SEO

Generate a customized technical SEO audit checklist tailored to the specific site type, CMS platform, and known issues, covering all critical technical factors that impact search engine crawling, indexing, rendering, and ranking performance.

TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT FRAMEWORK:

1. Crawlability Assessment
   - Review robots.txt file for incorrect disallow directives, missing allow rules, and proper sitemap references
   - Check for crawl budget optimization: identify and flag pages that waste crawl budget (parameter URLs, duplicate content, thin content, infinite scroll traps)
   - Verify proper use of the meta robots tag (noindex, nofollow) across page templates
   - Check for crawl errors in key directories and page types
   - Audit JavaScript rendering requirements: identify content that requires JS rendering and whether search engines can access it
   - Review internal link depth: flag important pages that are more than 3 clicks from the homepage
   - Check for soft 404 pages (pages returning 200 status but displaying error content)

2. Indexation Health
   - Audit the XML sitemap: verify it exists, is properly formatted, includes all important pages, excludes non-indexable pages, and stays under the 50MB / 50,000 URL limit
   - Check for index bloat: identify non-valuable pages that are indexed and consuming crawl budget
   - Verify canonical tags are implemented correctly across all page templates, especially for:
     * Pagination pages
     * Filtered/sorted product pages
     * HTTP vs HTTPS versions
     * www vs non-www versions
     * Trailing slash vs non-trailing slash
   - Check for conflicting signals (canonical pointing to page A, but robots noindex on page A)
   - Review hreflang implementation for international/multilingual sites
   - Audit the index coverage to identify excluded pages and diagnose why

3. Site Speed and Core Web Vitals
   - Evaluate all three Core Web Vitals metrics:
     * Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): target under 2.5 seconds
     * First Input Delay (FID) / Interaction to Next Paint (INP): target under 200ms
     * Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): target under 0.1
   - Identify the top speed bottlenecks:
     * Unoptimized images (format, compression, dimensions, lazy loading)
     * Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS
     * Server response time (TTFB)
     * Excessive DOM size
     * Third-party script impact
     * Missing browser caching headers
   - Check for proper implementation of performance optimizations: CDN, compression (gzip/brotli), minification, preloading critical resources

4. Mobile-Friendliness
   - Verify responsive design implementation across all page templates
   - Check for mobile-specific issues: tap target sizing, font readability, horizontal scrolling, intrusive interstitials
   - Verify the viewport meta tag is correctly implemented
   - Check for mobile-specific crawl issues (blocked resources, mobile-only content)
   - Ensure parity between mobile and desktop content (critical for mobile-first indexing)

5. Structured Data Audit
   - Inventory all existing schema markup across the site
   - Validate existing markup against schema.org specifications and Google guidelines
   - Identify missing schema markup opportunities based on page types:
     * Organization/LocalBusiness on homepage
     * BreadcrumbList on all pages
     * Article/BlogPosting on content pages
     * Product on product pages
     * FAQPage where applicable
     * Review/AggregateRating where applicable
   - Check for structured data errors and warnings
   - Verify markup is generating rich results in search

6. HTTPS and Security
   - Verify complete HTTPS migration with no mixed content warnings
   - Check SSL certificate validity and configuration
   - Audit HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect chains (should be single 301, not chains)
   - Verify HSTS header implementation
   - Check for security headers that may impact SEO (X-Robots-Tag in HTTP headers)

7. Redirect and URL Health
   - Audit redirect chains (flag any chains longer than 2 hops)
   - Identify redirect loops
   - Check for temporary redirects (302) that should be permanent (301)
   - Verify no important pages return 404 errors
   - Audit URL structure for SEO best practices: lowercase, hyphens, descriptive, concise
   - Check for duplicate content caused by URL variations

8. International SEO (if applicable)
   - Audit hreflang tag implementation for correctness and completeness
   - Check for return tag confirmation (bidirectional hreflang)
   - Verify x-default tag implementation
   - Check for language/region targeting conflicts
   - Review international URL structure (subdirectory, subdomain, or ccTLD)

OUTPUT CONSTRAINTS:
- Categorize every audit item by priority: CRITICAL (blocks indexing or causes major ranking loss), HIGH (significant ranking impact), MEDIUM (moderate impact), LOW (minor optimization)
- Include the specific check to perform, what a passing result looks like, and what a failing result indicates
- Customize the checklist based on the provided site type (ecommerce, blog, SaaS, local business, news, etc.)
- Exclude irrelevant sections (e.g., skip international SEO for single-language local sites)
- Include tool recommendations for each audit area

FORMAT:

**TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT: [Site Name]**
**Site Type:** [type]
**Audit Date:** [date]

**PRIORITY SUMMARY:**
- Critical Issues: [count]
- High Priority: [count]
- Medium Priority: [count]
- Low Priority: [count]

**SECTION 1: CRAWLABILITY** [Priority: Critical]

| # | Check Item | Status | Priority | Tool | Notes |
|---|-----------|--------|----------|------|-------|
| 1.1 | robots.txt accessible and correct | [ ] | CRITICAL | Screaming Frog, browser | [what to look for] |
| 1.2 | No important pages blocked | [ ] | CRITICAL | Google Search Console | [what to look for] |

[Continue for all sections]

**RECOMMENDED TOOLS:**
| Tool | Free/Paid | Used For |
|------|-----------|----------|

**IMPLEMENTATION ROADMAP:**
- Week 1: Address all CRITICAL issues
- Week 2-3: Address HIGH priority issues
- Week 4+: Address MEDIUM and LOW priority issues

**RE-AUDIT SCHEDULE:** [recommended timeline for follow-up]

---

MY INFO:

Website URL: (required)
Site Type (ecommerce, blog, SaaS, local business, news, corporate): (required)
CMS Platform (WordPress, Shopify, Wix, custom, etc.): (required)
Known Issues or Concerns: (optional)
International/Multilingual Site (yes/no): (optional)
Approximate Number of Pages: (optional)
Current Google Search Console Access (yes/no): (optional)
Previous Audit Findings: (optional)
Hosting Provider: (optional)