SITEAUD!TLINT CONSULTING
Technical SEO audit services
Find and fix what stops search engines from crawling, rendering, and indexing your website. We trace each issue to its root cause, rank fixes by impact, and give your developers requirements they can test, then recheck the results after release.
Fixed quote after a short scoping call. No retainer required.
Founder · Technical SEO Consultant
Developer of SiteAud!tLint
Last reviewed
- Issue
- 412 product URLs reported as
Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user - Evidence
- Faceted filter URLs like
?color=blue&size=mreturn 200, self-canonicalize, and are linked from category templates. - Cause
- One category template sets the canonical to the full request URL instead of the clean product path.
- Fix
- Canonicalize to the parameter-free URL and stop linking filter combinations in crawlable anchors.
- Validate
- Re-crawl the template, confirm canonical targets, and track the status count in Search Console.
Signs your site needs a technical SEO audit
Technical problems can affect one page, an entire template, or a whole section of a site. Some build up slowly. Others appear overnight after a migration, redesign, CMS update, or deployment.
- Organic traffic or indexed page counts dropped without an obvious cause.
- Important pages are missing from search results.
- Search engines are crawling parameter, filter, or tracking URLs that should never be indexed.
- Redirect chains, broken links, or unexpected 4xx and 5xx errors keep increasing.
- Canonical tags and duplicate URL variations are sending conflicting signals.
- A site migration or platform change may have introduced technical regressions.
- Developers need a prioritized, testable list of SEO requirements before a release.
- Existing technical SEO recommendations need independent verification.
Often the first clue is a status in the Search Console Page indexing report. These are the ones we are asked about most:
- Crawled, currently not indexed
- Discovered, currently not indexed
- Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user
- Alternate page with proper canonical tag
- Soft 404
- Blocked by robots.txt
- Excluded by noindex tag
What the technical SEO audit covers
Six areas, assessed together, so a fix in one place does not create a new problem in another.
Crawlability, status codes, and redirects
How search engines and users reach your URLs, and whether internal links lead to accessible destinations.
- Unexpected 4xx and 5xx responses, and soft 404s on important pages
- Redirect chains, loops, and wrong redirect destinations
- Internal links pointing to redirected or non-canonical URLs
- Orphaned pages, found by comparing crawl data against sitemaps, analytics, Search Console, and server logs
- Crawl budget waste, using log file analysis where logs are available
Robots.txt, XML sitemaps, and indexability
Whether search engines can access important content, and whether your directives match your indexing goals.
- Robots.txt rules blocking important pages or resources
- Noindex meta tags and X-Robots-Tag HTTP headers
- XML sitemap validity and sitemap URLs that redirect or error
- Conflicts between robots.txt, noindex, and canonical signals
A blocked URL is not always an indexing problem, and a crawlable URL is not always eligible for indexing. We assess these signals separately.
Canonical tags, duplicate URLs, and crawl traps
How your site handles URL variations and signals the preferred version of each page.
- Missing, invalid, or conflicting canonical tags, including canonicals to redirected URLs
- Duplicates from URL parameters, faceted navigation, and session or tracking codes
- URL normalization: HTTP vs. HTTPS, www vs. non-www, trailing slashes, and letter case
- Pagination handling (Google no longer uses rel=next and rel=prev)
- Crawl traps from calendars and infinite filter combinations
JavaScript rendering, mobile-first indexing, and Core Web Vitals
Whether search engines can retrieve and process the content and resources a page depends on.
- Raw HTML vs. rendered HTML differences in content, links, and meta tags
- Client-side rendering dependencies, and where server-side rendering would help
- Blocked scripts, stylesheets, and images
- Content parity between mobile and desktop for mobile-first indexing
- LCP, INP, and CLS, separating Chrome UX Report field data from Lighthouse lab data
Structured data, hreflang, and HTTPS
Signals that help search engines interpret your content, your audiences, and your site's security.
- Schema markup syntax errors and missing required properties
- Markup that does not match visible page content, or duplicated schema
- Hreflang return tags, invalid language codes, and conflicts with canonicals
- HTTPS coverage, mixed content, and certificate issues
Valid structured data is required for rich results, but it does not guarantee them. We separate validation errors from eligibility.
Internal linking and site architecture
How your structure helps search engines discover pages and understand how content relates.
- Priority pages with too few internal links
- Click depth that buries important pages
- Broken or redirected links in navigation and templates
- Links to non-indexable or non-canonical destinations
Findings here are tied back to crawlability and indexability, so fixes address the cause rather than the symptom.
