Technical SEO Audit

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A technical SEO audit will give all-encompassing insights into improvements to enhance crawling and indexing, performance, and user experience, helping users navigate your website and convert.

Our technical SEO audit touches on every important factor mentioned below. Learn more about what we cover and how we can help!

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What we check with our technical SEO audit

The journey every webpage takes to the top of Google search results includes Discovery > Crawling > Indexing > Ranking > Continued Monitoring. Getting every item below right will enable you to gain visibility and get the most out of your on and off-page SEO strategies.

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Google initially interacts with webpages by discovering new and updated pages through links from known pages and submitted sitemaps. Then Google’s crawler (Googlebot) visits the discovered URLs and analyzes the website to assess whether the page should be indexed.

Some items we check that affect crawling are XML sitemaps, robots.txt files, site structure, URL structure, internal linking, and canonical tags.

Once a web page has been crawled, Google processes the gathered information to understand the topic and its relevance from metadata, content, images, videos, and more.

Then Google decides whether the page follows Google Search Essentials and should be stored in its database. Various factors determine if a page should be indexed including Google quality guidelines, index rules in the Robot.txt file, index metatags, duplicate pages, and more.

Items we check that affect indexing include meta tags, content, schema markup, and indexing settings.

A secure website is critical for user safety and trust. Secure websites protect users’ personal information, like login credentials and payment details. They also protect the user from malware and phishing.

Security is also critical for search rankings. Google uses HTTPS as a ranking signal, and issues stemming from a website stemming from poor security can result in penalties and de-indexing from Google.

Items we check that affect security include the HTTPS status of all URLs on the website and confirming that the SSL/TLS certificate has not expired.

UX is critical for how efficiently users interact with your website and directly impacts search rankings. Google uses signals as ranking factors like load time, mobile usability, and user behavior metrics.

We check site speed, mobile friendliness, user interface design, interactive elements, site search functionality, content quality and readability, accessibility, and more to give you action items to improve the user experience of your website.

Website architecture plays a critical role in how users interact with your website, and how Google crawlers can access pages on your site to index and rank.

Things we check that impact website architecture are the hierarchy and structure of navigations, menus, breadcrumbs, URL structure, and internal links. We also check sitemaps, canonical tags, schema markup, content structure and quality, and more!

Internal linking is another critical ranking factor for websites because they pass authority from one page to another, and pages with many relevant internal and external links directing to them are an important signal to Google of topical authority.

Items we check to ensure internal links are to best practices are structure and hierarchy, internal links within topic clusters, status errors (301, 404, 500, etc), anchor text, link relevancy, number of internal links, link depth, orphaned pages, and follow or nofollow tags.

There are multiple types and uses of metadata used for crawling, indexing, ranking, and SERP CTR. Making sure each is set up for the intended use and to best practices is important. The metadata we check includes title tags, meta descriptions, header tags (H1, H2, etc.), image alt text, canonical tags, and meta robots tags.

Having original, high-quality content is an important ranking factor and a great way to inform users to help them on their journey to convert to paying customers.

Some critical things we check include word count, uniqueness, quality, relevance, structure, readability, internal and external links, freshness, accessibility, and media including images and videos. Every item listed is checked to ensure the content provides value to your customers while also being optimized for organic search.

Technical SEO Packages

Pricing varies depending on your needs.

Starting at $1,000

For websites with up to 500 pages.

What we check:

  • Crawling, Indexing, and Security
  • UX and site speed
  • Website Architecture
  • Metadata
  • On-page factors
  • Content

Action items for website improvements are provided upon completion.

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Starting at $2,000

For websites with up to 500 pages.

What we check:

  • Crawling, Indexing, and Security
  • UX and site speed
  • Website Architecture
  • Metadata
  • On-page factors
  • Content

Additional Services:

  • Compare website metrics with 1 competitor including backlink profile, keyword gap, and on-page factors.
  • 5 hours of additional support to fix major issues.

Action items for website improvements are provided upon completion.

Get Started

Starting at $3,000

For websites with up to 500 pages.

What we check:

  • Crawling, Indexing, and Security
  • UX and site speed
  • Website Architecture
  • Metadata
  • On-page factors
  • Content

Additional Services:

  • Compare website metrics with 3 competitors including backlink profile, keyword gap, and on-page factors.
  • 10 hours of additional support to fix major issues.

Action items for website improvements are provided upon completion.

