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All lessons in Technical SEO Auditing Lesson 7.3 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

Identifying Slow Pages

Your roadmap for this lesson

  • How Search Console groups slow URLs
  • How to run PageSpeed data for many URLs in a crawl
  • How to check server response time (TTFB)
  • How to map slow pages to templates

Short answer

To find slow pages at scale, start with Search Console's Core Web Vitals report, which groups failing URLs by similar pages. Then connect the PageSpeed Insights API to your crawler to pull field and lab metrics for sample URLs, check response times for slow servers, and map every slow URL to its page template.

Testing pages one by one in PageSpeed Insights works for five URLs, not five thousand. This lesson shows how to see performance across a whole site and connect it to templates.

Step 1: Start with Search Console

Open Experience, Core Web Vitals, Mobile. Click a failing issue (for example, “LCP issue: longer than 2.5s”). Google shows URL groups with an example URL and the group’s value. Each group usually maps to a template: product pages, blog posts, location pages.

Step 2: Pull PageSpeed data into your crawl

In Screaming Frog, go to API Access, PageSpeed Insights, add your free key, and choose mobile. Crawl a sample list: 5 to 10 URLs per template. You get CrUX field metrics, Lighthouse metrics, and opportunity savings in one sheet.

Step 3: Check server response

Sort your normal crawl by Response Time. Pages consistently slow to respond (over about 1 second) point to server, hosting, caching, or database problems. In PageSpeed, check TTFB in field data.

Step 4: Map to templates

Add a page type column and average each metric by type:

Page typeField LCPField INPCLSTTFB
Product3.8 s180 ms0.021.4 s
Blog post2.1 s120 ms0.180.6 s

Now the story is clear: products have a server and LCP problem, posts have a layout shift problem.

Practice: what does this suggest?

Sort each item into the right group.

  • TTFB of 2.3 s on every page type

  • Only blog posts have high CLS

  • Crawl response times spike on product pages with many variants

  • Fast TTFB but slow LCP from a large hero image

Common mistakes

  • Testing only the homepage. It is rarely representative.
  • Mixing mobile and desktop results.
  • Ignoring TTFB. No front-end fix overcomes a slow server.
1. How does Search Console present slow pages?
2. High TTFB on every template suggests...
3. How many URLs per template is usually enough to test?

Your action

Next, you will find image and resource optimization opportunities.

Key terms

URL group
A set of similar pages that Search Console evaluates together for Core Web Vitals.
TTFB (Time to First Byte)
Time from the request until the browser receives the first byte of the response. High TTFB delays everything.
PageSpeed Insights API
A free API that returns field and lab data for a URL, usable inside crawlers.
Response time
How long the server took to respond during your crawl, a quick proxy for server speed.

Questions beginners ask

How many URLs should I test?

Five to ten per template is usually enough, since pages built from the same template share most performance issues.

What is a good TTFB?

Around 0.8 seconds or less is a common target. Higher values often point to slow hosting, no caching, or heavy database queries.

Do I need an API key?

Yes, a free key from Google Cloud. It allows thousands of requests per day.

Why do some URLs show only origin data?

They lack enough traffic for URL-level CrUX data. The origin value describes the whole site.

Related lessons

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