How to Check Your Website for Technical SEO Problems
How to Check Your Website for Technical SEO Problems
Table of Contents
- 1. Understanding What Happens Behind Your Website
- 2. Technical SEO Checklist: Where Should You Start?
- 3. Check Whether Search Engines Can Reach Your Pages
- 4. Find Indexing Problems Before They Grow
- 5. Review Broken Links, Redirects, and Canonical Tags
- 6. Check Your XML Sitemap and robots.txt File
- 7. Look at Page Speed and Core Web Vitals
- 8. Review Title Tags and Schema Markup
- 9. Common Technical SEO Mistakes to Avoid
- 10. Frequently Asked Questions
- 11. Key Takeaways
- 12. Strengthen Your Website’s SEO
- 13. Disclaimer
- 14. References
Your website can look great to you and your customers while still having problems hidden behind the scenes. Search engines need to access your pages, follow your links, understand your URLs, and process your content before those pages have an opportunity to appear in search results. A technical SEO checklist gives you a practical way to find issues that may interfere with that process.
You do not need to be a developer to spot many of these problems. You can check whether important pages are accessible, find outdated links, review redirects, investigate indexing, and look for performance problems. You can also use tools such as Google Search Console to better understand how Google interacts with your website.
If you are new to this side of SEO, the goal is not to fix everything in one afternoon. It is to understand what is happening, identify the problems that matter most, and work through them in a sensible order.
1. Understanding What Happens Behind Your Website
When you visit your own website, you naturally see it from a customer’s perspective. You open the homepage, click through a few pages, check the navigation, and make sure everything looks right.
Search engines experience your website differently.
They discover URLs, follow links, request pages, interpret response codes, process content, and evaluate signals that help them understand which version of a page should be considered.
That is why a website can appear perfectly normal in your browser while still having technical SEO issues.
For example, imagine you recently redesigned your site. The new pages work well, but several old URLs still appear in internal links. Some lead through multiple redirects, while others return a 404 error. At the same time, an important service page may have accidentally inherited a setting that discourages indexing.
None of these problems necessarily changes how your homepage looks.
A technical SEO audit helps you look beneath the design and review how the website is actually structured and accessed.
You are not trying to satisfy an SEO tool for the sake of getting a perfect score. You are trying to make your website easier for people and search engines to navigate and understand.
2. Technical SEO Checklist: Where Should You Start?
A technical review can feel overwhelming because there are so many things you could check. The easiest approach is to start with the basics and work toward the smaller details.
A sensible order is:
- Check whether search engines can access your important pages.
- Review whether those pages are being indexed as expected.
- Find broken URLs and unexpected HTTP responses.
- Review redirects and canonical URLs.
- Check your XML sitemap and robots.txt file.
- Investigate page speed and Core Web Vitals.
- Review title tags and structured data.
- Document what you find before making major changes.
This order helps you prioritize fundamental problems.
There is little value in spending an hour rewriting a title tag if the page itself returns an error. Likewise, adjusting schema markup will not solve a crawl restriction that prevents a search engine from accessing an important page.
Think of the process as troubleshooting rather than optimizing everything at once. Find the obstacle first, understand why it exists, and then decide what needs to change.
3. Check Whether Search Engines Can Reach Your Pages
Before you worry about rankings, start with a simpler question: can a search engine actually access the pages you want people to find?
Google uses automated crawlers, including Googlebot, to discover and request pages across the web.
According to Google Search Central’s technical requirements, Googlebot must not be blocked from accessing a page for that page to meet Google’s minimum technical requirements for potential indexing.
Your robots.txt file is one place worth checking. This file provides instructions about which URLs crawlers may request.
That does not mean every blocked URL is a problem. You may have administrative areas or other sections that do not need to be crawled.
The concern is when an important public page is restricted unintentionally.
You should also look at your site’s navigation. If an important page exists but nothing on your website links to it, discovering that page can become more difficult for both visitors and crawlers.
As you review your site, think about the journey from the homepage to your important content. Can you reach your main pages through normal navigation? Do those links point directly to current URLs? Are important sections publicly accessible?
These simple questions can uncover problems before you move into more complicated technical checks.
4. Find Indexing Problems Before They Grow
Crawling and indexing are often discussed together, but they are not the same thing.
Crawling involves discovering and accessing a URL. Website indexing involves processing eligible content so that it may potentially appear in search results.
