Run the audit in the order below, because each pass depends on the one before it. There is no point tuning image formats on a page that is blocked from being crawled at all.
Pass one: can it be reached
Crawlability comes first. Check robots.txt for rules blocking directories that should be public, and check that the pages you care about are reachable by following links from the home page rather than only by knowing the URL.
- robots.txt does not block CSS, JS or any section you want indexed.
- The sitemap exists, is listed in robots.txt, and contains only live, canonical URLs.
- No important page sits more than three clicks from the home page.
- Redirect chains are collapsed: one hop, not four.
This is the single most common serious fault. A noindex tag copied from a staging build removes a page from search entirely, and nothing on the page looks wrong.
Pass two: is it indexed, and only once
Duplicate URLs split the value of a page between them. The usual causes are trailing slashes, uppercase variants, query parameters from campaigns, and the same page reachable at both www and the bare domain.
| Signal | What to check |
|---|---|
| Canonical tag | Every page names one canonical URL, and it matches what the sitemap lists. |
| Protocol and host | One version wins; the rest redirect to it with a 301. |
| Parameters | Tracking parameters do not create separately indexed copies. |
| Pagination | Page two onwards is crawlable but not competing with page one for the same phrase. |
Pass three: is it fast enough
Measure on a mid-range phone on mobile data, not on your laptop. The three field metrics worth tracking are how quickly the main content appears, how quickly the page responds to a tap, and how much the layout shifts while loading.
- Compress and correctly size every image; serve modern formats.
- Give images and embeds explicit dimensions so nothing jumps as they load.
- Defer scripts that are not needed for the first paint.
- Cut third-party tags you cannot name a use for. They are usually the largest single cost.
- Cache static assets for a long time and HTML for none.
Pass four: is it structured
Structured data does not lift rankings by itself, but it changes how your result looks, and a result with a rating, a price or a set of steps attracts more clicks than a plain one. Add the type that genuinely matches the page and validate it.
- Article or BlogPosting for guides, with author and date.
- Course for a course page, FAQPage only where visible questions and answers exist.
- Organization and BreadcrumbList site-wide.
Mark up only what a visitor can actually see on the page. Structured data describing content that is not there is a manual-action risk, not a shortcut.
Write the report as fixes, not findings
Finish with a list ordered by impact against effort, each item saying what to change, where, and what improves. A hundred findings nobody actions is worth less than five that ship this week.
Key takeaways
- Audit in order: crawl, index, speed, structure.
- A leftover staging noindex is the most expensive one-line bug in SEO.
- Consolidate duplicate URLs so one page holds all its value.
- Deliver the audit as a short, prioritised list of fixes.
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