
- URL
- Status Code
- Redirect URL
- Content Type
- Images
- H1 Tags
- Response Time
- SEO Score
- Inlinks
- Outlinks
- Issues
You can click on any URL to open Page Details, where you can see deeper insights such as canonical tags, schema, redirect information, indexability, and SEO score. This helps you analyze individual pages and fix specific technical issues.
Step 9: Review PageSpeed Insights and Core Web Vitals
SEO Analysis tools like CrawlHunt also provide PageSpeed Insights data, which is very important for performance optimization during a technical SEO audit.
You will see metrics like:
- Performance Score
- Accessibility Score
- Best Practices Score
- SEO Score
- First Contentful Paint
- Largest Contentful Paint
- Speed Index
- Core Web Vitals
These metrics help you understand how fast your website loads and how users experience your website. Improving performance and Core Web Vitals is a major part of a technical seo audit because Google uses these metrics as ranking factors.
Step 10: Export Reports and Fix Issues
The final step in the technical seo audit process is to export reports and start fixing issues. CrawlHunt allows you to export reports as CSV, Excel, or PDF. This is useful for SEO teams, developers, and website owners who need to work on fixing issues.
You should fix issues in this order:
- Fix Errors (4xx, slow response, broken links)
- Fix Warnings (missing meta descriptions, security headers)
- Fix Opportunities (alt text, headings, titles)
- Improve Page Speed
- Improve Mobile Friendliness
- Improve Internal Linking
- Optimize Images and CSS/JS
- Re-run the crawl to verify fixes
After fixing issues, run the crawl again to see if your SEO score improves. This continuous improvement process is what makes a technical seo audit effective.
Conclusion
A technical SEO audit is one of the most important steps to improve website performance, search engine ranking, and user experience. It helps you find technical issues like slow website speed, broken links, crawl errors, indexing problems, and mobile usability issues. When you fix these problems, your website becomes faster, more search engine-friendly, and easier for users to navigate. Understanding Common SEO mistakes to avoid is essential during a technical SEO audit, as it helps prevent issues like slow loading speed, broken links, and poor indexing that can harm your website’s performance.
A proper technical SEO audit also improves website traffic, SEO performance, and search visibility on Google. You should perform a technical SEO audit regularly to keep your website optimized and updated. In simple words, a technical SEO audit is the foundation of a strong SEO strategy, better website performance, higher rankings, and long-term SEO success for any website or online business.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is a technical SEO audit?
A technical SEO audit is a process of analyzing a website’s technical elements like speed, crawlability, indexing, and structure. It helps identify issues that may affect search rankings and overall site performance.
2. How often should I perform a technical SEO audit?
You should perform a technical SEO audit at least once every few months or after major website updates. Regular audits help catch new issues early and maintain consistent SEO performance.
3. Why is website speed important in a technical SEO audit?
Website speed directly impacts user experience and search engine rankings. A slow website can increase bounce rates and reduce your chances of ranking higher on search engines.
4. What are common issues found during a technical SEO audit?
Common issues include broken links, slow page speed, duplicate content, missing meta tags, and crawl errors. Fixing these issues improves both user experience and search engine visibility.
5. Can beginners perform a technical SEO audit?
Yes, beginners can perform a technical SEO audit using tools like CrawlHunt that simplify the process. These tools provide clear reports and insights, making it easier to understand and fix issues.