A systems-based approach to restoring visibility, trust, and performance in modern search
If your organic traffic is down — or worse, your pages are struggling to stay indexed — you don’t need a generic checklist. You need a systematic audit that exposes friction between your site and Google’s evolving evaluation systems.
This article walks through a full SEO audit framework focused on three essential pillars: crawlability, page speed, and mobile usability. These are not arbitrary technical concerns. They’re embedded in Google’s documentation and reflected in every recent Core Update recovery and Quality Rater Guidelines revision. Whether you’re managing a national platform or working with a local consultancy like SEO Services Aberdeen, the fundamentals remain the same: technical clarity, speed, and mobile-first accessibility are non-negotiable.
Let’s unpack how to audit your site the right way: not to chase scores, but to remove invisible obstacles to trust, indexation, and visibility.
1. Audit Crawlability and Indexing Issues
Google’s documentation is clear: if your pages can’t be discovered or crawled efficiently, they can’t be ranked. The first step of any serious SEO audit is to understand what’s being excluded — and why.
Step 1: Review the Search Console Coverage Report
In Google Search Console, go to Index > Pages. Focus on these exclusion types:
- “Discovered – currently not indexed”: Often caused by low perceived quality, duplicate content, or crawl budget limits.
- “Crawled – currently not indexed”: Indicates Google saw the page, but chose not to index it — a strong signal of insufficient value.
- “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical”: Conflicting signals from canonicals, internal linking, or sitemaps.
Fix: Ensure affected pages are unique, internally linked, and not competing with similar URLs. Remove noindex tags if misapplied. Improve thin or redundant content before requesting reindexing.
Step 2: Run a Controlled Crawl
Use tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to simulate how bots navigate your site. Look for:
- Orphaned pages with no internal links.
- Excessive URL parameters or infinite scrolls.
- Redirect chains and 404s.
- Inconsistent canonical tags across similar pages.
Why it matters: Crawl efficiency is a real constraint, especially on large sites. Googlebot allocates finite resources. If you’re burning crawl budget on junk URLs, your best pages may not be revisited often enough to stay competitive.
Step 3: Inspect robots.txt and Meta Robots Directives
Blocked resources — especially JavaScript or CSS — can impair how Google renders your site. Run live tests using GSC’s URL Inspection tool. Confirm that robots.txt isn’t disallowing important sections unintentionally, especially after migrations or staging pushes.
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2. Analyze Core Web Vitals and Page Speed
Page speed is no longer a side metric. Core Web Vitals (CWV) — specifically LCP, CLS, and INP — are officially part of Google’s ranking systems. While they won’t make or break visibility on their own, poor scores often correlate with low trust and weak user signals.
Step 1: Benchmark Using PageSpeed Insights
Enter URLs into Google’s PageSpeed Insights. Segment results by mobile and desktop, but prioritize mobile performance. Note which metrics fall below the “Good” thresholds:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Target < 2.5 seconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Target < 0.1.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Target < 200ms.
Common culprits: unoptimized images, render-blocking scripts, uncompressed fonts, or bloated page builders.
Step 2: Review Field Data from CrUX
Synthetic tools are helpful, but field data — the kind pulled from actual users via the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) — is what Google actually uses. You’ll find this in Search Console under “Page Experience > Core Web Vitals.”
Fixes:
- Use a performance-optimized theme.
- Enable server-level or plugin-based caching (e.g., WP Rocket or LiteSpeed Cache).
- Compress and lazy-load images (ShortPixel, WebP).
- Reduce JavaScript execution via tools like Perfmatters or by deferring unused assets.
Step 3: Evaluate Hosting and TTFB
Your infrastructure matters. Poor Time To First Byte (TTFB) often stems from slow hosting, overstuffed plugins, or inefficient database queries. Run diagnostics with GTmetrix or WebPageTest to see where delays originate. If TTFB exceeds 600ms, it’s time to re-evaluate your stack.
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3. Diagnose Mobile Usability and UX
Mobile-first indexing means your mobile experience is the version Google evaluates — not your desktop site. Poor mobile usability impacts not just UX, but indexation, CWV, and how your site is perceived by raters.
Step 1: Use GSC’s Mobile Usability Report
Under “Experience > Mobile Usability,” Google flags issues like:
- Clickable elements too close together.
- Content wider than the screen.
- Viewport not set.
Fixes: Adopt a mobile-first layout strategy. Use responsive CSS. Ensure font sizes are legible and interactive elements are spaced appropriately.
Step 2: Cross-Check CWV on Mobile Devices
Mobile CWV scores are usually worse than desktop — due to network latency, lower device resources, and longer JS execution. Test LCP and INP specifically on mobile. If your LCP element is hidden behind a hero slider or cookie banner, that’s an immediate UX and SEO red flag.
Step 3: Manual Mobile Testing
Don’t just trust tools. Open your site on a range of devices. Check:
- Navigation tap targets.
- Sticky headers and call-to-actions.
- Ad placements and interstitials.
- Cookie banners and consent modals.
Why it matters: Quality Rater Guidelines explicitly mention mobile usability, accessibility, and intrusive interstitials as negative indicators — especially for YMYL sites.
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4. Bonus Layer: Structure, Redirects & Trust Signals
While crawlability, speed, and mobile form the audit backbone, don’t ignore second-order factors that suppress trust and clarity.
- Internal Linking: Use Screaming Frog to visualize click depth and orphaned content. Aim for < 4 clicks to key pages.
- Redirect Chains: Audit with Sitebulb or Ahrefs. Trim chains to single 301 hops and avoid mixed protocols (HTTP > HTTPS).
- Canonicals: Make sure self-referential canonicals are correct. Avoid canonicalizing thousands of pages to the homepage.
- Schema Markup: Validate structured data with Google’s Rich Results Test. Implement only what’s relevant — excessive or duplicate schema from multiple plugins can hurt visibility.
- Meta Signals: Check for duplicate or missing title tags and meta descriptions. Use GSC CTR data to prioritize optimization.
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SEO Auditing Is Risk Management
The purpose of an audit isn’t to “check boxes.” It’s to surface systemic weaknesses that prevent your site from being crawled efficiently, loaded quickly, or trusted by users and Google.
Here’s what separates a reactive audit from a strategic one:
- It ties each finding to a ranking system or documented guideline.
- It prioritizes based on traffic impact and systemic recurrence — not vanity metrics.
- It measures post-fix results with GSC, CWV reports, and crawl frequency improvements.
Most importantly, it avoids guesswork. If you don’t understand why a page isn’t indexed, start by proving that Google can find, crawl, and render it correctly — then move up the stack.
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Final Thought
Technical SEO is invisible until it’s broken. And once it is, recovery isn’t about hacks — it’s about alignment: between what your site offers and what Google’s systems can reliably understand and trust.
A comprehensive SEO audit, done well, isn’t just about fixing errors. It’s about restoring flow — from discovery to rendering to ranking — in a way that supports long-term performance, not just temporary spikes.
