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All lessons in Technical SEO Auditing Lesson 9.3 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

Finding Structured Data Across a Website

In this lesson

  • How to configure a crawl to extract structured data
  • How to map schema types to page templates
  • How to spot templates with missing markup
  • How Search Console reports fit in

Short answer

To find structured data across a site, enable structured data extraction for JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa in your crawler, with JavaScript rendering if markup is injected by scripts. Export types per URL, pivot them by page template, and compare against what each template should have. Search Console's enhancement reports then show what Google detected.

Testing one page in the Rich Results Test shows that page. An audit needs every template. A Baguio hotel chain found Hotel markup on 3 of its 9 property pages, because the plugin was enabled per page and nobody remembered to switch it on for the newer ones.

Step 1: Configure the crawl

In Screaming Frog: Configuration, Spider, Extraction, tick JSON-LD, Microdata, RDFa, and Schema.org Validation and Google Rich Result Feature Validation. Use JavaScript rendering if any markup is injected by scripts.

Step 2: Export and map

Export the Structured Data tab. Add a page type column, then build a schema map:

TemplateExpected typesFoundCoverage
HomepageOrganization, WebSiteOrganizationMissing WebSite
Property pagesHotel, BreadcrumbListHotel on 3 of 933%
Blog postsArticle, BreadcrumbListArticle, BreadcrumbList100%

Step 3: Check Search Console

Under Enhancements (and Shopping for merchants), each detected rich result type has a report with valid items, items with warnings, and invalid items. Compare counts with your crawl.

Practice: coverage gap or fine?

Sort each item into the right group.

  • Product markup on 40% of product pages

  • BreadcrumbList on all category and product pages

  • No Organization or LocalBusiness anywhere

  • No Product markup on the About page

  • Article markup only in a rendered crawl, not text-only

Common mistakes

  • Testing single URLs only.
  • Text-only crawls on sites with injected JSON-LD.
  • No expected-type list. You cannot find gaps without one.
1. Why build a schema map by template?
2. Why might a text-only crawl show no markup?
3. Where does Search Console report detected rich result types?

Your action

Next, you will detect invalid and incomplete markup.

Key terms

Structured data extraction
A crawler setting that reads and stores all markup found on each page.
Schema coverage
The share of pages in a template that carry the expected markup.
Enhancement reports
Search Console reports for detected rich result types, such as Products, Breadcrumbs, and Review snippets.
Schema map
A table of templates, expected types, and found types.

Questions beginners ask

Why enable JavaScript rendering?

Many plugins and tag managers inject JSON-LD with scripts. A text-only crawl may report no markup.

Why does Search Console show fewer items than my crawl?

Search Console only reports types Google supports for rich results, and only on pages it crawled and indexed.

Should every page have markup?

Most sites benefit from Organization or LocalBusiness, WebSite, and BreadcrumbList sitewide, plus a specific type per template.

Can I extract specific property values?

Yes, with custom extraction, for example to pull every Product price and compare it with the visible price.

Related lessons

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