What a technical SEO audit checks, and how the common problems get fixed

Someone told you your website "needs a technical SEO audit", or a free tool emailed you a score with a long red list. You are not sure what any of it means, which items matter, or whether you are being sold something you do not need.

A technical SEO audit answers one question: can search engines find, read and index your pages without trouble, and does the site work well for people on their phones? It does not judge your writing or your marketing. It looks at the plumbing.

What a proper audit checks

1. Crawling. Is anything blocking Google from the pages that matter? A robots.txt rule left over from development, or a "noindex" tag the developer forgot to remove, can hide a whole site. Every important page should also be reachable through normal links, not only through search boxes or filters.
2. Indexing. Google Search Console has a page indexing report that shows which pages are indexed and why others are not. An audit reads those reasons and separates normal exclusions from real problems.
3. Duplicate addresses. The same page opening at http and https, with and without www, with and without a trailing slash, or with tracking parameters. Google then has to guess which one counts.
4. Status codes and redirects. Broken internal links, pages that say "not found" but return a normal status, chains of redirects, and server errors.
5. Sitemap. An XML sitemap that lists only real, indexable pages and is submitted in Search Console.
6. Speed and mobile use. Heavy images, slow hosting and bloated themes. Many customers in Bangladesh browse on mid-range phones over mobile data, so a site that feels fine on office Wi-Fi can be slow for them.
7. HTTPS. The whole site on a valid certificate, with no insecure images or scripts mixed in.
8. Page basics. A unique title and meta description per page, one clear main heading, descriptive image alt text.
9. Structured data. Schema markup for your business, products or articles, checked so it is valid and matches the page.
10. JavaScript content. If text or links appear only after scripts run, the URL Inspection tool shows what Google actually sees.
11. Thin and empty pages. Tag archives, empty categories and internal search results that add many near-blank pages.

How the common problems get fixed

Most fixes are less dramatic than the report makes them sound:

• Blocked or noindexed pages: remove the rule or tag, then request indexing for the key pages.
• Duplicates: choose one version of each URL, send the others to it with permanent (301) redirects, and set matching canonical tags.
• Broken links: update the link, or redirect the old address to the closest live page.
• Redirect chains: point every old URL straight to its final address.
• Sitemap: let the CMS generate it automatically so it stays current, and keep noindexed or redirected pages out of it.
• Speed: resize and compress images, remove unused plugins and scripts, turn on caching, and move to better hosting if the server itself is slow.
• Thin pages: improve them, merge them, or keep them out of the index.

What a good audit gives you

Not a long PDF of tool warnings. You should get a short, prioritised list: what is wrong, why it matters for your business, how to fix it, and who should do it. A broken order page matters far more than missing alt text on an old blog image. Tool scores are a guide, not a goal; chasing a perfect score can waste weeks.

Doing it yourself versus calling in help

You can verify your site in Search Console, read the indexing report, test key pages on your own phone over mobile data, and fix titles and broken links. Redirect rules, templates, structured data, server settings and JavaScript rendering usually need a developer or SEO specialist. If you cannot tell which group a finding belongs to, ask before paying for fixes. Audits are part of the SEO work I offer, and slow sites have their own speed guide.

Start with one report

Open Google Search Console, go to the page indexing report, and write down the reasons Google gives for pages not being indexed. Next to each, note whether those pages should be in Google at all. That one list tells you where to start. If it raises more questions than it answers, send it to me.