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All lessons in Technical SEO Auditing Lesson 7.4 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

Image and Resource Optimization Opportunities

What we will go through

  • How to find oversized and unoptimized images
  • When to lazy load and when not to
  • How fonts, caching, and compression affect speed
  • How to speed up the LCP element

Short answer

Image and resource audits find files that slow loading: oversized images, old formats, missing width and height, lazy-loaded LCP images, uncompressed text files, missing browser caching, and slow web fonts. Use your crawler's image size filters and Lighthouse opportunities, then fix templates so the LCP image loads early and everything else loads efficiently.

A Palawan resort’s homepage hero was a 6.2 MB PNG straight from the photographer’s camera. On a 4G connection in Puerto Princesa, it took 9 seconds to appear. Converting it to WebP at the right size brought it to 140 KB. Same photo, 97% smaller.

Images: the biggest quick wins

Check in your crawl’s Images tab (filter Over 100 KB) and Lighthouse opportunities:

  1. Oversized files: compress and resize to display size.
  2. Old formats: serve WebP or AVIF.
  3. No responsive images: use srcset so phones get smaller files.
  4. Missing width and height: causes CLS.
  5. Lazy-loaded LCP image: remove loading="lazy" above the fold and add fetchpriority="high".
  6. Offscreen images not lazy loaded: add loading="lazy" below the fold.

Other resources

  • Text compression: HTML, CSS, JS served with Brotli or Gzip.
  • Browser caching: static files with long Cache-Control lifetimes.
  • Fonts: few families, WOFF2, font-display: swap, preload the main font.
  • CDN: serve static files from servers near your visitors.
  • Preconnect: early connections to critical third-party domains.

How to find the LCP element

In PageSpeed Insights, open the diagnostic for the Largest Contentful Paint element. It shows exactly which image or text block is the LCP and its load phases. Fix that element first on each template.

Practice: good practice or problem?

Sort each item into the right group.

  • Hero image with loading="lazy"

  • Footer images with loading="lazy"

  • 4 MB PNG product photo

  • Images served as WebP with srcset

  • Five font families and twelve weights

  • CSS served with Brotli compression

Common mistakes

  • Lazy loading everything, including the hero.
  • Compressing but not resizing. A 4000px image is still too big for a phone.
  • Fixing images on one page instead of in the upload or template process.
1. Should the LCP image be lazy loaded?
2. Which attribute helps load the LCP image sooner?
3. Missing width and height on images mainly hurts...

Your action

Next, you will audit JavaScript and CSS performance.

Key terms

WebP and AVIF
Modern image formats that are much smaller than JPEG or PNG at similar quality.
Lazy loading
Delaying offscreen images until the user scrolls near them, using loading="lazy".
fetchpriority="high"
An attribute that tells the browser to load an important resource, like the LCP image, early.
Text compression
Gzip or Brotli compression of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to reduce download size.

Questions beginners ask

How large should images be?

No larger than their displayed size, served responsively with srcset. Hero images under about 200 KB are a good target on mobile.

Should I lazy load every image?

No. Never lazy load the LCP image or images above the fold. That delays LCP.

Does a CDN help?

Yes, especially for visitors far from your server. Many hosts in the Philippines serve from Singapore or the US, so a CDN can cut latency.

How do fonts affect performance?

Large or many font files delay text and can cause layout shifts. Limit families, use WOFF2, and font-display: swap.

Related lessons

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