A technical SEO audit can find problems that stop search engines from crawling, indexing and understanding your website properly. Typical findings include pages blocked from search, broken links, redirect errors, duplicate content, slow loading, mobile usability issues and faulty structured data.
Many of these problems are invisible to visitors, which is exactly why a dedicated technical check is so useful.
Crawling and Indexing Problems
The most serious issues are those that stop pages appearing in search results. An audit can uncover pages marked “noindex” by mistake, robots.txt rules that block important areas of the site and pages that return errors instead of content.
It can also find orphan pages, which have no internal links pointing to them, and check whether your XML sitemap lists the right pages. A sitemap full of broken or redirected addresses sends mixed signals to search engines.
Data from Google Search Console is particularly helpful here, as it shows which pages Google has indexed and why others have been left out.
Duplicate Content and URL Problems
Many websites create several versions of the same page without anyone realising. An audit can spot pages that load at different addresses, such as with and without “www”, or with tracking codes and filter options added.
It can also check whether canonical tags are pointing to the right pages. When these are set up incorrectly, search engines may choose the wrong version of a page to show, or split signals between several copies.
Links and Redirects
Broken internal links frustrate visitors and waste the time search engines spend crawling your site. An audit lists these so they can be fixed or redirected.
It also looks for redirect chains and loops. A chain happens when one redirect leads to another and then another, slowing things down. A loop sends visitors and search engines round in circles, so the page never loads at all.
Problems like these are especially common after a website redesign, when old page addresses are changed without proper redirects.
Speed, Mobile and Other Issues
A technical audit usually reviews loading speed and Core Web Vitals, highlighting large images, heavy scripts or slow server responses. It checks how pages behave on mobile phones, since Google mainly uses the mobile version of a site for indexing.
Other common findings include security warnings, missing or incorrect structured data, poorly organised site structure and pages buried too many clicks away from the homepage.
Each finding should come with an explanation of why it matters and how urgent it is. Not every warning deserves the same attention.
Technical checks are a core part of our SEO audit services, and serious issues can then be fixed through our technical SEO services. If you suspect your website has hidden technical problems, please get in touch.
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