What To Know About Technical SEO Audits (for Beginners)

When it comes to search engine optimization, most people are familiar with the on-page SEO factors you can see, like keywords, headers, and images. But they often ignore or forget about technical SEO, which works behind the scenes to keep your site running smoothly and ranking well on the search engine results pages (SERPs). 

For B2B SaaS companies, technical SEO is essential. These companies have complex websites and customer journeys. If the search engines can’t crawl and understand their sites, how will potential customers navigate the site content?  

The most successful B2B SaaS companies make technical SEO a priority, leading to better site performance and searchability. 

How is technical SEO different from regular SEO? 

If SEO were a theatrical performance, regular SEO would include everything happening on stage. From the audience, you’d see the sets, props, costumes, and characters. But pull back the curtain, and you’ll find the lighting rigs, sound equipment, and stage machinery (the technical SEO). 

What happens behind the scenes is just as important as what happens on stage during a performance. The same is true for SEO. Specific aspects of technical SEO, including site speed, mobile usability, site crawlability, and security, influence your site’s place in the SERPs. 

These are the factors web crawlers analyze when indexing and ranking your website. Even the best content and link-building strategies will fall short if technical SEO isn’t a major consideration. 

However, it’s easy to take what’s happening in the background for granted. Website architecture is one of the most overlooked aspects of technical SEO. When marketing leaders, project managers, and developers don’t weigh in with data-informed insights to optimize this area, it often results in a poor user experience. 

In the B2B SaaS world, a visitor who doesn’t understand how to navigate a website may not complete their journey to learning more about a product. This is a huge missed opportunity, especially if visitors can Google a competitor and easily find answers to their questions. 

So how do you strike a balance between technical SEO and content-driven SEO? 

While many B2B companies continually produce content to boost SEO, technical SEO is less of a regular task. It’s not about fixing every single error on your site but about resolving the errors that hold your site back from performing well and getting more clicks. After correcting major errors, many companies prioritize technical site updates in monthly or quarterly sprints. 

What is a technical SEO audit 

A technical SEO audit is a thorough evaluation of a website’s technical health. During a site audit, you can identify what issues might be slowing down your site or preventing the search engines from crawling and indexing pages. Any technical obstacles you encounter are likely hurting your site's health. 

Historical maintenance is a challenge for most B2B SaaS websites. When web teams update product pages and URLs, they’re often left with broken links and page redirects, resulting in 4xx errors when visitors land on a web page. 

These errors, along with redirect chains in the resource library, navigation, and core pages, can have serious implications for SERP visibility. Google may exclude pages with 4xx errors from its index over time, decreasing the likelihood that people will discover your website.

Technical SEO audits help you identify these issues before they take a toll on your website performance. 

Areas of focus in a technical SEO audit 

A technical SEO audit analyzes your website for technical issues driving down your search engine rankings. It should dissect every element of your site, from how fast it loads to how search engine crawlers understand your site content. 

These six factors are essential when you’re conducting a technical SEO audit. 

Crawling and indexing 

Google may crawl a website anywhere from once every three days to four weeks. When it does, the crawler or Googlebot gathers information from your site to understand what it’s about. It stores that data in an index so that when a user enters a query, Google can search the index to return high-quality results that address the user’s question. 

Technical SEO audits reveal the key issues that can impact a site’s search engine visibility and performance. Crawl errors like broken links (404 errors) and server errors (5xx status codes) can prevent the crawlers from properly indexing a site. Without an XML sitemap that includes all important pages on the site, crawlers may not know how to index your content. 

During a technical SEO audit, you also want to review the robots.txt file and check for no-index meta tags. These factors can unintentionally block important content from the search engines and decrease a site’s organic traffic. 

Site speed

The average web page load time is 2.5 seconds on desktop and 8.6 seconds on mobile. And yet, Google found that 53% of visitors will give up and leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load. Further, a study by Portent revealed that sites that load in just one second have 3x higher conversion rates than sites that take five seconds to load.

When consumers visit a website, they want immediate results. Slow load times frustrate website visitors, leading to a poor user experience and lower conversions. 

That’s why page load speed is a known ranking factor for desktop and mobile searches. Search engines acknowledge that quick page load times provide a better user experience, and they prioritize those pages. 

Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help you get to the bottom of website speed issues. When you enter your website URL into the tool, it displays your overall performance score for desktop and mobile, providing detailed recommendations that include diagnostics, passed audits, and additional items to check manually. 

B2B SaaS companies that resolve these issues often see reduced bounce rates and improved conversions. Faster load times keep potential customers engaged, so they’re more likely to request a demo or free trial. 

Mobile usability 

Mobile usability categorizes how well your website performs on mobile devices. In 2023, Google announced it had fully transitioned to mobile-first indexing (prioritizing the mobile version of websites over desktop) to reflect changing browsing behaviors. So it’s no surprise mobile usability is now a major ranking signal. 

