Technical SEO has expanded significantly since the days of checking title tags and sitemaps. In 2026, a complete technical audit covers crawlability, indexability, performance, accessibility, structured data, and AI-readiness. Here is the full checklist.
Crawlability
- robots.txt: no accidental Disallow for important URL patterns, sitemap referenced
- XML sitemap: all indexable URLs present, no 404s or redirects in the sitemap, lastmod dates accurate
- Crawl depth: important pages within 3 clicks from homepage
- Orphan pages: no pages with zero internal links
- Redirect chains: no chains longer than 2 hops, no redirect loops
- Canonical tags: every page has a self-referencing canonical, no conflicting canonicals across hreflang
Indexability
- noindex audit: no important pages accidentally noindexed
- Canonical correctness: pagination handled correctly (rel=next/prev deprecated — use canonical)
- Duplicate content: URL parameter variants canonicalized, www vs non-www redirected
- Soft 404s: pages returning 200 status with “not found” content
- Blocked resources: JS/CSS not blocked in robots.txt (Google needs to render these)
Performance (Core Web Vitals)
- LCP under 2.5s (field data, 75th percentile)
- CLS under 0.1
- INP under 200ms
- TTFB under 800ms
- Render-blocking resources minimized
- Images: WebP/AVIF format, lazy loading, explicit width/height attributes
Structured Data
- Schema validation: no errors in Rich Results Test
- Required properties present for each type
- Entity relationships connected (Article → author Person → Organization)
- FAQPage markup on informational content
- No schema types mismatched to page content
Tip: Run your technical audit immediately after any major site migration, CMS upgrade, or template change. These are the three most common sources of mass-scale technical SEO regressions.
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Security and Trust Signals
- HTTPS on all pages, no mixed content
- Security headers: Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy
- SSL certificate valid and not expiring within 30 days
- No malware or phishing flags in Google Search Console
Accessibility (WCAG 2.1)
- All images have descriptive alt text
- Page lang attribute set
- Proper heading hierarchy (one H1, logical H2/H3 nesting)
- Form inputs labelled
- Sufficient color contrast
- Skip navigation link present
AI and GEO Readiness
- Clear author attribution with Person schema
- Original data and research cited
- Speakable markup on key content
- Entity sameAs connections to Knowledge Graph sources
- Content organized around answerable questions
Running This Audit Efficiently
Manually checking 150+ URLs against this list is not realistic. Daylytix automates the entire checklist across all crawled pages, prioritizes issues by impact, and tracks changes between audits so you can verify fixes and catch regressions.