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All lessons in Technical SEO Auditing Lesson 2.6 of 84

Module 1: Introduction to Technical SEO Auditing

  1. 1.1What Is a Technical SEO Audit?
  2. 1.2Technical SEO Audit vs. General SEO Audit
  3. 1.3When Should You Audit a Website?
  4. 1.4Types of Technical SEO Issues
  5. 1.5Defining Audit Scope and Objectives

Module 2: Website Crawling and URL Discovery

  1. 2.1How SEO Crawlers Discover URLs
  2. 2.2Configuring a Website Crawl
  3. 2.3Crawl Scope, Limits, and Exclusions
  4. 2.4Internal Links and Crawl Depth
  5. 2.5Orphan Pages and URL Discovery
  6. 2.6Crawl Data vs. Search Engine Data
  7. 2.7Identifying Crawl Coverage Gaps

Module 3: HTTP Status Codes and Redirect Auditing

  1. 3.1Understanding HTTP Status Codes
  2. 3.2Finding 4xx Errors and Broken Links
  3. 3.3Identifying 5xx Server Errors
  4. 3.4Redirect Chains and Redirect Loops
  5. 3.5Internal Links to Redirected URLs
  6. 3.6301 vs. 302 Redirects
  7. 3.7Auditing 404 Pages and Soft 404s

Module 4: Crawlability and Indexability Auditing

  1. 4.1Crawling vs. Indexing
  2. 4.2Robots.txt Audit
  3. 4.3Meta Robots and X-Robots-Tag
  4. 4.4Noindex and Canonical Conflicts
  5. 4.5XML Sitemap Validation
  6. 4.6Canonical URL Auditing
  7. 4.7Identifying Indexability Conflicts
  8. 4.8Comparing Crawl Data with Google Search Console

Module 5: URL Structure and Duplicate Content Issues

  1. 5.1URL Structure and Normalization
  2. 5.2Duplicate URLs and Duplicate Pages
  3. 5.3HTTP vs. HTTPS and Hostname Variations
  4. 5.4Trailing Slashes and URL Parameters
  5. 5.5Pagination and Faceted Navigation
  6. 5.6Canonicalization Strategies
  7. 5.7Internal Linking to Preferred URLs

Module 6: Technical On-Page Auditing

  1. 6.1Missing and Duplicate Title Tags
  2. 6.2Missing and Duplicate Meta Descriptions
  3. 6.3Missing, Duplicate, and Multiple H1 Headings
  4. 6.4Heading Hierarchy and HTML Structure
  5. 6.5Missing Image Alt Attributes
  6. 6.6Internal Link and Anchor Text Issues
  7. 6.7Empty, Thin, and Near-Duplicate Pages
  8. 6.8Auditing HTML Metadata at Scale

Module 7: Website Performance and Core Web Vitals

  1. 7.1Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP, and CLS
  2. 7.2Lab Data vs. Field Data
  3. 7.3Identifying Slow Pages
  4. 7.4Image and Resource Optimization Opportunities
  5. 7.5JavaScript and CSS Performance
  6. 7.6Mobile Usability and Responsive Rendering
  7. 7.7Prioritizing Performance Fixes

Module 8: JavaScript SEO and Rendering

  1. 8.1How Search Engines Process JavaScript
  2. 8.2HTML Source vs. Rendered HTML
  3. 8.3Client-Side vs. Server-Side Rendering
  4. 8.4JavaScript-Generated Content and Links
  5. 8.5Rendering Failures and Missing Content
  6. 8.6Lazy Loading and Crawl Accessibility
  7. 8.7Diagnosing JavaScript SEO Problems

Module 9: Structured Data and Schema Auditing

  1. 9.1Structured Data and Schema.org Basics
  2. 9.2JSON-LD and Structured Data Formats
  3. 9.3Finding Structured Data Across a Website
  4. 9.4Detecting Invalid or Incomplete Markup
  5. 9.5Schema Validation and Rich Result Eligibility
  6. 9.6Conflicting or Duplicate Structured Data
  7. 9.7Prioritizing Schema Fixes

Module 10: Analyzing Audit Data and Prioritizing Issues

  1. 10.1Reading Crawl Reports and Exports
  2. 10.2Grouping URLs by Issue Type
  3. 10.3Identifying Root Causes vs. Symptoms
  4. 10.4Evaluating Severity, Impact, and Effort
  5. 10.5Separating Sitewide and Isolated Issues
  6. 10.6Identifying False Positives
  7. 10.7Building an Actionable Issue Register

