What a Technical SEO Audit Includes, and What You Get at the End

If someone has suggested a technical SEO audit, usually a developer before a rebuild, a board member after a dip in traffic, or an agency at the start of a pitch, the fair question is what you'd actually get for the money. The short answer: a technical audit checks whether search engines and AI assistants can find, render, understand and trust the pages that earn you revenue. It should end in a short plan that says what to fix first and what each fix is worth.

Our technical SEO audits start from £2,000 plus VAT and take 2 to 4 weeks, depending on the size of the site. They're run by a director rather than handed down a chain, and to be honest they're one of my favourite pieces of work, because a single finding can explain a problem a team has been circling for months.

A good example: a large business we worked with had thousands of product pages and a steady flow of new stock, yet most of it never appeared in Google. The pages themselves were fine. Google simply couldn't crawl its way to them. More pages hadn't meant more visibility; it had meant more pages Google never reached, and because nothing on the surface looked broken, nobody had spotted it.

This piece covers the seven areas a technical audit should check, how AI search visibility fits in, how findings are ranked, what the deliverable looks like, and what we need from you to start.

What does a technical SEO audit include?

Seven areas, in the order we work through them, because problems early in the list cause problems later in it. A page that can't be crawled can't be indexed, and a page that isn't indexed can't be cited by anyone.

1. Crawling

Can search engines reach every page that matters, and are they spending their time on those pages rather than on filter combinations, tracking parameters and old redirects? We crawl the site ourselves, compare that crawl with your XML sitemaps and with what Search Console reports, and, where your hosting allows, read the server logs to see where Googlebot actually goes. In plain English: we check whether Google's picture of your site matches yours.

2. Indexing

Of the pages Google can reach, which has it chosen to keep? The page indexing report in Search Console lists the reasons pages are left out, and most are fixable: stray noindex tags, canonical tags pointing at the wrong URL, near-duplicates Google has folded together. Then there's "crawled, currently not indexed", which usually means Google didn't think the page was worth keeping. That one is often a content question that looks like a technical one, and we'll say which it is.

3. Rendering and JavaScript

Many modern sites build their content in the browser with JavaScript. Google can render most of it, but later and less reliably than plain HTML, so it matters which parts arrive late. We compare the raw HTML with the rendered page for each key template. If the product description, price or main copy only appears after scripts run, we flag it, because that's also the version most AI crawlers see.

4. Architecture and internal links

How many clicks does it take to reach your commercial pages from the homepage, and do the pages that make money get the most internal links? Orphaned pages, meaning pages with no internal links pointing at them, turn up on almost every site we look at. The fix is usually a navigation or template change, which is cheap for what it returns.

5. Page experience and Core Web Vitals

Loading speed, visual stability and responsiveness, measured on real visitors through the Chrome UX Report where the data exists and on lab tests where it doesn't. We check this per template rather than per page, since a slow category template slows every category at once. We don't chase perfect scores. We look for the templates where speed is costing enquiries or sales.

6. Structured data, canonicals and duplication

Schema markup tells search engines what a page is: a product, an organisation, an article, a local business. We check that it validates, that it matches what's visible on the page, and that canonical tags, pagination and any language or country versions agree with each other. When those signals conflict, Google picks one, and it isn't always the one you'd pick.

7. Tracking and conversion measurement

This one surprises people, but a technical audit that can't measure the result of its own fixes isn't finished. We check that analytics records conversions properly, that forms and calls are tracked, and that organic visits aren't being credited to the wrong channel.

Our work with AM Phillip Trucktech, a commercial vehicle dealership with several branches, shows why this matters. The team had limited sight of where enquiries came from and how they converted, so early work went into custom event tracking and one view of performance across every branch. Only then could effort move confidently towards the channels earning their keep. Technical fixes work the same way: measure first, so you know what the work was worth.

How does an audit check visibility in AI search?

AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot now answer a share of the questions your buyers used to type into Google, and they draw on pages they can access and understand. So we treat AI search visibility as part of the technical audit rather than a separate product. Four checks sit under it.

• Access. Your robots.txt and firewall rules for AI crawlers such as GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended. Some sites block them by accident through a security setting nobody remembers switching on.
• Readable HTML. Whether key facts, prices and answers sit in the page source rather than being loaded by scripts, since most AI crawlers don't run JavaScript the way Googlebot does.
• Entity clarity. Organisation schema, consistent company details across your site and the main listings, and clear author information, so an assistant can tell who you are and whether to trust you.
• Citations. A sample of the questions your buyers ask, run through AI Overviews and the main assistants, noting where you're cited, where a competitor is, and which of their pages earned it.

