Technical SEO Audit: 25-Point Checklist

A Georgian services site had good content and zero rankings. The audit found the cause in four minutes: a leftover line in robots.txt was blocking Google from the entire site, and a misfiring tag told search engines not to index the pages that did get crawled. No amount of content or links fixes a site Google cannot read. Technical SEO is the foundation everything else sits on, and most problems are invisible until you check for them.

Here is a 25-point checklist grouped into six areas. Each point names what to check and why it matters. Items marked DIY a non-technical owner can verify; items marked HIRE usually need a developer or the kind of full sweep in our SEO service.

Crawlability (can Google reach your pages?)

1. robots.txt is not blocking important pages (DIY). Visit yoursite.ge/robots.txt. A stray Disallow: / blocks the whole site. This single line causes more invisible-site cases than anything else.
2. XML sitemap exists and is submitted (DIY). A sitemap at /sitemap.xml lists your pages for Google. Submit it in Search Console so Google knows what to crawl.
3. No important page returns 4xx or 5xx (DIY). Broken (404) and server-error (5xx) pages waste crawl budget and lose rankings. Search Console reports them under Pages.
4. Internal links connect every page (DIY). Orphan pages with no links pointing to them rarely get crawled or ranked. Every page should be reachable in a few clicks from the homepage.
5. Crawl budget is not wasted on junk URLs (HIRE). Filter, sort, and session parameters can spawn thousands of duplicate URLs that drain crawling on a larger site. A developer blocks or canonicalizes them.

Indexation (are your pages actually in Google?)

6. Pages are indexed (DIY). Search site:yoursite.ge in Google to see roughly how many pages are indexed. Far fewer than you published signals a problem.
7. No accidental noindex tags (DIY/HIRE). A noindex meta tag tells Google to drop the page. Common after a site launch when the staging setting was never removed. Check the page source for it.
8. Canonical tags point to the right URL (HIRE). Canonicals tell Google which version of similar pages is the master. Wrong canonicals make Google ignore the page you want ranked.
9. No duplicate content competing with itself (HIRE). The same content on multiple URLs (with and without www, http and https, trailing slash variants) splits ranking signals. Pick one version and redirect the rest.
10. Thin and empty pages are handled (DIY). Auto-generated tag pages, empty category pages, and placeholder content can drag down site quality. Improve them or noindex them.

Speed and Core Web Vitals

11. Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds (HIRE). LCP measures how fast the main content loads. Run any page through PageSpeed Insights for the number. Slow LCP hurts both ranking and conversions.
12. Interaction to Next Paint is responsive (HIRE). INP measures how quickly the page reacts to taps and clicks. Heavy scripts make a page feel laggy and drop the score.
13. Cumulative Layout Shift is low (DIY/HIRE). CLS measures content jumping around as the page loads. Images without set dimensions are the usual cause and an easy fix.
14. Images are compressed and modern format (DIY). Oversized images are the top speed killer on Georgian SMB sites. Compress them and serve WebP. This alone often fixes a slow score.
15. Caching and a CDN are in place (HIRE). Browser caching and a content delivery network cut load times, which matters for visitors outside Tbilisi and abroad. The full speed playbook is in the Google SEO in Georgia guide.

Mobile and rendering

16. The site is mobile-friendly (DIY). Google indexes the mobile version first. Most Georgian traffic is on phones. Open the site on your own phone and check that nothing is cut off or untappable.
17. Tap targets and font sizes are usable (DIY). Buttons too small or too close together frustrate mobile users and hurt engagement signals.
18. No intrusive popups on mobile (DIY). Full-screen popups that block content on load can trigger a Google penalty and annoy visitors. Use smaller, dismissible prompts.
19. Content renders without JavaScript errors (HIRE). If key content only appears after heavy JavaScript, Google may miss it. A developer checks the rendered HTML against the source.

On-page technical signals

20. Every page has a unique title and meta description (DIY). Titles and descriptions are your SERP pitch. Duplicates and blanks waste the click. One unique pair per page.
21. One H1 per page, logical heading order (DIY). A single clear H1 and ordered H2/H3 headings help Google understand structure. This also feeds the keyword map from Georgian keyword research.
22. URLs are clean and readable (DIY/HIRE). Short, descriptive URLs beat long parameter strings. Set them at page creation; changing live URLs needs redirects.
23. Structured data (schema) is valid (HIRE). Organization, LocalBusiness, Product, and FAQ schema help Google and AI engines understand and display your pages. Validate it, and connect it to the answer-engine setup in the AEO playbook.
24. hreflang is correct on multilingual sites (HIRE). If you run KA, EN, and RU versions, hreflang tags tell Google which to show whom. Errors here serve the wrong language and waste the work in multilingual SEO.
25. HTTPS is active site-wide with no mixed content (DIY/HIRE). The whole site must load over HTTPS, with no insecure resources. Browsers flag insecure pages and Google treats security as a signal.

Redirects and site migrations

One more area deserves its own attention because it breaks sites quietly: redirects. When you change a URL, retire a page, or move the whole site, every old address needs a 301 redirect to its closest live equivalent so Google transfers the ranking it built and visitors do not hit a dead page. Skipping this is how a redesign erases years of SEO overnight, and it is one of the most common ways a Georgian business loses rankings it never realizes it had.

Two rules keep migrations safe. Map every old URL to a new one before launch, one to one where possible, and never chain redirects (an old URL pointing to a second redirect that points to a third), because chains lose ranking strength and slow the page. After any migration, recheck the whole list: indexation, canonicals, robots.txt, and the redirect map together, since a migration tends to reset all of them at once. This is firmly a HIRE task, and the moment most worth a full audit.

When to DIY and when to hire

An owner can responsibly handle the DIY items: checking robots.txt, submitting a sitemap, confirming indexation with a site search, compressing images, fixing titles, and testing mobile on a phone. These need attention, not deep skill, and clearing them removes the most common ranking blockers for free.

The HIRE items (canonicalization, crawl-budget control, Core Web Vitals tuning, schema, hreflang, redirect mapping) interact with each other and with site code, where a wrong fix can make things worse. That is the point where a technical audit pays for itself, because one blocked directive or broken canonical can suppress an otherwise healthy site. If you would rather have the full 25 points checked and fixed once, the aiNOW SEO service runs the audit and reports every finding in lari-priced scope before any work starts.

FAQ

How often should I run a technical SEO audit?

Run a full audit when you launch or redesign a site, then a lighter check every quarter. Redesigns and platform migrations are the highest-risk moments because they often reset robots.txt, canonicals, redirects, and noindex settings. Between audits, watch Search Console weekly for new crawl errors and indexation drops, which flag problems as they appear.

Which technical issue hurts Georgian SMB sites most?

Two tie for first: slow load from uncompressed images and accidental crawl or index blocks left over from launch. Both are common and both are devastating because they cap the whole site. Image compression is a DIY fix; the robots.txt and noindex checks take minutes. Start there before spending on content or links.

Can I run an audit without paid tools?

Yes for most of it. Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights are free and cover crawl errors, indexation, and Core Web Vitals. A site search and viewing page source handle the rest of the DIY checks. Paid crawlers speed up large sites and surface more at once, but a careful owner can clear the high-impact items on a small site with free tools.