Module 11: Technical SEO Audit Reporting

  1. 11.1Structuring a Technical SEO Audit Report
  2. 11.2Documenting Evidence and Affected URLs
  3. 11.3Writing Developer-Ready Recommendations
  4. 11.4Mapping Issues to Business and Search Impact
  5. 11.5Creating a Prioritized Remediation Roadmap
  6. 11.6Presenting Findings to Stakeholders
  7. 11.7Tracking Fixes and Ownership

Module 12: Fix Verification and Technical QA

  1. 12.1Re-Crawling After Fixes
  2. 12.2Comparing Before-and-After Crawl Results
  3. 12.3Verifying Redirects, Canonicals, and Indexability
  4. 12.4Detecting Regressions and Newly Introduced Issues
  5. 12.5Testing Website Changes Before Deployment
  6. 12.6Confirming Fixes with Search Console and Other Evidence
  7. 12.7Closing Audit Findings and Recording Results

Crawl Data vs. Search Engine Data

Inside this lesson

  • What crawl data can and cannot tell you
  • What Search Console data adds
  • Common reasons the two sources disagree
  • How to use both together to find causes and measure impact

Short answer

Crawl data shows what a crawler could find on your site at one moment. Search engine data, mainly from Google Search Console, shows what Google actually crawled, indexed, and showed in results. You need both: crawl data explains the cause of a problem, while search engine data confirms its real impact.

Your crawler says the site has 1,200 healthy pages. Search Console says 480 are indexed and 300 are “Crawled, currently not indexed.” Who is right? Both. They are answering different questions.

What crawl data tells you

Your crawler is a simulation. It shows:

  • Every URL reachable by links and sitemaps right now
  • Status codes, redirects, canonicals, meta robots, titles, headings
  • Internal links, depth, and page structure

It cannot tell you what Google indexed, how often Googlebot visits, or how many people see the page in search.

What search engine data tells you

Google Search Console is the record of reality:

  • Pages report: which URLs are indexed and why others are not
  • Crawl Stats: how many requests Googlebot made, response codes, and host problems
  • Performance: clicks, impressions, and queries for each URL
  • URL Inspection: how Google last crawled, rendered, and indexed one page

It cannot tell you the full link structure or check every tag on every page at once.

Why they disagree

  • Timing: Search Console lags by days. Your crawl is live.
  • Discovery: Google uses backlinks and history. Your crawl uses only your links.
  • Choice: Google may decide not to index thin or duplicate pages that your crawl marks as fine.
  • Rendering: Google may fail to render something your crawler rendered, or the reverse.

Using both together

Use the pattern symptom, cause, impact:

  1. Search Console shows the symptom: 300 room and package pages “Crawled, currently not indexed.”
  2. The crawl shows the cause: those pages share near-identical text and titles from one template.
  3. Search Console Performance shows the impact: those pages lost 60% of impressions.

That chain makes a recommendation hard to ignore.

Practice: which source answers this?

Sort each item into the right group.

  • Is this page in Google's index?

  • How many internal links point to this page?

  • How many impressions did this page get last month?

  • Which pages have duplicate H1s right now?

  • How often did Googlebot hit our server yesterday?

  • What is the click depth of the contact page?

Common mistakes

  • Reporting crawl warnings without checking Google’s view. An issue Google ignores may be low priority.
  • Reporting Search Console problems without a cause. “Not indexed” needs an explanation from the crawl.
  • Forgetting the time lag. A fix made yesterday will not show in Search Console today.
1. Which source tells you what Google actually indexed?
2. Why might Search Console list URLs your crawl did not find?
3. In the symptom, cause, impact pattern, which source usually shows the cause?

Your action

Next, you will turn these comparisons into a list of crawl coverage gaps and their causes.

Key terms

Crawl data
Information collected by your own crawler: URLs, status codes, tags, links, and depth at the time of the crawl.
Search engine data
Information from the search engine itself, such as indexing status, crawl stats, impressions, and clicks.
Crawl Stats report
A Search Console report showing how often Googlebot requested your pages and what responses it received.
Data freshness
How current a data source is. Your crawl is live, while Search Console reports can lag by days.

Questions beginners ask

Why does Search Console show more URLs than my crawl?

Google remembers old URLs, finds pages through backlinks, and crawls parameter variants. Those extra URLs often reveal orphans, old redirects, or duplicate patterns.

Why does my crawl show more URLs than Search Console?

Your crawler may follow filters or parameters Google ignores, or Google may not have discovered or chosen to index some pages yet.

Which source should I trust?

Each answers a different question. Trust crawl data for what the site does now, and Search Console for what Google actually did.

Does Bing have similar data?

Yes. Bing Webmaster Tools has site scan, indexing, and crawl reports, useful for checking that issues are not Google-only.

Related lessons

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