Content is king, but technical SEO is the castle. If the drawbridge is broken (crawl errors) or the walls are crumbling (slow speed), it doesn't matter how beautiful the throne room is—nobody is getting in.
A technical audit isn't a five-minute glance at Google Analytics. It is a deep dive into the infrastructure of your website. To help you ensure your foundation is rock solid, we have categorized the 50 essential checks into 5 critical pillars.
Pillar 1: Crawlability & Indexing (The Gatekeepers)
Can Google actually read your site? If these aren't right, nothing else matters.
- Robots.txt: Is it blocking important resources?
- XML Sitemap: Is it submitted to Search Console? Does it contain only 200 (OK) URLs?
- Noindex Tags: Are you accidentally hiding important pages?
- Status Code 200: Do your live pages return a 200 OK status?
- Status Code 404: Are broken links handled correctly with a custom 404 page?
- Status Code 5xx: Are there server errors indicating downtime?
- Redirect Chains: Avoid A → B → C. It should be A → C.
- 302 vs 301: Are you using 301 (permanent) for moves, not 302 (temporary)?
- Canonical Tags: Does every page point to itself (or its master version) to prevent duplicate content?
- Orphan Pages: Are there pages with zero internal links pointing to them?
Pillar 2: Site Architecture & URL Structure
A logical structure helps bots understand topical relevance.
- SSL Certificate: Is HTTPS forced site-wide?
- WWW Resolve: Does the non-www version redirect to www (or vice versa)?
- URL Structure: Are URLs clean, lowercase, and descriptive? (No ?id=123)
- Trailing Slashes: Consistency is key (Django defaults to adding them).
- Breadcrumbs: Are they present and marked up with Schema?
- Click Depth: Is every page reachable within 3 clicks of the homepage?
- Internal Linking: Do you link to high-value pages using descriptive anchor text?
- Pagination: Is pagination handled correctly (rel="prev/next" or canonical logic)?
- Hreflang: If multilingual, are language tags implemented correctly?
- Subdomains vs. Subdirectories: Are you fragmenting authority unnecessarily?
Pillar 3: On-Page Technicals
The code that lives on the specific page.
- Title Tags: Unique, under 60 chars, keyword-focused.
- Meta Descriptions: Unique, actionable, under 160 chars.
- H1 Tags: One per page, containing the primary keyword.
- Header Hierarchy: H2s and H3s nested logically.
- Alt Text: All images have descriptive alt attributes.
- Structured Data (JSON-LD): Is Schema.org markup valid?
- Open Graph Tags: Are social sharing cards defined?
- Viewports: Is the meta viewport tag set for mobile scaling?
- Favicon: Is it present and visible in search results?
- Keyword Cannibalization: Are multiple pages fighting for the same term?
Pillar 4: Speed & Core Web Vitals (Performance)
Google’s 2025 performance standards.
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Under 2.5 seconds?
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Under 200ms?
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Score under 0.1?
- TTFB (Time to First Byte): Is the server responding quickly (under 600ms)?
- GZIP/Brotli Compression: Is text compression enabled on the server?
- Image Formats: Are you serving WebP or AVIF?
- Image Dimensions: Are explicit width/height attributes set?
- Lazy Loading: Are off-screen images deferred?
- Minification: Are CSS and JS files minified?
- CDN Usage: Are static assets served via a Content Delivery Network?
Pillar 5: Security & Mobile
Trust and usability factors.
- Mobile Friendliness: Does the site pass Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test?
- Tap Targets: Are buttons large enough for thumbs (48px+)?
- Font Legibility: Is the base font size at least 16px?
- Intrusive Interstitials: Are pop-ups blocking content on mobile?
- Mixed Content: Are you loading HTTP resources on an HTTPS page?
- Security Headers: Are HSTS and X-Frame-Options configured?
- Malware Check: Is the site clean of injected code?
- Duplicate Content: Is the site plagiarism-free?
- JavaScript Rendering: Can Google verify the content if using React/Vue?
- Google Search Console: Are there any manual actions or security issues listed?
Summary
A score of 50/50 is rare, but every box you tick is a signal to Google that your business is legitimate, authoritative, and user-friendly. Don't let technical debt be the anchor holding your rankings down.