This distinction matters because a page can be accessible without necessarily being indexed.
For example, you may publish a new service page and see that it loads perfectly in your browser. That confirms the page is live. It does not confirm that Google has indexed it.
When an important page is missing from search, avoid jumping immediately to one conclusion. The problem could involve crawl access, an indexing directive, an error response, canonicalization, duplicate content, weak internal discovery, or another issue.
Look for patterns too.
One missing page is different from an entire section of your website disappearing from search. If many URLs experience the same problem at roughly the same time, think about what changed across the site.
Maybe you redesigned the website. Perhaps a plugin setting changed. Maybe URLs were reorganized or a development configuration carried over to the live site.
Keeping track of website changes makes these situations much easier to investigate.
5. Review Broken Links, Redirects, and Canonical Tags
Websites rarely stay exactly the same. You add pages, remove old content, rename services, redesign sections, and change URLs.
Over time, those normal changes can leave behind technical clutter.
Start with broken links. An internal link should take your visitor somewhere useful. If it leads to a missing page, both you and your visitor have reached a dead end.
You do not need to panic every time you find a 404. Sometimes a page was intentionally removed and has no appropriate replacement.
The more important question is whether your website still actively sends visitors to that missing URL.
Redirects are another area worth reviewing. A 301 redirect is commonly used when a URL has permanently moved to a new location.
Imagine you changed an old service URL to a cleaner version. Redirecting the old address to its relevant replacement can help visitors who still encounter the previous URL.
Problems can develop when redirects begin stacking on top of one another.
If Page A redirects to Page B and Page B redirects to Page C, your own internal links should generally point directly to the current Page C destination rather than relying on the older route.
You should also inspect canonical tags. These signals help indicate a preferred URL when duplicate or very similar versions exist.
A canonical should make sense for the page. If an important page unexpectedly points to a different or unrelated URL as its canonical version, that deserves investigation.
6. Check Your XML Sitemap and robots.txt File
Your XML sitemap and robots.txt file serve different purposes, even though both frequently come up during a website SEO audit.
A sitemap helps search engines discover URLs you consider important. Your robots.txt file provides crawling instructions.
A healthy sitemap should reflect the website you have now, not every URL your site has ever used.
After a redesign or migration, for example, you may discover old redirected URLs lingering in the sitemap. You might also find pages that were removed months ago or duplicate URL versions that are no longer useful.
Your important current pages should be represented accurately.
At the same time, review robots.txt for restrictions that no longer make sense. Development teams sometimes block sections while a website is being built. Problems can happen if those restrictions remain after launch.
You do not need to edit either file simply because an SEO tool mentions it. First understand what the existing configuration is doing.
A change made without understanding the purpose of the file can create a bigger problem than the warning you were originally trying to fix.
7. Look at Page Speed and Core Web Vitals
Nobody enjoys waiting for a page that feels slow. If your website takes too long to load or becomes difficult to use while content is appearing, visitors may leave before they get to the information they need.
Your site’s page speed can be affected by many things, including large images, scripts, fonts, third-party tools, plugins, page builders, hosting, and caching. This is why there is rarely one fix that works for every slow website.
For example, compressing oversized images can make a meaningful difference when large media files are slowing down a page. But if the real problem comes from heavy JavaScript, slow server response times, or too many third-party resources, image compression alone may not solve it.
The better approach is to identify what is actually causing the slowdown before making changes.
Core Web Vitals can also help you understand important parts of the experience people have when using your pages, including loading performance, responsiveness, and visual stability. If you want to take a closer look at these measurements, our Core Web Vitals guide explains what they measure, how to test your pages, and what common performance problems to look for.
As you review the results, try not to focus only on getting a perfect score. Instead, ask what the data is telling you about the actual experience on your website.
Does the main content take too long to appear? Does the layout shift while someone is trying to read or click something? Does the page feel slow to respond after an interaction?
Those are the kinds of problems worth investigating. Once you understand what is causing them, you can make more targeted improvements instead of changing parts of your website that may not be responsible for the issue.
The goal is not simply a better test score. It is a faster, more stable, and easier-to-use website.
8. Review Title Tags and Schema Markup
Once you have looked at access, indexing, URLs, and performance, move into page-level elements.
Title tags are a good place to start.
A title should help describe what a page is actually about. Problems arise when titles are missing, duplicated across many pages, left over from templates, or so vague that they provide little context.
