SEO Audit Techniques
A practical program for anyone who needs to diagnose technical issues, spot content gaps, and understand what's actually holding a site back in search.
This isn't about following a checklist someone else made. You'll learn to run audits that reveal real problems—broken redirects, crawling issues, content that's competing with itself. The kind of stuff that quietly tanks rankings while everyone's focused on keywords.
What you're getting into
Sites break in weird ways. Sometimes it's obvious—404 errors everywhere, load times in double digits. Often it's subtle. Pages that used to rank suddenly don't. Traffic drops and nobody knows why.
This program teaches you how to find those problems. You'll work with actual site data, run crawls, analyze server logs, check indexation issues. The focus is on building a systematic approach that works whether you're auditing an ecommerce site with 50,000 products or a blog with 200 posts.
- Technical crawling with tools that show you what search engines actually see
- Log file analysis to understand crawl budget and indexation patterns
- Content audits that identify cannibalization and outdated material
- Link structure analysis for sites with messy internal linking
- Performance diagnostics beyond just running PageSpeed
Who this works for
If you're responsible for a website's performance—whether you're in-house, freelancing, or at an agency—and you need to diagnose issues methodically rather than guessing, this fits.
What you'll need
Basic understanding of how websites work. You should know what a redirect is, what HTML looks like, and be comfortable poking around in spreadsheets. We're not coding, but you can't be afraid of technical details.
Time commitment
Plan for 6-8 weeks if you're working through it part-time. Each module has hands-on exercises that take real time—you can't just watch videos and call it done.
What's covered
Six modules that walk through the entire audit process, from initial crawl to prioritized recommendations.
Crawl Analysis
Setting up proper crawls, interpreting crawl data, identifying structural issues that prevent indexation, understanding how bots navigate your site.
Indexation Issues
Finding pages that should be indexed but aren't, diagnosing canonical problems, managing parameter handling, dealing with duplicate content systematically.
Technical Health
Server response codes, redirect chains, HTTPS implementation, mobile usability issues, structured data errors, JavaScript rendering problems.
Content Assessment
Identifying thin content, spotting keyword cannibalization, analyzing content gaps, evaluating freshness, determining what to update versus what to remove.
Link Architecture
Internal linking analysis, finding orphaned pages, optimizing link flow, reducing crawl depth, managing faceted navigation without creating crawl traps.
Reporting Framework
Prioritizing issues by impact, creating actionable recommendations, presenting findings to stakeholders who don't live in spreadsheets, tracking implementation.
How it actually works
Hands-on exercises
Each module includes practical tasks using real site data. You'll run crawls on sample sites with known issues, analyze server logs from actual ecommerce platforms, and work through content audits on existing blogs. The exercises get progressively more complex.
Tool access
You'll work with Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, server log analyzers, and spreadsheet templates. Most tools have free versions that work fine for learning. If you need premium access for larger crawls, trial periods cover the program duration.
Case studies
Six detailed breakdowns of real audits—what was found, how issues were diagnosed, what got fixed first, what the results looked like three months later. These aren't sanitized success stories; some fixes worked better than others.
Templates and frameworks
Audit checklists, prioritization matrices, reporting templates, client communication guides. Everything you need to run audits consistently without reinventing the process each time.
You'll finish with a complete audit of a site you choose—could be a client site, your employer's site, or a personal project. That becomes your portfolio piece and proof you can do this work.
Ready to start?
Enrollment is open. The next cohort begins in two weeks. If you've got questions about whether this fits your situation, get in touch and we can talk through it.