A website can look professional, explain its services clearly and still fail to generate the enquiries it should.
Sometimes the problem is not the design or even the content. It is what is happening underneath: Google may struggle to crawl important pages, understand the structure of the website or decide which pages should appear in search results.
A technical SEO audit helps uncover those problems.
This guide explains some of the most important areas to check, why they can affect your visibility in Google and which issues deserve attention first.
If you are unsure whether your own website has technical, SEO or usability problems, you can also request a free website review. I will take an initial look at your website and highlight areas that may be holding it back.
What should a technical SEO audit achieve?
A technical SEO audit looks at the foundations beneath your website content.
It asks some fairly simple questions:
Can Google find your important pages?
Can those pages be crawled and indexed?
Is the structure of the website easy to understand?
Does the website load quickly?
Does it work properly on mobile devices?
Can visitors easily move from finding a page to making an enquiry?
The result should be a prioritised plan, not simply a spreadsheet containing hundreds of automated warnings.
Some technical problems are important because they prevent pages appearing in Google altogether. Others affect speed, usability or Google’s understanding of the website.
And some warnings produced by automated SEO tools are relatively insignificant.
A useful audit separates genuine commercial problems from technical housekeeping.
For most small and medium-sized businesses, the objective is straightforward: make sure the pages capable of generating enquiries are visible, quick to use and technically sound.
These might include:
service pages
location pages
case studies
contact pages
ecommerce category pages
important product pages
If you would like another pair of eyes on your website before commissioning a full technical audit, my free website review is a useful starting point.
Start with crawling and indexing
Google needs to find a page before it has any chance of ranking it.
One of the first stages of a technical SEO audit should therefore be checking what Google can access and which pages it has chosen to index.
Check whether your important pages appear in Google
Start with a few simple searches.
Search for your business name and some of the main services you provide. You can also try a Google site search such as:
site.co.ukThis provides a rough indication of pages Google knows about.
It is not a complete SEO diagnostic tool, but it can reveal obvious problems such as missing pages, old content or multiple versions of similar pages appearing in search results.
Google Search Console provides much more useful information.
Its indexing reports can identify pages that have been:
excluded from Google’s index
redirected
blocked
marked as duplicates
discovered but not indexed
Not every excluded page represents a problem.
Thank you pages, internal search results and obsolete campaign URLs, for example, may have no reason to appear in Google.
The warning sign is when an important service, product or location page is missing.
Review robots.txt, noindex tags and canonical URLs
Three technical controls can cause surprisingly significant SEO problems when they are configured incorrectly.
A robots.txt file gives search engine crawlers instructions about areas of a website they should or should not access.
A noindex tag tells search engines that a page should not appear in search results.
A canonical tag indicates which version of similar pages should be regarded as the primary version.
All three are useful.
Problems occur when development settings are accidentally carried over to a live website, an important page is set to noindex or canonical tags point Google towards the wrong URLs.
These mistakes are particularly easy to overlook because the website can appear completely normal to visitors.
If your website looks fine but receives surprisingly little organic traffic, this is one of the areas worth investigating.
You may also find my other web design and SEO insights useful when looking at the wider performance of your website.
Make redirects deliberate
Websites change over time.
Services are renamed, products disappear and old pages are replaced. When this happens, a permanent 301 redirect should usually send visitors and search engines to the closest relevant replacement.
Redirecting every deleted page to the homepage is rarely the best solution.
It can confuse visitors and makes it more difficult for search engines to understand what has happened to the original content.
Redirect chains are another common issue.
For example:
Old URL -> New URL -> Another URL -> Final URLEach additional step adds unnecessary work.
Where possible, the original address should redirect directly to the final live page.
Audit your site structure and internal links
Website structure affects both SEO and usability.
Important services should not be buried several clicks away from the homepage or only accessible through complicated navigation.
Look at your website as a potential customer rather than its owner.
Can someone quickly find:
what you do
where you work
examples of your work
answers to common questions
how to contact you
Then look at the links within the actual content of your pages.
A page about website design, for example, might naturally link to relevant case studies, SEO information, website hosting or articles explaining related subjects.
Internal links help Google understand relationships between pages, but they also help potential customers make decisions.
Someone considering a website redesign might want to see examples of previous projects. Someone researching SEO might want to understand what is involved before making contact.
Good internal linking provides those routes naturally.
For further advice, browse the Web Design Insights section of the website.
Look for duplicate and thin pages
Duplicate content can appear for many reasons.
Common examples include:
filter and category pages
old versions of services
printer friendly pages
duplicated product information
near identical location pages
Duplicate content does not automatically mean Google will penalise a website, but having multiple similar pages can make it harder for search engines to determine which page is most relevant.
