Technical SEO Audit: A 15-Point Checklist

There are 200 pages on your site. How many of these does Google see?

Most businesses don't know the answer to this question. When they open Search Console, they are presented with a list full of "discovered — not indexed" warnings and they don't know what to do. Then they continue to produce content. The content they produce is also added to the same list.

This is not a content issue. It's a technical problem. And here's the bright side of technical issues: They don't require prediction, they require measurement.

You can apply the following 15 items in order on your own site. Three free tools are enough: Search Console, PageSpeed ​​Insights, and the browser's developer tools.

Let's make this clear first

Technical SEO is not a "let's write better content" advice. It's a binary situation: either Google can find your page or it can't. It either indexes or it doesn't. Either it can scan or it can't.

That's why control is not subjective. Each item has a measurable answer. And you can't manage something that can't be measured.

A. Accessibility and scanability (1-5)

1. Does robots.txt really allow it?

https://siteniz.com/robots.txt Open the address. Failure to test environment Disallow: / If the line remains live, one line can delete your entire site from search results. This is the most common technical SEO mistake I see in Turkey — and the most expensive.

The Search Console → Settings → robots.txt report shows when Google last read the file and which lines gave errors.

2. Is the address pointing to the sitemap working?

in robots.txt Sitemap: If there is a line, paste the address there into the browser and open it. If you see XML, it's ok. If you're getting a 404, the situation is worse than you think: Pointing to a non-existent sitemap is worse than not providing a sitemap at all. Google gets a 404 on every try and completely ignores the signal.

We saw this error on a customer site last month. Sitemap was deleted in 2024, leaving the robots.txt line. For two years, Google was shown a file that did not exist.

3. Are important pages indexed?

in Search Console site:siteniz.com/sayfa-adi write. If the page isn't showing up, look for the cause in the "Pages" report. The three most common reasons are: noindex tag, canonical error, lack of internal links.

The third is the most overlooked. A page that has no links from anywhere is very difficult for Google to find — even if the page is technically perfect.

4. Is there a Canonical chain?

If page A gives canonical to B, and B gives canonical to C, Google may stop following the chain and index neither. This is called the "canonical chain".

In page source <link rel="canonical"> check the line. A page that gives itself canonical is normal. The page that links to another page is removed from the index — if you did not do this on purpose, there is an error.

5. Is hreflang mutual?

If you publish in more than one language, each language version hreflang should be connected with and this mutual should be. If the Turkish page shows English but the English page does not show Turkish, Google completely ignores this signal.

And test this: does the language selector actually change languages? Showing a flag in the interface is not enough. ?lang=en When you open it, different content should be returned from the server. If everything except the menu remains in Turkish, it means no translation has been made — and Google reads it as duplicate content.

B. Structure and marking (6-10)

6. Is the title hierarchy consistent?

One per page <h1>. Subheadings <h2>, their six <h3>. Don't level up — h2from h4Switching to breaks the structure.

Do not use titles for visual size. To make it look bigger <h2> Doing so is pointless for both the search engine and the screen reader.

7. Are there alt text in the images?

Every meaningful image alt Must have text. In decorative images alt="" It's true — leaving it blank is better than writing irrelevant text.

Do not write file names in the alt text. Write what the image says. Additionally, the WebP format and proper sizing can halve page weight.

8. Is structured data actually on the page?

For articles Article, for FAQ FAQPage, for products Product markup provides rich results. Verify with Google's Rich Results Test tool.

Critical point: if the content you mark does not appear on the page, Google considers it as spam. Just point to what's on the screen.

9. Is the internal link structure solid?

Important pages should be no more than 3 clicks away from the main menu. If there is an "orphan page" that does not get links from anywhere, Google will have a hard time finding it.

The most productive type of internal link: the link from the blog post to the service page. As the reader searches for information, they approach purchasing intent — and that's when the link gains value.

10. Has the URL changed subsequently?

/blog/teknik-seo-denetimi good URL. /blog?id=4821&cat=12 bad Do not use Turkish characters: ş instead of s, ı instead of i.

If you need to change the URL, 301 redirect is a must. A change without a redirect will reset any savings earned by that page.

C. Performance (11-15)

11. Are Core Web Vitals below thresholds?

Three metrics, three thresholds:

These metrics alone do not determine ranking, but they directly affect user experience. The most common cause of an LCP issue is that the large image at the top of the page is not compressed.

12. Did you actually use the site from your phone?

Narrowing the browser is not a test. Pick up the phone and check the following: does the text require horizontal scrolling, can the buttons be pressed with a finger, are the drop-down menus working, do the form fields close when the keyboard is opened?

Mobile issues are the most common technical SEO problems that never appear on desktop.

13. Is there any unused JavaScript payload?

Remove plugins and libraries you don't use. Each JavaScript file consumes processor time and worsens the INP metric.

In the developer tools, the "Coverage" tab shows the percentage of code that is loaded and not used. If it is above 60 percent, there is a serious cleaning opportunity.

14. Are compression and caching turned on?

In server responses Content-Encoding: gzip or br Must have title. For static files Cache-Control should be adjusted. Compression is typically a single server setting and provides up to 70 percent gains on text files.

15. Is the server response time acceptable?

Time to first byte (TTFB) must be under 600 milliseconds. If above, the cause is usually a slow database query or uncached page generation.

If you are using shared hosting, lowering this value may be limited. In this case, page caching is the fastest win — halving the TTFB is not an uncommon result.

Three common mistakes

Checking on the home page. Problems arise in the deep pages. Test at least 10 different templates: homepage, category, product or post detail, contact, search result.

Not opening Search Console at all. Google already tells you what it sees. No need to guess.

Changing them all in the same week. You can't see which change worked. Move forward group by group.

What to do?

1. Accessibility first. If Google can't find your page, everything else is meaningless.
2. Then indexing and canonical. Incorrectly indexed page is the silent cause of traffic loss.
3. The ultimate performance. It is important, but its effect will not be visible until the first two are resolved.

Repeat the audit every three months. A new page template, a new plugin, or a new language version adds new items to the list.

Conclusion

Technical SEO seeks answers to a single question: Can Google crawl and index your site without any problems?

If the answer is “no,” any new content you write is going to waste. Therefore, technical control is more important than content production. before It comes — not after.

If you want to stop guessing and start measuring, technical SEO audit It starts with a written report covering exactly these 15 items.