Technical SEO Audit: A 30-Point Checklist

Speed is no longer measured by a single number, but by three separate metrics reflecting what a user actually experiences; one of them is Interaction to Next Paint (INP), which measures the time between a click and the screen responding.

• Is the INP value at or below 200 milliseconds: web.dev defines that threshold as good responsiveness.
• Does visual stability (CLS) cause a noticeable jump while the page loads: this can make a user tap the wrong thing.
• Are images compressed and in a modern format (WebP/AVIF): this affects file size directly.
• Is caching configured correctly: it shortens load time on repeat visits.
• Is server response time monitored regularly: a slow server makes every optimisation in front of it pointless.

However good a page is, it counts for nothing if a search engine cannot find and read it; this heading checks whether the door to the site is open or closed.

• Is robots.txt accidentally blocking important sections: a single misplaced line can take a whole section out of the index.
• Is the XML sitemap current and submitted: it tells the search engine directly which pages exist.
• Are 404s and redirect chains clean: long redirect chains waste crawl budget.
• Do canonical tags point to the right page: this prevents duplicate content confusion.
• Are important pages reachable through internal links: pages sitting only in the sitemap with no internal link get discovered late.

Structured data confirms a page's topic to a machine; under Google's general guidelines, marking up information not visible on the page, or leaving broken syntax, means a rich result simply does not appear at best.

• Is Organization or related schema present on the homepage: it confirms brand identity.
• Do product or service pages carry the relevant schema: it defines the page type clearly.
• Does the schema match the page's own text exactly: a mismatch can count as a violation.
• Does the Rich Results Test return errors: it allows checking before anything goes live.
• Are types like FAQPage or HowTo used only where genuinely appropriate: misuse of a type can mean the rich result disappears.

Google evaluates the mobile version of a site first for ranking purposes; accessibility, meanwhile, has been a legal requirement under the European Accessibility Act since it came into force in 2025.

• Does the site need horizontal scrolling on mobile: content that does not fit the screen breaks the experience.
• Are touch targets large enough: small targets cause mis-taps on mobile.
• Do images have alt text: it matters for both accessibility and image search.
• Is colour contrast readable: low contrast makes text hard to read.
• Is the site navigable by keyboard: essential for visitors who cannot use a mouse.

This heading checks whether the page content is internally consistent and properly connected to the outside world.

• Does every page have a unique title and description: duplicated metadata confuses the results page.
• Are there broken outbound links: they send visitors and search engines to a dead page.
• Does internal linking build a sensible hierarchy: the most important pages should receive more internal links.
• Is the content genuinely current: out-of-date information misleads both users and models.
• Is spelling and grammar checked regularly: small errors quietly undermine credibility.

The final heading checks whether the site meets basic security requirements and, where relevant, the needs of a multilingual or multi-region structure.

• Is HTTPS enforced across the entire site: an insecure connection is a risk for both trust and ranking.
• Are there mixed-content warnings: HTTP resources left on an HTTPS page trigger a trust warning.
• Are hreflang tags correct on a multilingual site: wrong hreflang can show the wrong-language page to the wrong country.
• Are old, unused plugins or scripts still present: they carry both a security risk and unnecessary slowdown.
• Are backups taken regularly: this determines how quickly a site can recover from an attack or an error.

Trying to fix all 30 points at once on an e-commerce site usually ends with none of them finished; we saw this exactly on a flooring manufacturer's catalogue, where a three-month 'fix everything together' effort stalled halfway through.

The right order is usually set by irreversible risk rather than impact alone: an error blocking crawlability needs fixing first, because none of the other 29 points matter if the page is never crawled at all.

A useful rule: if a point affects whether the page exists in the index at all, it is first priority; if it affects how good the page looks once it is there, it is second. That simple split turns a 30-point list into a manageable order.