A 30-minute technical SEO audit: a checklist for your site

Technical SEO is the base everything else rests on: if Google cannot crawl, understand or load your site well, even the best content does not perform. The good news is that you can run a first review in half an hour, with free tools and without being a programmer. This checklist is ordered by impact: start at the top.

A quick audit does not fix everything, but it finds the problems that cost the most. What matters is leaving with a prioritized list, not a hundred alerts.

Before you start (5 minutes)

You need access to:

• Google Search Console for your site (free, and the most valuable thing there is for this).
• A crawling tool (there are free options for small sites).
• PageSpeed Insights to measure speed.
• Your browser, with developer tools if you feel like it.

1. Indexing: does Google see your pages? (5 minutes)

In Search Console, open the Pages (indexing) report:

• How many pages are indexed and how many are not?
• Do "Excluded by noindex tag" or "Blocked by robots.txt" appear on pages you do want to rank?
• Are there many "Crawled, currently not indexed" pages? It usually points to thin or duplicate content.
• Are there server errors (5xx) or 404s on important pages?

Also try searching Google for site:yourdomain.com to see how many pages it returns and with which titles.

2. Crawling: robots.txt and sitemap (3 minutes)

• Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt: does it block anything it should not? A forgotten Disallow: / after a migration is a classic mistake.
• Open your sitemap (/sitemap.xml): does it exist, is it up to date and does it include only URLs you want indexed (no redirects or 404s)?
• Check that the sitemap is submitted in Search Console.

3. URL structure and redirects (4 minutes)

• URLs are readable and stable (no unnecessary parameters).
• There is only one version of your site: with or without www, and on HTTPS, with a 301 redirect from the others.
• There are no redirect chains or loops.
• Internal links point to final URLs, not to redirects.

If you are coming from a migration, review how to migrate without losing Google rankings.

4. Titles, descriptions and headings (4 minutes)

With your crawling tool, look for:

• Missing, duplicate or overly long titles.
• Missing or repeated meta descriptions.
• Pages without an H1 or with several H1s for no reason.
• Broken heading hierarchy (jumps from H2 to H4).

There are guides to fix it: titles and meta descriptions that raise your CTR and heading structure.

5. Speed and Core Web Vitals (4 minutes)

In PageSpeed Insights, check your homepage and an inner page on mobile:

• LCP (main content load), INP (response to interaction) and CLS (visual stability).
• The most important recommendations: heavy images, unnecessary JavaScript, blocking fonts.

In Search Console, the Experience or Core Web Vitals report shows real data from your visitors. To understand each metric, read Core Web Vitals in 2026 and how to fix a site that is slow to respond to clicks.

6. Mobile and usability (2 minutes)

• Open your site on your phone: does it read without zooming? Can buttons be tapped without missing?
• Is the content the same as on desktop? Google mainly uses the mobile version for indexing.

7. Duplicate content and canonicals (2 minutes)

• Every page should have a canonical tag pointing to itself or to the preferred version.
• Check that there are no nearly identical pages competing (for example, city pages with the same text).

8. Structured data (2 minutes)

• Validate your pages with Google's rich results tool.
• Useful types: organization, local business, article, product, FAQ (as applicable).
• Fix errors and warnings on whatever affects your key pages.

9. Multilingual sites (if applicable, 2 minutes)

• Each language must have its own URL, with correct and reciprocal hreflang tags.
• Make sure a page is not announced in a language if no translation exists.

10. Basic security (1 minute)

• The whole site loads over HTTPS, with no mixed content.
• The certificate is valid.
• No security warnings or "not secure" notices in the browser.

How to prioritize what you found

Start with the critical and work downward. If what you are after is the content and structure of each page, see our guide to on-page SEO.

What a 30-minute audit does not cover

It is a first filter. It does not replace a deep review of content, external links, competition or keyword analysis. But it tells you whether your technical base is healthy.

How we do it at Codegea

We run complete technical audits, with a prioritized list and the fixes handled by our team when you need it. Learn about our on-page SEO service or request a review from contact.