A technical SEO audit is a health check of your website’s foundations, looking at how easily search engines and AI engines can crawl, read, index and trust it. It surfaces the hidden issues, from slow pages to missing structured data, that are quietly holding your rankings back.
Studio22What is a technical SEO audit?
A technical SEO audit is a health check of the foundations of your website. It looks at how easily search engines, and now AI engines, can crawl, read, index and trust your site. Where on page SEO is about your content and off page SEO is about your reputation, technical SEO is about the machinery underneath, and an audit is how you find what is quietly broken.
Most sites have issues they cannot see. A technical SEO audit surfaces them, so you can fix the things holding your rankings back before they cost you more. It sits alongside our wider SEO services, and if you want the bigger picture first, our complete guide to SEO in Perth is a good place to start.
What a technical SEO audit covers
A thorough audit works through the foundations one layer at a time.
- Crawlability. Can search engines reach and move through your pages, or is something blocking them?
- Indexation. Are the right pages in the search index, and the wrong ones kept out?
- Site speed and performance. Do your pages load quickly, on mobile as well as desktop?
- Site structure. Is your site organised logically, so both users and crawlers can find their way?
- Internal linking. Do your pages link together in a way that spreads authority and guides visitors?
- Structured data. Is your content marked up so machines can understand what it means?
- Mobile and core web vitals. Does the site perform well on the measures Google actually uses?
- Duplicate and thin content. Are there pages competing with each other or adding little value?
Why it matters for search and AI
Technical problems undermine everything else you do. You can write brilliant content and earn strong links, but if search engines cannot crawl your pages, load them quickly or understand their structure, that effort is wasted.
This matters even more in AI search. If an engine cannot access or parse your site, it cannot cite it, no matter how good your content is. Clean technical foundations are the price of entry for both classic rankings and being named in AI answers. It is the same groundwork that helps you get cited by ChatGPT and Claude.
Signs you need a technical SEO audit
- Your rankings have dropped or stalled without an obvious reason.
- Your traffic fell after a website redesign or migration.
- Your pages are slow, especially on mobile.
- New pages are slow to appear in Google, or not appearing at all.
- You have never had one done, or not in the last year.
How often should you run one?
As a rule, a full technical SEO audit once a year is sensible for most businesses, with lighter checks along the way. You should also run one after any major change to your site, such as a redesign, a migration or a big content update, since these are the moments technical issues tend to creep in.
Our technical SEO work covers audits and the fixes that follow. If your rankings have stalled, or you have never had a proper audit, request an SEO review and we will show you what is holding the site back.
Frequently asked questions
What is a technical SEO audit?
It is a health check of your website’s foundations, looking at how easily search engines and AI engines can crawl, read, index and trust it. It surfaces hidden issues like slow pages, indexing problems and missing structured data.
What does a technical SEO audit include?
Typically crawlability, indexation, site speed, site structure, internal linking, structured data, mobile performance and duplicate content, along with the fixes needed to put them right.
How often should I do a technical SEO audit?
A full audit once a year suits most businesses, with lighter checks in between. You should also run one after any major change, such as a redesign or migration.
Can technical SEO improve conversions?
Yes. Faster, cleaner, better structured pages are easier to use as well as to crawl, so fixing technical issues often improves the experience for visitors and lifts conversions alongside rankings.