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All lessons in Technical SEO Auditing Lesson 9.4 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

Detecting Invalid or Incomplete Markup

This lesson covers

  • The difference between errors and warnings
  • The most common invalid markup patterns
  • How to spot markup that misrepresents the page
  • How to group errors by template

Short answer

Invalid markup has errors that stop it from being used, such as broken JSON, unknown types, or missing required properties. Incomplete markup has warnings for missing recommended properties. Find both with your crawler's validation and the Rich Results Test, check values against visible content, and group every issue by the template or plugin that generates it.

A Pasig gadget shop’s product markup showed "price": "0" on every product, because the plugin read a field that was empty for items “on sale.” Google flagged invalid prices on 1,200 products, and price rich results disappeared.

Common invalid patterns

  • Broken JSON: trailing commas, missing quotes, unescaped line breaks
  • Unknown types or properties: typos like "@type": "Prodcut"
  • Missing required properties: Product without offers, review, or aggregateRating
  • Wrong value formats: price with ”₱” inside the number, dates not in ISO 8601, relative URLs
  • Empty or placeholder values: "price": "0", "name": ""
  • Wrong context: Event markup on a page that is not an event

Mismatch and policy problems

  • Prices or availability different from the visible page
  • Reviews or ratings not shown to users
  • Self-serving reviews on LocalBusiness or Organization
  • Marked-up content hidden from users

These matter more than warnings because they can remove eligibility or lead to a manual action.

How to find them

  1. Crawler Structured Data tab: filter Validation Errors, Validation Warnings, Parse Errors.
  2. Export issues with URLs and group by template.
  3. Use custom extraction to pull key values (price, availability) and compare with visible values.
  4. Test a sample in the Rich Results Test to confirm Google’s view.

Practice: error, warning, or policy problem?

Sort each item into the right group.

  • Trailing comma breaks the JSON-LD block

  • Product missing 'brand' (recommended)

  • Markup price ₱999, page shows ₱1,499

  • Product with no offers, review, or rating

  • Five-star rating in markup, no reviews on page

Common mistakes

  • Fixing warnings before errors.
  • Validating syntax but not values. Valid markup can still be wrong.
  • Fixing URLs one by one instead of the plugin or template.
1. What usually breaks a whole JSON-LD block?
2. Which is the most serious?
3. Should all warnings be fixed?

Your action

Next, you will validate schema and check rich result eligibility.

Key terms

Error
A problem that makes markup invalid or ineligible for rich results, such as a missing required property.
Warning
A missing recommended property. The markup still works, but may show less information.
Required property
A property Google needs for a rich result, such as name for Product or offers, review, or aggregateRating.
Markup mismatch
Structured data values that differ from what users see, such as a different price or fake reviews.

Questions beginners ask

Should I fix every warning?

No. Fix errors first. Add recommended properties where data exists and adds value, such as availability or brand.

What happens if markup does not match the page?

It can lose rich result eligibility and, in serious cases, trigger a structured data manual action.

Why is my JSON invalid?

Usually a trailing comma, a missing quote, or unescaped characters from a CMS field. One error breaks the whole block.

Are self-serving reviews allowed?

Google does not show review stars for LocalBusiness or Organization reviews that the business publishes about itself.

Related lessons

Want someone to handle SEO for your business while you learn? The team at Remar Digital can help.