- For beginners
- 12 minutes
- No SEO knowledge needed
SEO audit: find and fix technical problems on your website
Crawl Foundry checks every page of your website and shows you what gets in Google's way. Here you learn to read the list, fix the most important problems and check that the fix worked.
Let's startIn a nutshell
An audit is a car inspection for your website.
At a car inspection, someone checks brakes, lights and tires against a fixed list. An audit does the same for your website: a program visits every page and checks, for example, whether it loads, has a title and isn't accidentally blocked for Google.
Why it matters: If Google can't read a page, even the best copy won't help. Many technical problems are quick to fix. You just have to find them.
For a first access check, test one URL with the AI Crawler Checker. Use the robots.txt checker to examine the crawler-specific rules separately.
First things first
What to look out for first
1.Errors first, notices later
Do thisStart at the top: errors before warnings, warnings before notices.
Not thisStarting with the smallest notice because it looks easiest.
2.Fix the pattern, not each page
Do thisIf all 40 product pages are missing a title, the template is the cause. Fix it once in the template and you're done.
Not thisEditing 40 pages one by one in the CMS.
3.Check before you tick it off
Do thisAfter the fix, run a new audit and look in Compare to see whether the problem is gone.
Not thisTicking it off because the change was made.
Step by step
How to do it in Crawl Foundry
1Step 1 of 4
Add your website
Open Site Audit and click “Add domain”. Choose “My own website” and enter the address.
Done when: The address is entered.
Simplified sketch with sample data 2Step 2 of 4
Show that the website is yours
For the full audit, you confirm that you manage the website. The easiest way is a meta tag: copy one line of code into the head of the home page, for example through the SEO plugin. Then click “Check proof” and start the audit.
Done when: The domain is verified and the audit is running.
Simplified sketch with sample data 3Step 3 of 4
Work through problems from the top
When the audit is finished, open the “Issues” tab. It shows how serious each problem is and how many pages it affects. Click the top entry to see the affected pages.
Done when: You know which problem to fix first, and on which pages.
Simplified sketch with sample data 4Step 4 of 4
Fix it and check again
Fix the problem on the website or in the template. Then run a new audit with the same settings and open the “Compare” tab. It shows in black and white whether the problem has gone.
Done when: Compare shows 0 affected pages for the problem.
Simplified sketch with sample data
Common mistakes
Mistakes that happen a lot at the start
Only ever running the Quick Check.
Better: The Quick Check covers at most 100 pages. For the full picture, verify the domain and run the full audit.
Trying to work through every single notice.
Better: Not every finding is a task. Focus on errors that affect many or important pages.
Not checking the fix.
Better: Only a new audit shows whether the change is really live. Caches and templates sometimes hold surprises.
Mini glossary
Terms you need here
- Crawl
- A program visits every page of the website and reads it, just like Google does.
- noindex
- An instruction in the code telling Google: please don't show this page in search results. Handy on staging, fatal on the live site.
- Page title
- The title in a page's code (the title tag). Google often shows it as the blue headline in search results.
- Verification
- Proof that you manage the website. Full and scheduled audits only become possible after it.
Done
Run the first audit on one of your websites.
A Quick Check of up to 100 pages works without verification. It shows you where to start.