Just so you know, for reference: blocking Google-Extended doesn't remove you from AI Overviews, which follow the normal Googlebot rules. It's a common mix-up, and a decision worth making on purpose. We've written more on how those citations are earned in our piece on AI Overviews citations.

How do you decide which fixes come first?

A crawl of a mid-sized site will usually surface a few hundred issues. Most of them don't matter much. The work of an audit is separating the handful that do from the rest, and we do that by scoring every finding on two things: what fixing it is likely to be worth, and what it costs to fix.

Worth is estimated from the pages affected. If 300 category pages are missing from the index, we look at what the indexed categories earn today and at the search demand for the missing ones, and put a range on it. Cost is developer time, which we estimate with your team rather than for them. The findings then fall into three groups: quick wins to ship in the first month, structural work to plan into a sprint, and findings we suggest you leave alone.

That third group matters more than it sounds. A missing meta description on a page nobody visits is a real finding and a poor use of a developer's afternoon. Knowing what to ignore is part of what you're paying for.

What do you get at the end of a technical SEO audit?

Three things, and a conversation.

• A prioritised plan. A ranked list of actions, each with the reasoning, the pages affected, an estimated value and an effort rating, with quick wins called out separately. Short enough to read in one sitting.
• Developer-ready specifications. Each fix written clearly enough to hand straight to your build team or agency, with example URLs and a simple way to check it's done.
• The evidence. Crawl data, Search Console exports and the AI citation checks, kept as an appendix for anyone who wants to see the working.

We then walk your team through it on a call, answer questions, and stay available while the first fixes ship. The plan is yours. There's no obligation to have us implement any of it, and plenty of teams do the work in-house.

How long does it take, and what do you need from us?

Two to four weeks from access to walkthrough. A site with a few hundred pages sits at the shorter end; a large catalogue, several languages or a heavy JavaScript framework pushes it towards four. The first week is access and crawling, the middle is analysis, and the last few days go on turning findings into the plan, which is the part that takes the most thought.

From you, we need four things: access to Search Console and your analytics, a contact on the development side who knows how the site is built, server logs if your host can provide them, and half an hour on how the site makes money. That last one shapes everything, because an issue on a page that earns nothing ranks below a smaller issue on your best-selling category.

Prices start from £2,000 plus VAT. Larger sites, multi-market sites and ecommerce catalogues cost more because there's more to check, and our guide to what an SEO audit costs sets out what moves the price.

Is a technical audit the right audit for you?

Sometimes it isn't, and we'd say so on the first call. A technical audit answers one question: can search engines and AI assistants reach and understand what you've got? If the site is technically sound but has no pages for what buyers search, or competitors simply have more authority, the constraint is content or links, and a full SEO audit with demand mapping is the better buy.

A quick way to tell: if traffic dropped suddenly, after a migration, redesign or platform change, start technical. If it has drifted slowly or never really grew, the answer is more often in content and demand. We've audited sites where the technical answer was "this is in good shape", and saying so saved the client money for the thing that was holding them back.

When there are technical problems, they're nearly always fixable, often in a sprint or two, and the previous work on a site is usually more sound than people fear. If you sell online, our ecommerce SEO audit framework adds the checks specific to catalogues and filters.

Where we fit

Technical audits are senior-led at Clear Click, and they're built to end in a plan your team can start on the following week. The full scope, process and deliverables are on our SEO audit services page.

If you're weighing up an audit, or you already have one and would like a second opinion on the priorities, get in touch with the site address and anything that has changed recently. We'll tell you whether a technical audit is the right place to start.

Questions we get asked

What is included in a technical SEO audit?

Crawling, indexing, rendering, site architecture and internal links, page experience, structured data and duplication, and tracking. Ours also covers AI search visibility, meaning whether AI crawlers can access your pages and whether assistants cite you. It ends in a ranked plan rather than a list of issues.

How long does a technical SEO audit take?

Two to four weeks for most sites, from the day we have access to the walkthrough call. Very large catalogues or sites in several languages sit at the longer end. Anything delivered the same day is a tool export, which has its uses but isn't an audit.

How much does a technical SEO audit cost?

Ours start from £2,000 plus VAT. The price rises with the number of templates, markets and URLs to check, and we agree scope up front so there are no surprises. We're happy to tell you on a short call roughly where your site is likely to sit.

Does a technical SEO audit cover AI Overviews and ChatGPT?

Ours does. We check AI crawler access, whether key content is readable without JavaScript, how clearly the site identifies your business, and where you are and aren't cited for a sample of buyer questions. It has become one of the most useful parts of the audit.

Can our developers implement the fixes themselves?

Yes, and many do. Every fix comes with a specification written for developers, plus a way to confirm it worked. We stay available for questions while the work ships, and we're glad to look over the changes once they're live.