Technical SEO Audit: What to Check and in What Order

Why a technical SEO audit comes before content

Picture a Tashkent online store that launches a new catalog, writes product descriptions and promotes it through Instagram and Telegram. Search traffic stays flat. The cause is often technical: the new section was blocked in robots.txt during testing, product pages return server errors, or every product exists under ten parameter-based URLs. An audit finds these problems before more budget is spent around them.

Order matters. Check first what prevents pages from being indexed, then what holds rankings back, and only then the fine details. Polishing structured data on pages a crawler can't even open is wasted effort.

Start with status codes and indexing

Run a crawler across the whole site and list every URL with its response code. Important pages should return 200, removed pages 404 or 410, and moved pages a 301 redirect. Server errors in the 5xx range are the most serious: if a bot meets them regularly, it visits less often. Weak hosting that struggles during a big sale is a common cause.

Then open the indexing reports in Google Search Console and Yandex Webmaster, which still matters for Russian-language queries in this market. Look for the following:

• Whether the number of pages indexed is close to the number of pages that actually matter
• Important pages missing from the index, and the reason given
• Junk in the index: internal search results, service pages, test sections
• A stray noindex tag or response header blocking pages by accident

Crawl rules, sitemaps and duplicate pages

Read robots.txt on its own. It shouldn't block needed sections, nor the style and script files a search engine needs to render the page properly. The sitemap should list only canonical, open pages that return 200, and it should be submitted in both Search Console and Webmaster.

Duplicates are among the most common findings. The same page may open with and without www, over HTTP and HTTPS, with and without a trailing slash. A catalog with price, color and size filters can generate thousands of near-identical URLs. For each group, pick one main address and mark it with a canonical tag or a redirect.

Speed, mobile and JavaScript rendering

Look at speed from two angles. The Core Web Vitals report in Search Console reflects real users, while PageSpeed Insights gives a lab test of a single page. Typical culprits are uncompressed images, too many scripts, a slow server response, and elements that jump around as the page loads.

Many visitors arrive on a phone from a link in Instagram or Telegram, so test the mobile version on real devices, not only in a browser emulator. Text should be readable without zooming, buttons easy to tap, there should be no sideways scrolling, and checkout through Click or Payme should work. Since search engines mostly evaluate the mobile version, the main text and links must be fully present there too.

If the site loads content through scripts, use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to see what the crawler actually receives. Keeping core text and links in the initial HTML is the safer choice.

Multilingual sites: Uzbek, Russian and English

Many businesses here run versions in two or three languages. Each version should reference the others through correct hreflang attributes, and the links must be reciprocal. When they aren't, someone searching in Uzbek may land on the Russian page, or an English-speaking buyer may see the wrong version.

Also check that structured data matches the page type and passes validation, and that HTTPS works on every page with a valid certificate and no mixed content.

How to write up the findings

For each finding, record the problem, example URLs, the impact, the recommended fix, and a way to verify it. A developer receiving the task should know both how to do it and how to confirm it's done. Sort tasks by impact, with anything that blocks indexing first, and add a short summary for the owner: the top few problems and what happens if they stay unfixed.

On large sites, look for causes in templates rather than single pages. One mistake in a product-card template repeats across thousands of URLs, and fixing it improves the whole section at once. After the changes go live, rerun the same checks to confirm the errors are gone and no new ones appeared.

Getting it right from the start

Many of these problems are cheaper to prevent than to repair: one canonical domain, clean URL structure, lightweight templates and correct language versions are all decided during development. markdev builds websites in Uzbekistan on a turnkey basis, and the checklist above works well as a pre-launch review. If you already have a live site and suspect it loses visitors for technical reasons, tell us about it and we can discuss where to begin.