How the audit works, from scoping to validated fixes
Define the audit scope
We confirm site size, platform, priority sections, business-critical pages, and known concerns, plus recent migrations, redesigns, traffic changes, or deployments that shape where to look first.
Crawl and collect technical evidence
We crawl the site for response codes, indexability signals, canonicals, links, and structured data, then add Search Console data, the URL Inspection tool, rendering tests, source inspection, and server logs where the project calls for them.
Analyze patterns and root causes
We group issues by template and URL pattern instead of listing every affected URL as a separate problem. Where evidence cannot confirm a cause, we document what needs further investigation.
Prioritize recommended fixes
Findings are ranked by severity, affected pages, business importance, implementation effort, and dependencies, so your team knows what to fix now, what to schedule, and what to monitor.
Validate fixes after release
We recheck the affected URLs and templates, and look for side effects such as new redirects, changed canonical targets, blocked resources, or noindex directives introduced by the fix.
What you receive
Technical findings report
Each issue with affected URL patterns, supporting evidence, likely cause, and technical context.
Prioritized issue list
A ranked list by severity, scope, business relevance, and recommended order of implementation.
Recommended fixes
What needs to change, where it occurs, and how the change resolves the issue, written for developers.
Validation checklist
Testable checks for developers, SEO specialists, or QA to run before release and after deployment.
Follow-up validation
Where included in scope, a re-crawl or targeted review confirming the fixes resolved the original findings.
What we need from you
- Google Search Console access (read-only is enough)
- Analytics access (optional)
- Staging environment for pre-release checks (optional)
- Server logs for crawl budget analysis (optional)
Built for teams that need clear technical priorities
In-house SEO teams
Evidence-backed findings to support technical roadmaps and win developer time.
Marketing teams
A clear explanation of organic traffic declines and indexing problems.
Developers and engineers
SEO requirements that are specific, testable, and tied to templates.
Agencies and consultants
Technical audit support for client websites, delivered under your process.
E-commerce businesses
Large catalogs, faceted navigation, duplicate URLs, and crawl budget at scale.
Sites in migration or redesign
Pre-launch risk checks and post-launch validation of redirects and indexing.
Quoted to your site's scope.
Pick the audit closest to what you need, tell us about your site, and you get a fixed quote after a short scoping call.
Questions, answered.
What teams ask before booking a technical SEO audit.
How much does a technical SEO audit cost?
Every audit is quoted after a short scoping call. Price depends on the number of URLs and templates, the platform, whether JavaScript rendering or server log analysis is needed, and whether follow-up validation is included. Share your website URL and concerns and we will send a fixed quote.
How long does a technical SEO audit take?
Most audits for small and mid-sized websites are delivered within one to three weeks after access is granted. Large e-commerce sites, sites with heavy faceted navigation, and audits that include log file analysis take longer. The timeline is confirmed in your quote.
What access do you need?
Read access to Google Search Console is the most useful. Analytics access, XML sitemap locations, a staging environment for pre-release checks, and server logs for crawl budget analysis are helpful but optional. We never need admin access to your CMS.
Why does Search Console say Crawled, currently not indexed?
Google fetched the page but chose not to index it. Common causes include thin or near-duplicate content, weak internal linking, conflicting canonical signals, or a large volume of low-value URLs diluting crawl priority. The audit checks which of these applies to the affected URL patterns rather than guessing.
What is the difference between Discovered, currently not indexed and Crawled, currently not indexed?
Discovered means Google knows the URL exists but has not fetched it yet, which often points to crawl budget, server capacity, or discovery path problems. Crawled means Google fetched the page and decided not to index it, which usually points to quality, duplication, or canonicalization signals.
Do you fix the issues or only report them?
The audit delivers findings, prioritized fixes, and a validation checklist your developers can test against. Implementation is handled by your team or developers. Where follow-up validation is in scope, we recheck the affected URLs and templates after release.
Do you audit JavaScript websites built with React, Vue or Next.js?
Yes. We compare the raw HTML response with the rendered HTML to find content, links, canonical tags or structured data that only appear after client-side rendering, and we note where server-side rendering or prerendering would remove the dependency.
Is the audit done with the SiteAud!tLint app?
The SiteAud!tLint crawler is part of the toolset, alongside Search Console data, rendering tests, and log analysis where available. The consulting audit adds the investigation, root-cause analysis, and prioritization that a crawl report alone cannot provide.
Turn technical findings into verified fixes
A list of crawl errors does not tell you which issues matter, why they happened, or whether the fixes worked. Send your website URL, the problems you are investigating, and any recent changes, and we will scope an audit around your site.