A technical SEO audit checks whether search engines and AI crawlers can find, crawl, render and index your pages without problems. The core checks are HTTPS, robots.txt, XML sitemap, indexability, status codes and redirects, speed, mobile usability, canonical URLs, structured data and AI crawler access.
Key takeaways
- Fix anything that blocks crawling or indexing first — nothing else matters until then.
- Speed and mobile issues affect both rankings and conversions.
- Re-audit after every significant site change.
Crawling and indexing
- Site loads on HTTPS and HTTP redirects to it.
- robots.txt exists and doesn’t block important pages.
- An XML sitemap lists every indexable page and is referenced in robots.txt.
- No important page carries a noindex tag.
- Canonical URLs point to the preferred version of each page.
- Google Search Console shows no major coverage errors.
Status codes and links
- No pages return 4xx or 5xx errors.
- No broken internal links.
- No redirect chains — links point to final URLs.
- No orphan pages that nothing links to.
Speed and mobile
- Server responds quickly (aim for under about 600 ms).
- Compression (gzip or Brotli) is enabled.
- Images have width and height and are sized sensibly.
- Scripts don’t block rendering.
- A mobile viewport is set and pages work on phones.
Content basics
- Every page has a unique, descriptive title.
- Every page has a unique meta description.
- One H1 per page; headings nest in order.
- Images have descriptive alt text.
- Key content is visible in the HTML without JavaScript.
Trust and structured data
- Valid Organization or LocalBusiness schema.
- Security headers are set.
- Contact details, About and privacy pages are easy to find.
AI search
- AI answer crawlers are allowed.
- An llms.txt file summarizes your site.
The free AIRankSurge audit runs all of these automatically.
Sources
- Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide
- Google, Web Vitals
See how your site scores. The free AI visibility audit checks everything in this article in about 30 seconds.