Signs your site has a technical problem
Technical SEO problems rarely announce themselves. The site looks fine in a browser, so the owner assumes Google sees the same thing. Often it does not. These are the symptoms that usually send people our way:
- A page you know exists does not appear when you search for its exact title.
- Traffic dropped after a redesign, a host move, or a switch to a new platform.
- Google shows an old version of a page, or the wrong page for a search.
- The site feels slow on a phone, especially on a mobile connection.
- You have many pages but only a handful ever bring in calls.
If any of those sound familiar, content and links will not help much until the foundation is repaired. That is why an audit often comes before the rest of our SEO services.
What the audit covers
We crawl the site the way a search engine does, compare that to what Google reports in its own tools where you give us access, and then check the pages that matter most by hand.
Indexation
Which pages Google has indexed, which it has chosen to skip, and why. We look for stray noindex tags, pages blocked in robots.txt, and important pages that are simply missing from the index.
Crawlability and site structure
Broken links, redirect chains, orphan pages that nothing links to, and XML sitemaps that list pages which no longer exist. We also check how many clicks it takes to reach your key service pages from the home page.
Canonicals and duplicate pages
Duplicate versions of the same page split your ranking signals. Common causes are http and https both loading, www and non-www both live, trailing-slash variants, tracking parameters, and near-identical city pages. We check that canonical tags point where they should and that duplicates are consolidated.
Core Web Vitals and speed
Google's Core Web Vitals measure loading (Largest Contentful Paint), responsiveness (Interaction to Next Paint), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift). We look at field data where it exists, then trace slow scores to causes such as oversized images, heavy scripts, or render-blocking files.
Internal linking
Internal links tell Google which pages are important and how they relate. We map them and flag service pages that receive few links, anchor text that says nothing, and navigation that hides key pages.
Structured data
We validate your schema markup, check that business details in it match your real name, address, and phone, and remove markup that misrepresents the page, which Google can penalize.
What you receive
| Deliverable | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Prioritized issue list | Every problem found, ranked by likely impact on leads, not by how alarming it sounds. |
| Plain-English summary | A short explanation an owner can read without a glossary. |
| Fix instructions | Specific steps your developer, or we, can follow. |
| Walkthrough call | We go through the findings together and answer questions. |
Most audit tools produce long lists of warnings, many of which do not matter. Part of our job is telling you which ones to ignore.
Local sites have their own technical traps
City pages that duplicate each other
A business that serves both Henderson and Las Vegas often ends up with two pages that differ only by the city name. Google tends to treat those as duplicates and pick one, or neither. Our own Henderson SEO page and Las Vegas SEO page are written to stand on their own for that reason, and we check yours the same way.
Redirects left over from old sites
Local businesses often change domains, rebrand, or move from one web builder to another. Each move can leave old URLs that still have links pointing at them but now return errors. We find those pages and redirect each one to its closest current equivalent, so the value they earned is not thrown away.
Mismatched business details
If the address in your schema, footer, and Google Business Profile do not match, that inconsistency weakens the local signals your site sends. We compare them line by line.
After the audit
You can take the report to your own developer, or have us make the fixes. If the problems run deep, such as a platform that cannot produce clean URLs or fast pages, we may recommend SEO-focused web design, and we will explain the reasoning before you spend anything. Once the foundation is sound, ongoing local SEO work has something solid to build on. It is the same order we follow for every Henderson SEO client.
Fixing technical problems removes obstacles. It does not guarantee rankings. How quickly results follow depends on your competition and how often Google recrawls your site.
Questions we hear from business owners
How much does a technical SEO audit cost?
The price depends mainly on the size and complexity of the site. A small service-business site is a very different job from a large site with thousands of pages. We quote a fixed price after a quick look, so there are no surprises.
How long does the audit take?
Small sites usually take less time than large ones, and we give you an expected delivery date up front. The walkthrough call is scheduled once the report is ready.
Do you need access to my website?
Read-only access to Google Search Console is very helpful, because it shows what Google itself reports about your site. We do not need login access to your site to run the audit. If you want us to make the fixes afterward, we will discuss access then.
Will the audit break anything on my site?
No. The audit only reads your site the way a search engine does. Nothing is changed until you approve specific fixes.