Audit first.

A technical website audit answers a simple question: can a search engine properly read, index and show your pages? If not, texts and links will not help. Below are six checks in order of importance, with tips on what to fix first.

The list works for both business owners and marketers: most items can be covered in a day with Yandex Webmaster, Search Console and a free crawler.

What a technical audit is

It is a check of a website for technical problems that block indexing, slow down loading or break things on the phone. SEO optimization starts with it: SEO texts and links without a clean technical base work at half strength.

How it differs from an SEO audit

An SEO audit is broader: it covers semantics, texts, meta tags, links and competitors. A technical audit deals only with how the website is built and how it works: the server, the code, the URL structure, speed. In essence, it is optimization for SEO at the level of the CMS and hosting.

When to carry it out

At least once every six months and after any major change: a new CMS, design, hosting or catalog structure.

Before launch

Checking a test copy is cheaper than fixing things after release. Pay special attention to lifting the indexing block: people often forget to remove it when moving from a test domain.

When traffic drops

If search traffic dropped sharply, within a couple of days, the cause is more often technical: blocked pages, server errors, broken redirects. A gradual decline is usually related to competitors or algorithm updates.

Check 1. Indexing

Website indexing is checked first, because a page outside the index cannot appear in search results. Compare how many pages should be in search with how many are actually there.

How many pages are in the index

The data is in Webmaster under "Pages in search" and in the Search Console indexing report. If the index has twice as many pages as the website, you have duplicates; if it has half as many, some sections are blocked or have not been found by the robot.

What is hidden from search

Check noindex meta tags, X-Robots-Tag headers and the rules in robots.txt and the sitemap. A typical mistake is style and script files blocked from the robot, which makes the search engine see the page without its layout.

robots.txt

The file should block service sections, the cart, on-site search and sorting parameters, but not the pages being promoted. For unnecessary GET parameters, Webmaster now has a "GET parameter settings" tool that partly replaces Clean-param.

Sitemap

The sitemap should contain only canonical pages with a 200 response code, without redirects or blocked URLs. Link to it in robots.txt and add it in the webmaster panels, and submit new pages via IndexNow.

Check 2. Duplicates and canonical pages

Duplicate pages are the same content at different URLs. They split weight among themselves, confuse the search engine when it chooses the main version and waste crawl budget.

How duplicates appear

The most common sources are:

• URLs with and without a trailing slash;
• versions with and without www, http and https;
• GET parameters for sorting, filters and tags;
• one product in several categories;
• pagination pages with the same text.

How to find them

Run a crawler over the website and sort the pages by identical title and H1. In Webmaster, duplicates are visible in the excluded pages section, marked as a non-canonical version.

Canonical

The canonical tag tells the search engine the main version of a page. It is placed on sorting pages, tags and similar product cards when the duplicate is needed by visitors but not in the index.

301 redirects

If nobody needs the duplicate, merge it with the main page using a permanent redirect. Make sure there are no chains of several redirects: each link in the chain slows down crawling.

Check 3. Loading speed

Page loading speed affects both rankings and leads. The benchmark for Google is Core Web Vitals: LCP up to 2.5 s, INP up to 200 ms, CLS no higher than 0.1 at the 75th percentile of real visitors.

What slows a website down

Heavy images, unnecessary scripts, slow hosting, no caching. On corporate websites, half of the delay often comes from third-party widgets: chats, calculators, counters.

How to measure

PageSpeed Insights shows both lab data and field data from real users; go by the latter. Detailed instructions are in the article website speed: how to check it and why it matters.

Images

Convert images to WebP or AVIF, set their dimensions and enable lazy loading for everything below the first screen. This often cuts page weight in half.

Scripts

Defer loading of non-critical JavaScript and remove unused libraries. Keep in mind that Google reads only the first 2 MB of HTML, so junk embedded in the code can push out the content.

Check 4. Mobile version

Today the mobile version of a website is the main one: search engines evaluate it first. If there is less content on the phone than on the computer, the cut-down version is what gets into the index.

Responsive or a separate version

Responsive layout is more reliable: one URL, one codebase, no risk of the versions getting out of sync. A separate mobile version on a subdomain requires setting up links between pages and breaks more often.

What breaks on the phone

Tables with horizontal scrolling, full-screen pop-ups, small fonts, layout shifts when banners load. More examples are in the article SEO optimization for mobile devices.

Buttons

The tap area should be at least 48 pixels, and neighboring buttons should be spaced apart so a finger does not miss. Make the phone number in the header clickable.

Forms

Check that the phone field opens a numeric keyboard, autofill works and the submit button does not hide under the keyboard.

Check 5. Errors and broken links

Website errors and broken links waste the robot's resources and annoy visitors. The easiest way to find them is with a crawler and in webmaster panel reports.

404 and 500

Code 404 means the page does not exist, 500 means the server could not handle the request. Occasional 404s are normal, but the search engine sees mass 5xx errors as a sign of an unstable website and may temporarily lower it.

Broken internal links

These are links within the website to deleted or moved pages. They usually remain in old articles, menus and product cards after URLs change.

How to find them

Run a crawler, filter 4xx and 5xx responses and see which pages link to them. In Webmaster, similar data is available in the "Links" section.

How to fix them

Replace the link with the current URL, and if the page has moved, set up a 301 redirect. For deleted products, it is better to lead to the category than to the home page.

Check 6. Security and access

A hacked website or lost access to hosting wipes out all the work. That is why security is part of the mandatory minimum of an audit.

SSL

The website should open only over https, and all http URLs should redirect to the secure version. Check the certificate's expiry date and images served over http: the browser blocks them.

Admin panel access

Change the default login URL, enable two-factor authentication and use strong passwords. Update the CMS and plugins: most hacks go through outdated modules.

Backups

Copies of files and the database should be created automatically and stored separately from the website's server. Once a quarter, check that the website can actually be restored from a copy.

Who has access

Make a list of everyone with access to the hosting, domain, admin panel and analytics, and remove former employees and contractors. The domain should be registered to the company, not to the contractor.

What to do with the results

Sort the findings by their impact on traffic and how hard they are to fix. Technical website problems are rarely fixed all at once, so order matters.

Priorities

A guide for distributing tasks:

What to fix first

Everything that blocks indexing and availability: blocks in robots.txt, noindex on the pages you need, server errors. Until this is fixed, the rest of the work will have no effect.

Quick fixes

These tasks can be done in a day or two without a developer:

• editing robots.txt and updating the sitemap;
• replacing broken links in menus and articles;
• compressing heavy images;
• setting up the main mirror;
• removing unnecessary access.

Long fixes

Reworking templates, speeding up the server, moving to a responsive layout and changing the URL structure require a developer and testing. They are planned in stages, and an SEO specialist makes sure the changes do not break what already works. If you do not have your own team, it is easier to order SEO for the whole website: search engine optimization and development then follow a single plan.

Conclusion

If you do not know what to check on your website first, go in order: indexing, duplicates, speed, the mobile version, errors, security. This is the foundation on which SEO optimization for search engines is built, and without it search SEO optimization turns into a waste of budget. Read about everything that promotion includes in the article what SEO is in plain words, and for an example of how an audit changes results, see the case about a website that started working at 100%.

At epic name., a technical audit is the first step before promotion for projects across Russia. On the SEO promotion page you can find out the price of website SEO optimization and the cost of SEO optimization for your scope, order website SEO optimization as a separate stage or order SEO promotion right away.