Technical SEO Audit: What We Check Before Every Website Launch
A website that no one can find is infrastructure that generates no return. Technical SEO determines whether search engines can crawl, index, and rank your pages — and whether users who arrive from search stay long enough to convert. We run a structured audit before every website we launch.
Why technical SEO comes before content
Content strategy and keyword research matter. But they only deliver results if the technical foundation is solid. A site with excellent content and broken indexation will not rank. A site with fast pages and correct structured data will outperform a slower competitor on equivalent content, consistently.
We have audited sites where 40% of pages were blocked from indexing by a misconfigured robots.txt. Sites where canonical tags pointed every product page to the homepage, eliminating category-level ranking potential entirely. Sites where Core Web Vitals scores were failing because a third-party chat widget loaded synchronously in the document head.
These are not edge cases. They are common. And none of them are visible without a structured audit.
Crawlability and indexation
The first question is whether search engines can reach your pages at all.
robots.txt configuration. We verify that the robots.txt file allows crawling of all pages intended for indexing and explicitly disallows staging environments, admin panels, and duplicate parameter URLs that would waste crawl budget.
XML sitemap. The sitemap must list only canonical, indexable URLs — no redirects, no 404s, no noindex pages. We generate a clean sitemap, submit it to Google Search Console, and verify that Googlebot can fetch it without errors.
Crawl depth. Every indexable page should be reachable within three clicks from the homepage. Orphaned pages — those with no internal links pointing to them — will not be crawled regularly regardless of their sitemap inclusion.
Redirect mapping. For sites migrating from an existing URL structure, we map every old URL to its new destination and implement 301 redirects before launch. Traffic and link equity from the old URLs transfer to the new ones. Without this step, a site relaunch can destroy years of accumulated ranking.
Core Web Vitals
Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal. More importantly, they measure the experience of a real user loading your page on a real connection. We benchmark all three metrics before launch:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). The time until the largest visible element — typically a hero image or headline — is fully rendered. Target: under 2.5 seconds. We achieve this through image optimisation, preloading critical resources, and eliminating render-blocking scripts.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). The degree to which page elements move after initial render. A banner that loads late and pushes content down is a CLS problem. We set explicit dimensions on images and embeds, and we load web fonts without layout disruption.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP). The responsiveness of the page to user input. Heavy JavaScript execution that blocks the main thread causes poor INP scores. We audit third-party scripts — analytics, chat widgets, ad tags — and defer or remove those that cannot justify their performance cost.
On-page technical structure
Title tags and meta descriptions. Every indexable page needs a unique title tag under 60 characters and a meta description under 160 characters. These are not just ranking signals — they are what users read in search results before deciding whether to click. Generic or duplicated titles reduce click-through rate across the entire site.
Canonical tags. E-commerce sites and sites with URL parameters frequently generate duplicate content. We implement canonical tags to tell search engines which version of a page to index, preventing ranking dilution across equivalent URLs.
Heading hierarchy. Each page should have one H1 that matches the primary keyword intent. H2 and H3 headings structure the content logically. We audit heading structure for both SEO alignment and accessibility compliance.
Internal linking. Link anchor text signals topic relevance to search engines. We audit internal links for descriptive anchor text, verify that high-priority pages receive sufficient internal links, and identify pages that are effectively orphaned within the site structure.
Structured data
Schema.org structured data tells search engines what your content means, not just what it says. Correctly implemented structured data can earn rich results — star ratings, FAQ expansions, breadcrumbs, and product details — that increase visibility and click-through rate in search results without changing your ranking position.
We implement structured data for:
- Organisation and LocalBusiness — name, address, contact details, and social profiles
- Product and Offer — price, availability, and reviews for e-commerce pages
- Article and BlogPosting — author, publication date, and content type for editorial pages
- BreadcrumbList — navigation path for category and product pages
- FAQPage — question and answer content eligible for expanded search results
Every structured data implementation is validated with Google's Rich Results Test before launch.
Mobile and international configuration
Mobile usability. Google indexes the mobile version of your site first. We test every page template on a range of screen sizes and verify that tap targets, font sizes, and content layout meet Google's mobile usability standards.
hreflang for multilingual sites. Sites serving content in Ukrainian and English require hreflang tags that tell search engines which language version to serve to which audience. Incorrectly configured hreflang is a common source of ranking cannibalisation on multilingual sites — each language version competing against the others for the same queries.
Search Console setup and baseline
Before launch, we configure Google Search Console with the correct property, verify DNS or tag-based ownership, and submit the sitemap. We document the pre-launch baseline — indexed page count, any existing search appearance data — so that the impact of the launch is measurable against a known starting point.
Post-launch, we monitor Search Console for crawl errors, manual actions, and indexation anomalies during the first 30 days. Problems found at this stage are addressed before they compound.
What a clean audit means for your business
A site that passes a thorough technical SEO audit before launch starts earning organic traffic immediately rather than spending the first three months recovering from indexation problems. The content you publish compounds over time. The link equity you build accumulates. None of that works if the technical foundation is broken.
We include this audit in every website project we deliver. It is not an add-on or an optional service. It is part of what it means to launch a website correctly.
Not sure whether your current site has technical SEO issues holding back your rankings? We run standalone technical audits for existing sites. Contact us to discuss what a review would cover and what it typically uncovers.