Technical SEO Audit Checklist: 15 Things to Check (2026)

You can write the best content on the internet, but if Google can't crawl it, render it, or understand it — none of it matters.

Technical SEO is the foundation everything else sits on. And most sites have issues they don't even know about.

This checklist covers the 15 things that actually matter when auditing a site's technical health. No fluff, no "make sure you have a website" advice — just the stuff that moves rankings.

Why bother with a technical SEO audit?

Three reasons:

1. Crawl budget is finite. Google won't crawl every page on your site. If you're wasting crawl budget on junk pages, your important content gets discovered slower.
2. Speed affects rankings directly. Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor. Slow pages lose positions to fast ones, all else equal.
3. Broken stuff compounds. One redirect chain becomes three. One orphaned page becomes fifty. Technical debt in SEO is real and it snowballs.

If you haven't audited your site in the last 6 months, you almost certainly have issues worth fixing.

The 15-point checklist

1. Crawlability: robots.txt

Check your robots.txt for accidental blocks. It's shocking how often a Disallow: / from a staging environment makes it to production.

What to check:

• Is your robots.txt accessible at yourdomain.com/robots.txt?
• Are important directories accidentally blocked?
• Is your sitemap URL listed?
• Are you blocking CSS/JS files that Googlebot needs for rendering?

2. XML sitemap

Your sitemap should list every page you want indexed — and nothing else. No 404s, no redirects, no noindexed pages.

What to check:

• Does your sitemap exist and is it referenced in robots.txt?
• Are all URLs returning 200 status codes?
• Is the sitemap under 50MB / 50,000 URLs? (Split if needed)
• Is it submitted in Google Search Console?

3. Indexing status

Use Google Search Console's Index Coverage report to see what's actually indexed vs. what you think is indexed.

What to check:

• How many pages are indexed vs. submitted?
• Are there "Crawled — currently not indexed" pages that should be?
• Any "Excluded by noindex tag" surprises?
• Check site:yourdomain.com in Google — does the count match expectations?

4. Page speed and Core Web Vitals

Google's Core Web Vitals measure real user experience:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Under 2.5 seconds
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Under 0.1
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Under 200ms

What to check:

• Run your top 10 pages through PageSpeed Insights
• Check the Core Web Vitals report in GSC for field data
• Look for patterns — is it images? Fonts? JavaScript?

5. Mobile usability

Google uses mobile-first indexing. If your site looks broken on mobile, that's the version Google sees.

What to check:

• Test key pages on actual mobile devices (not just Chrome DevTools)
• Check for tap targets that are too close together
• Ensure text is readable without zooming
• Look for horizontal scrolling issues

6. HTTPS and security

This is table stakes in 2026, but still worth verifying.

What to check:

• Is every page served over HTTPS?
• Does HTTP redirect to HTTPS properly (301, not 302)?
• Is your SSL certificate valid and not expiring soon?
• No mixed content warnings?

7. URL structure and canonicalization

Duplicate content happens when the same page is accessible at multiple URLs. Canonicals tell Google which version to index.

What to check:

• Do all pages have a rel="canonical" tag?
• Are canonicals self-referencing (pointing to themselves)?
• Does www vs. non-www resolve to one version?
• Are trailing slashes consistent?
• Check for parameter-based duplicates (?utm_source=..., ?page=1)

8. Internal linking structure

Internal links distribute authority and help Google discover pages. Orphan pages (no internal links pointing to them) are invisible.

What to check:

• Are there orphaned pages with zero internal links?
• Is your most important content within 3 clicks of the homepage?
• Are you using descriptive anchor text (not just "click here")?
• Do category/hub pages link to all relevant child pages?

9. Redirect chains and loops

A redirect chain is when Page A redirects to B, which redirects to C. Each hop loses PageRank and adds latency.

What to check:

• Audit all 301/302 redirects for chains (A → B → C should be A → C)
• Check for redirect loops
• Ensure old URLs redirect to the most relevant current page
• Verify redirects use 301 (permanent), not 302 (temporary), unless intentional

10. Broken links (4xx errors)

Broken internal links waste crawl budget and create dead ends for users and bots.

What to check:

• Crawl your site for 404s and other 4xx responses
• Fix or redirect broken internal links
• Check external links too — broken outbound links hurt trust signals
• Review GSC's crawl errors report

11. Structured data (Schema markup)

Structured data helps Google understand your content and can unlock rich results (stars, FAQs, how-tos, etc.).

What to check:

• Is Schema markup present on key page types? (Article, Product, FAQ, LocalBusiness, etc.)
• Validate with Google's Rich Results Test
• Check for errors in GSC's Enhancements reports
• Are you using JSON-LD format? (Google's preference)

12. Heading structure

Proper heading hierarchy helps both accessibility and SEO. One H1 per page, logical nesting.

What to check:

• Does every page have exactly one H1?
• Is the H1 unique and descriptive?
• Do headings follow a logical hierarchy (H1 → H2 → H3)?
• Are keywords naturally included in headings?

13. Image optimization

Images are often the biggest performance bottleneck on a page.

What to check:

• Do all images have descriptive alt attributes?
• Are images served in modern formats (WebP, AVIF)?
• Are images properly sized (not 4000px wide displayed at 400px)?
• Is lazy loading implemented for below-the-fold images?

14. JavaScript rendering

If your content is rendered client-side, Google might not see it. This is a bigger problem than most people realize.

What to check:

• View your pages with JavaScript disabled — is the content there?
• Use Google's URL Inspection tool to see the rendered HTML
• Check if critical content loads in the initial HTML response
• SSR or pre-rendering for important pages?

15. Log file analysis

Server logs tell you exactly what Googlebot is doing on your site — which pages it crawls, how often, and what errors it hits.

What to check:

• How frequently is Googlebot crawling your important pages?
• Is crawl budget being wasted on low-value pages?
• Are there 5xx errors Googlebot is hitting that you don't see?
• Has crawl frequency changed recently? (Could indicate a problem)

How to automate your technical SEO audits

Running through this checklist manually works, but it's slow. For ongoing monitoring, you want automation.

Tools like Jello SEO can run instant technical audits on any URL — checking meta tags, content quality, Core Web Vitals (CLS, LCP), heading structure, link health, and image optimization in seconds. Instead of juggling multiple tools, you get a single audit with a pass/fail score and specific recommendations.

The key is making audits a habit, not a one-time event. Sites change constantly — new deploys break things, content gets deleted, redirects pile up. A quarterly audit minimum; monthly is better.

The bottom line

Technical SEO isn't glamorous, but it's the difference between a site that ranks and one that doesn't. Most of these checks take minutes individually. Run through the full list once, fix what you find, then set up monitoring so problems don't pile up again.

Start with the items that affect the most pages (crawlability, speed, indexing), then work down to page-level issues (headings, images, structured data). Fix the foundation first.