Location pages deserve particular attention.
If you have separate pages targeting Bristol, Bath, Somerset or other areas, each should have a genuine purpose.
Simply copying the same page and changing the town name provides little additional value to the person reading it.
Useful location pages should include relevant services, local context and information that genuinely helps someone in that area decide whether your business can help them.
Test website speed and mobile usability
Website speed is both a technical and commercial issue.
If a page takes too long to load, some visitors will leave before they have even seen your offer.
Performance testing tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights can help identify problems, but do not test only your homepage.
Try several important types of page:
homepage
service page
contact page
article
product or category page
A fast homepage does not compensate for slow service pages.
Common causes of poor performance include oversized images, unnecessary scripts, badly configured caching, excessive plugins and slow hosting.
Large background videos, animations and other visual effects can also have an impact.
They may look impressive, but they should have a purpose.
If an effect delays the main content or makes it harder for a mobile visitor to find the enquiry button, it may be working against the website rather than improving it.
Don’t forget Core Web Vitals
Google’s Core Web Vitals look at aspects of the experience such as loading performance, visual stability and responsiveness.
But performance scores should not be considered in isolation.
Use the website yourself.
Does content jump around while the page loads?
Does the menu respond immediately?
Does a cookie notice cover most of the screen?
Can you complete and submit the contact form easily?
A website can achieve respectable scores in automated testing and still be frustrating to use.
Test your website on a real phone
One of the simplest website audits you can perform requires no specialist software at all.
Take out your phone and use your website as though you were a customer.
Try to find one of your services and then make an enquiry.
Ask yourself:
Can I understand the main message without zooming?
Are buttons easy to tap?
Can I find the navigation?
Does the telephone number work when tapped?
Is the enquiry form easy to complete?
Is the text comfortable to read?
Can I quickly understand what to do next?
Technical performance and conversion performance frequently meet at this point.
If you would like me to take a similar look at your website, you can request a free website review.
Check structured data and search appearance
Structured data is additional code that can help search engines understand information on a webpage.
For a local service business, relevant structured data might include:
Organisation
LocalBusiness
Service
FAQ
Breadcrumb
Adding structured data does not guarantee better rankings or enhanced search listings.
Accuracy is more important than quantity.
Business names, addresses, telephone numbers, opening hours and service information should agree with the information visitors see on the website.
It is also worth reviewing how your important pages may appear in Google’s search results.
Page titles should clearly describe the subject of the page and, where appropriate, its location.
Avoid trying to squeeze every possible keyword into the title.
Meta descriptions should provide a concise and credible reason for someone to visit the page.
Prioritise SEO fixes by business impact
A technical audit can easily produce dozens, or even hundreds of recommendations.
That does not mean everything needs fixing immediately.
For most business websites, a sensible order is:
Indexing problems, broken pages and errors affecting important services.
Mobile usability, loading speed and enquiry form problems.
Weak internal linking, redirect chains and confusing site structure.
Structured data, image optimisation and other refinements.
The exact priorities depend on the website.
A large ecommerce website with thousands of pages may need to concentrate on crawling and indexing.
A smaller Bristol service business may get considerably more value from improving a slow service page and making its enquiry process easier.
The audit should reflect how your business actually generates enquiries rather than blindly following an automated checklist.
Turn your SEO audit into ongoing improvement
Technical SEO should not be treated as something completed once when a website launches.
Websites continually change.
New pages are added. Plugins and software are updated. Content is removed. Hosting changes. Designs evolve.
Any of these can introduce new technical problems.
A simple monthly check of Google Search Console, website uptime, performance and enquiry forms can identify many problems before they have a significant effect.
It is also worth recording your current position before making substantial changes.
Depending on the website, this might include:
organic search traffic
visibility for priority services
number of indexed pages
website performance
number of enquiries generated
This gives you a baseline against which improvements can be judged.
A technical change is useful when it contributes to better visibility, a better customer experience or more enquiries — not simply because an audit tool gives the website a higher score.
Is your website working as hard as it should?
The most valuable technical SEO work is often invisible.
Visitors do not care whether canonical tags are correct or redirects have been tidied up.
They care that they can find the right page, understand what you offer and contact you without difficulty.
And that is ultimately what a technically sound website should achieve.
If your website looks good but is not generating the enquiries you expected, there may be technical, SEO, content or usability issues that are not immediately obvious.
Request a free website review and I will take an initial look at your website and highlight areas where it could potentially be improved.
It is a straightforward way to identify where your website may be losing visibility or enquiries, and which improvements are worth looking at first.