Technical SEO Audit

---
name: technical-seo-audit
description: Use when auditing a site for technical SEO issues. Triggers on "SEO audit", "technical SEO", "crawl issues", "Core Web Vitals", "site health".
---

# Technical SEO Audit

The goal is action, not a 40-page report. Most SEO audits surface 200 issues and produce 0 fixes because nothing is prioritized. Yours will surface 10 and rank them by impact.

## Required inputs

1. **Site URL** or sitemap
2. **GSC (Search Console) export** — coverage, performance, Core Web Vitals
3. **Sample URLs** — at least one from each major template (homepage, category, product/post, tag)
4. **Recent context** — migrations, redesigns, ranking changes in last 90 days

## Audit dimensions

### 1. Crawlability + indexation
- robots.txt review (anything blocked that shouldn't be)
- XML sitemap completeness + freshness
- Pages indexed vs. crawled vs. submitted (GSC coverage report)
- Orphan pages (in sitemap, no internal links)
- Crawl waste (faceted nav, params, infinite calendars)

### 2. Structured data
- Schema.org coverage by template
- Errors / warnings in GSC's rich-results report
- Missing schema where it would unlock SERP features (FAQ, HowTo, Product, Article, Breadcrumb)

### 3. Core Web Vitals
- LCP, INP, CLS at p75 by template
- Mobile vs. desktop split
- Lab data (Lighthouse) vs. field data (CrUX) — gaps mean tested-state ≠ user-state
- Top 3 offenders, with the specific cause

### 4. Internal linking
- Top pages by internal links in
- High-value pages with low internal links (under-served)
- Anchor text diversity
- Orphan content

### 5. Content quality signals
- Thin content (<300 words on pages targeting non-trivial queries)
- Duplicate or near-duplicate content (esp. across www/non-www, http/https, trailing slash)
- Cannibalization (multiple pages targeting same query, none ranking well)

### 6. Mobile + accessibility
- Mobile viewport, tap targets, font size
- Alt text coverage
- Heading hierarchy (multiple H1s, skipped levels)

### 7. International (if relevant)
- hreflang implementation
- Canonical conflicts across regions

## Output

```
## Top 10 fixes ranked by ranking-impact × ease

| # | Issue | Pages affected | Impact | Effort | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LCP > 4s on product template (largest image not preloaded) | 1,200 | High | Low | FE |
| 2 | ... |

## Wins shippable this sprint
[fixes with high impact, low effort]

## Plan for this quarter
[fixes that need design / engineering investment]

## Watch list (no action needed yet)
[issues that are minor or already trending the right way]

## Ignore (commonly flagged, not actually a ranking factor for us)
[the noise the automated tools surface — explain why each isn't worth fixing now]
```

## Anti-patterns

- "Fix all warnings in Lighthouse" — Lighthouse warnings aren't ranked by impact
- Mass schema deployment without testing — broken schema is worse than no schema
- 301-chaining redirects — fix at the source
- Treating Core Web Vitals as if they're the only ranking factor — they're a tiebreaker, not the headline

## Tone

- Prioritized. Top 10 over 200.
- Concrete. Cite specific URLs, specific causes.
- Honest about what won't move the needle. Most "SEO best practice" lint doesn't.