Free Technical SEO Audit Checklist: 35 Checks + Template

Resolve HTTP, HTTPS, apex, and www variants and record every redirect hop.

Verify priority URLs return the intended 200, 3xx, 4xx, or 5xx status.

Confirm robots.txt is reachable, syntactically valid, and points to the canonical sitemap.

Compare robots directives with page-level robots meta and X-Robots-Tag headers.

Test representative pages with and without JavaScript and record material differences.

Keep only canonical, indexable, 200-status URLs in XML sitemaps.

Verify every indexable page has one self-referencing canonical on the preferred host.

Remove accidental noindex directives from pages intended to rank.

Identify soft 404s, thin shells, empty states, and misleading success responses.

Compare indexed and excluded route groups in Search Console, not only totals.

Map duplicates caused by parameters, casing, trailing slashes, and alternate paths.

Test redirects for single-hop behavior and preservation of the exact destination path.

Align navigation, structured data, hreflang, sitemap, and canonical URLs.

Confirm raw HTML contains a unique title, H1, canonical, opening copy, and internal links.

Check that hydration does not remove, duplicate, or replace crawl-critical metadata.

Capture browser errors, blocked resources, and failed API dependencies on key templates.

Assign one search intent and one canonical owner to every priority route.

Check titles and descriptions for uniqueness, accuracy, and useful snippet propositions.

Verify headings reflect the visible task instead of repeating navigation labels.

Confirm pagination, filters, and empty states do not create indexable clutter.

Crawl internal href links and resolve broken URLs, redirect chains, and orphaned pages.

Give priority pages descriptive links from hubs, related guides, and commercial pages.

Confirm links remain crawlable anchors rather than click handlers without href values.

Validate JSON-LD syntax and match every entity, claim, author, date, and URL to visible truth.

Use one stable Organization identifier and connect only verified sameAs profiles.

Check breadcrumbs, article dates, service details, and application fields against the page.

Review field Core Web Vitals by template before treating one lab run as sitewide truth.

Inspect image sizing, font loading, long tasks, and layout shifts on mobile.

Record response time and HTML size for representative server responses.

Verify the analytics loader, consent behavior, and one page_view contract per route.

Test form, phone, booking, and diagnostic actions through to accepted outcomes.

Preserve route, source, and campaign context without sending personal data.

Record affected URLs, raw evidence, severity, owner, recommended fix, and confidence.

Separate verified defects from hypotheses, opportunities, and external platform delays.

Re-crawl changed templates and save before-and-after evidence before closing an issue.