Someone said this to me recently.
I laughed.
Because honestly, I used to think the same.
When I first learned tech audit, it seemed simple: crawl the site in Screaming Frog, export the data, and paste it into a spreadsheet, and you’re done.
But after doing almost 100 SEO tech audits, I’ve learned that a good audit goes way beyond that.
Here’s what I’ve learned along the way:
• Crawling is just the start. Most issues don’t show up in the first crawl. You often have to adjust crawl settings like user agents, rendering, exclusion rules, JavaScript support, etc., to uncover what’s really going on.
• Don’t stick to templates. Every website is unique. A checklist helps, but real insights come from custom analysis, especially on large or complex sites.
• Redirect chains, orphan pages, and faceted navigation aren’t always obvious. You have to look at how the site behaves, not just what the crawler says.
• Google Search Console is a gold mine if you know where to look. You can spend hours exploring coverage reports, inspecting URLs, and correlating clicks and impressions with crawl or indexing issues.
• PageSpeed audits go beyond Core Web Vitals. It’s not just about a PageSpeed Insights score. You have to understand how the tech stack, third-party scripts, and server setup affect performance.
• Manual checks matter. Tools can miss sitemap issues, robots.txt misconfigurations, canonical problems, and more. A human eye is essential.
But above all, understanding the business is crucial.
Once, a crawler flagged an orphan page. A teammate casually suggested linking to it from a blog post and moving on.
But I took a step back to ask: Why does this page exist?
It turned out the client, a productivity coach, was using that page to share a one-hour masterclass. It had been intentionally set to noindex and wasn’t meant to be linked from the site. But it was mistakenly included in the sitemap, which is why the crawler flagged it.
I only realized it because I’d subscribed to the client’s newsletter and remembered the page being part of their email marketing campaign.
The fix wasn’t to interlink it randomly. It was to remove it from the sitemap.
That seemingly small detail taught me a big lesson. Not every flagged issue needs to be “fixed” immediately. First, understand the intent. Then suggest the right solution.
That same mindset helped me analyse 16,000+ orphan pages for a large enterprise site by prioritizing them based on purpose, value, and business goals.
So, no, a technical audit isn’t just copy-paste. It’s analysis, investigation, problem-solving, and business understanding.
It’s where SEO starts making sense or breaking down.
Want to know how I handled those 16,000 orphan pages?
Drop a comment saying “orphan pages”, and I’ll share more in the next post.
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