Imagine five service pages all using “Our Services” as their title. Each page may cover something completely different, but the titles do not reflect those differences.
Review your important pages individually and make sure the titles accurately represent their content.
You can then look at schema markup, also known as structured data.
Structured data gives search engines machine-readable information about certain types of content. Depending on your website, that might include information about articles, businesses, breadcrumbs, products, events, or other supported content.
More markup is not automatically better.
Your structured data should accurately describe what appears on the page. If your schema contains outdated information or claims that are not reflected in the visible content, it needs attention.
Validation can help you identify errors, but context still matters. A technically valid piece of markup is only useful when it represents the page correctly.
9. Common Technical SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Many website problems happen because someone tries to fix an issue too quickly.
One common mistake is changing several things at once. If you edit redirects, indexing settings, plugins, and page templates at the same time, you may struggle to identify which change affected the result.
Another is assuming that every warning from an SEO tool represents an emergency. Tools can help you find potential problems, but they do not always understand the purpose of every page on your website.
It is also easy to forget old internal links. A redirect may keep an outdated link functioning, but updating the link to its current destination usually creates a cleaner internal structure.
Be careful with broad redirects too. Sending every removed page to your homepage may seem convenient, but it does not necessarily give the visitor a relevant replacement.
Finally, do not assume that a page is indexed simply because it is live.
The Google crawling and indexing documentation explains how Google approaches areas such as sitemaps, robots.txt, canonicalization, redirects, metadata, HTTP status codes, and crawlable links.
When something seems wrong, investigate the specific issue before changing your website.
Frequently Asked Questions
You may notice obvious signs such as broken pages, slow loading, or links that lead nowhere. Other problems are less visible and may involve indexing, crawl restrictions, canonical URLs, or redirects.
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The best approach is to review your website systematically instead of relying on one score. Start with access and indexing, then work through URLs, site structure, performance, metadata, and structured data.
Start with whether search engines can access your important pages and whether those pages are eligible to be indexed.
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Those are foundational checks. Once you understand them, move on to status codes, broken internal links, redirects, canonical tags, sitemaps, performance, and page-level elements.
No. A sitemap can help search engines discover URLs, but it does not guarantee that every URL listed will be indexed.
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Think of your sitemap as a useful map of important URLs rather than an instruction that requires a search engine to include every page in its index.
No. If a page was intentionally removed and there is no relevant replacement, a not-found response can be appropriate.
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If an old page has a clear replacement, a redirect may make sense. You should also update internal links that still point to the old URL so visitors can reach the current page directly.
There is no schedule that works for every website.
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A small site that changes only a few times per year may need less frequent reviews than an ecommerce or publishing site that constantly adds and removes URLs. It is especially useful to check your site after a redesign, migration, URL restructuring, major CMS changes, or an unexpected shift in organic search visibility.
Key Takeaways
- Start by checking whether search engines can access and process your important pages.
- Review indexing before assuming that every live URL can appear in search.
- Check broken links, redirects, canonical tags, your sitemap, and crawling instructions after major website changes.
- Investigate the actual cause of slow performance instead of chasing a perfect testing score.
- Make sure title tags and structured data accurately describe the pages where they appear.
- Document major technical changes so future problems are easier to troubleshoot.
- Remember that technical improvements can support your search foundation, but they do not guarantee rankings or indexing.
Strengthen Your Website’s SEO
Checking your website for technical problems does not have to turn into a complicated exercise. Start with the fundamentals, work through one area at a time, and focus on problems that affect access, navigation, indexing, and the experience people have when they use your site.
You can also make technical reviews part of regular website maintenance. When you redesign pages, change URLs, install new functionality, or reorganize content, checking the technical foundation afterward can help you catch problems while the changes are still fresh.
If you would like to understand how these technical checks fit into a broader organic strategy, explore IL Webdesign’s search engine optimization services to learn more about building a healthier search foundation for your website.
Disclaimer
This article is intended for general educational and informational purposes. Search engine documentation, systems, technical requirements, and recommended practices can change over time. Website configurations also vary depending on the content management system, hosting environment, plugins, themes, and development setup.
Before making significant technical changes to a live website, review current documentation and consider qualified technical assistance when appropriate. No specific ranking position, traffic increase, indexing result, or other SEO outcome is guaranteed.