How to Do a Technical SEO Audit (Free Tools Included)

Start with Google Search Console, which is free and pulls data straight from Google. Open the Pages report under Indexing to see which URLs are indexed and, more importantly, why others are not. Common flags like 'Crawled - currently not indexed' or 'Discovered - not indexed' point to thin content or crawl-budget waste. Fix the reasons behind the biggest buckets first.

Next, crawl your own site the way a bot does. Screaming Frog's free tier crawls up to 500 URLs, enough for most small business and Shopify stores. Look for broken links (404s), redirect chains, missing title tags, duplicate meta descriptions, and pages with no internal links pointing to them. Export the report and sort by issue count so you attack the highest-volume problems first.

Check your robots.txt and XML sitemap, because these two files control what gets crawled at all. Your robots.txt should not accidentally block important sections (a single Disallow: / line can deindex a whole site). Your sitemap should list only canonical, indexable URLs and exclude redirects, 404s, and noindex pages. Submit the sitemap in Search Console and confirm the read count matches your live page count.

Measure Core Web Vitals with PageSpeed Insights and the Search Console 'Core Web Vitals' report. Google uses three metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (aim under 2.5 seconds), Interaction to Next Paint (under 200 milliseconds), and Cumulative Layout Shift (under 0.1). On Shopify, the usual culprits are oversized hero images, too many apps injecting scripts, and render-blocking third-party fonts. Compress images and remove unused apps before anything else.

Confirm the site renders and works on mobile, since Google indexes the mobile version first. Use Chrome DevTools device mode or the mobile tab in PageSpeed Insights to check tap targets, font sizes, and layout. Then validate your structured data with Google's Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator. Product, Article, FAQ, and Organization schema help both Google rich results and AI engines understand and cite your pages.

For answer engines specifically, check that your content is actually accessible to AI crawlers. Make sure GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot are not blocked in robots.txt unless you intend to block them. Confirm key pages render server-side rather than relying on JavaScript that bots may not execute, and that each page answers its target question clearly in the first paragraph so it can be quoted directly.

Finish by turning findings into a prioritized list, not a 50-page report. Rank issues by impact and effort: indexation blockers and site-wide broken templates come first, cosmetic warnings last. Re-crawl after each fix to confirm it worked, and schedule a lightweight audit every quarter. Technical SEO is maintenance, not a one-time project, especially after theme updates or platform migrations.