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Additional Pages

$1 per additional page checked.

Contact us for pricing for enterprise websites (1,000+ web pages). We do not work with programmatic, algorithm-driven websites.

Additional Hours

$175 per hour for additional support.

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Technical SEO FAQs

Technical SEO is optimizing a website for efficient crawling and indexing from search engines and improving user experience and keyword rankings.

Technical SEO is one of the three major cornerstones of SEO, the others being on-page and off-page SEO. Technical audits ensure your website is optimized for search engines and provides a great user experience. This improves crawling, indexing, rankings, organic traffic, and conversions.

This varies depending on the size of your website and how much we uncover in the audit. The audit is typically completed within 1-2 weeks but can take longer for large projects.

Audit frequency depends on the website size and how often it is updated. We typically recommend at most every 6 months for smaller websites, and quarterly for everyone else. Regular audits ensure new issues are addressed and resolved promptly, facilitating an optimal site for performance and SEO.

Tools we use for technical SEO audits include SEMRush, Screaming Frog, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, GTMetrix, and Pagespeed Insights.

Countless other tools like Ahrefs, Moz, Surfer SEO, and more exist.

Site architecture affects how easily search engines can crawl and index your website. A logical, organized website structure helps search engines understand the hierarchy and relevancy of pages.

A well-implemented web architecture also helps user experience, enabling them to navigate to the pages that serve their needs efficiently. A website with good behavioral signals showing your website is serving the users’ intent is critical for SEO.

Site speed affects user experience, and will impact bounce rate and user engagement. Google considers site speed a ranking factor, and behavioral metrics from users interacting with your website that are directly correlated with user experience.

The main things that affect mobile usability include responsive web designs that adapt well to different screen sizes, optimized images and other media for mobile, mobile-friendly navigations, and site speed. These are critical improvements that will help your websites mobile friendliness.

A robot.txt is a text file used to instruct web robots how to crawl and index pages on a website. Their key functions are to specify which pages can or cannot be crawled by search engines, indicate the delay between crawl requests to avoid server overload, and provide the sitemap location to help search engines find and index pages efficiently.

An XML sitemap is a file that lists website URLs with information such as when they were last updated, how often they change, and their importance relative to other pages. Its key function is to help search engines crawl and index a website efficiently.

Canonical tags are used to prevent issues with duplicate content. They indicate the preferred page for indexing and rankings when multiple exist, preventing penalties and consolidating link equity.

All pages need to have a canonical tag and should be self-referencing if there is not another preferred page it needs to refer to.

We recommend having a great 404 error page that helps users find what they are looking for like a search bar or links to important pages.

Solutions to mitigate 404s errors depend on why the page is 404ing. If the URL was accidentally changed it needs to be corrected. If a page URL is modified, a 301 permanent redirect should be made and all internal links be updated to the new URL. If the page no longer exists the 404 needs to either be left alone to sunset or a 301 redirect made to a similar page that properly serves the user, and all 404ing internal links removed or updated.

HTTPS stands for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure”. It is a URL protocol designed to enhance security by encrypting data exchanged between the user’s browser and server. It is also a ranking factor for Google and a major trust signal for users.

They are not a direct ranking factor, but theoretically, they are an indirect ranking factor. Meta descriptions are shown under the site title on the search engine results page. An optimized description’s main goal is to convince the user to click on the listing to visit the website, improving the click-through rate (CTR).

How users interact with your website is a ranking factor. Having more users visiting and positively engaging with your website will help with rankings.

Meta robot tags are used to provide instructions to search engines on how to crawl and index a page. Common tags are index and noindex tags to allow or prevent indexing and follow or nofollow tags to allow or prevent passing link equity.

Structured data Is a markup formatted to help search engines better and more efficiently understand the type of content on your website. It tells search engines if you’re referring to a person, event, product, job, article, and more.

Using properly formatted schema increases the likelihood your site is shown in featured snippets on the search results page. These snippets include product, organization, FAQ, and more, resulting in more visibility and visits to your website.

Other SEO Services

We offer more than technical SEO audits; see other SEO services tailored to your business needs.

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About Hilltop SEO

Hilltop SEO is a boutique agency delivering result-driven SEO solutions for the automotive industry. Focused on ethical, data-backed strategies, Hilltop helps brands increase visibility, drive qualified traffic, and achieve sustainable growth through long-term search performance.

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