A technical SEO audit considers a website’s ability to adjust smoothly to different screen sizes. It evaluates touch-friendly elements like buttons and links to ensure these elements are large enough and spaced properly for touch input. 

Websites with mobile-friendly navigation, like hamburger menus and simplified menu structures, often receive a higher score. These menus are much easier for users to navigate from a small screen. 

Audits also scan for mobile-specific errors. This can include pop-ups that obstruct important website content, horizontal scrolling that negatively impacts user experience, or mobile-only 404 errors that keep pages from displaying. 

Structured data and schema markup 

Structured data gives your website content meaning. Rather than relying on search engines to decipher meaning, you can provide exact instructions. Structured data allows you to define entities, attributes, and relationships on your page, so there’s no ambiguity. 

Schema, on the other hand, is the language you use to present your content to search engines. It tells the SERPs what content is on your page and what actions visitors can take with that content. 

Schema is a shared language that contains a standard markup for structured data so that search engines can easily understand it. Together, structured data and schema tell the bots what your content is about, how different pages relate to one another, and how visitors will interact with the content as they navigate your site.

A technical SEO audit examines the implementation of schema markup. It determines how easy it is for the search engines to identify important content on your site, like product details, reviews, and FAQs. 

SSL and security 

Like website visitors, search engines favor secure sites. HTTPS, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, encrypts data between a visitor’s browser and a website, making it more difficult for malicious actors to intercept sensitive information. 

Proper SSL certification installation is critical. A technical SEO audit helps ensure your SSL certificate is valid and properly configured. It can also pinpoint any security vulnerabilities that might affect trust signals and search rankings. You don’t want Google to penalize your site for improper SSL implementation. 

Core Web Vitals 

Core Web Vitals are the factors Google says are important for a web page’s overall user experience. They’re part of Google’s Page Experience signals, which determine a page’s quality based on page speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Core Web Vitals include metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). 

Core Web Vitals issues are common for many B2B SaaS websites. They often have various applications running in the background, including chatbots, first-party data capture, heat mapping, video embeds, and Google Analytics. 

If these elements load before the user-facing interactive elements, user experience and Core Web Vitals often suffer. This is why Core Web Vitals are an important aspect of technical SEO audits. They help paint the picture of how seamlessly a user can navigate your site. 

Common issues that B2B SaaS companies see during technical SEO audits 

We’ve touched on some of the most common issues, like broken links and crawl errors, that emerge when B2B SaaS companies perform technical SEO audits. Now let’s explore those issues in more detail. 

Broken links or redirects

As we mentioned earlier, if you frequently update product pages and content, you can end up with broken links and incorrect redirects. Since visitors can’t explore these pages, and search engine crawlers can’t properly analyze them, broken links and redirects negatively impact user experience and SEO performance. 

A technical audit can identify and help you fix these issues. When links lead to the right destination, you make your site easier for visitors to navigate and prevent link equity loss, which occurs when you change or remove links without proper redirects. 

Duplicate content or meta tags

Many SaaS platforms rely on dynamic content to provide a more personalized user experience. Users can customize their interface or features or access a dashboard tailored to their account type or preferences. While this personalization is great for user experience, search engines often struggle to crawl and index dynamic content. 

Since SaaS websites often have pages with similar structures or purposes, they may end up with duplicate metadata. For example, a SaaS company may have multiple pages that describe different features of their software — but with similar page titles and descriptions. 

Duplicate content confuses the search engines and can signal that a website lacks unique content. While indexing your site, crawlers may not know which versions of content to include or exclude. 

A technical SEO audit serves a dual purpose here. It can highlight issues like duplicate meta tags, H1s, or content that might stump the search engine crawlers and penalize your organic search rankings. It can also help you proactively resolve those issues by consolidating similar content or using canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page. 

Crawl errors 

Server issues, incorrect URLs, and other technical problems are stumbling blocks for search engines. When the search engine can’t communicate with your website server, or when redirect loops send crawlers on a wild goose chase, pages of your site may not appear in the search results. 

Some of the most common crawl errors that get flagged during a technical SEO audit include 404 not found errors, 5xx server errors, DNS errors, and access denied (403) errors. These errors steal time away from the crawl budget — the maximum number of connections crawlers can use to inspect a site without overloading their servers. 

Put simply, the more server resources you waste on “dead” pages, the less quality content the crawlers can find to rank. 

Inconsistent URL structures 

Inconsistent URL structures cause indexing headaches for search engines. When multiple versions of a URL exist (for example, https://awebsite.com and http://awebsite.com), the search engines may view these as separate pages with identical content. Crawlers are unsure which version should take ranking precedence on the SERPs. 

In a technical SEO audit, you can verify your site is properly using canonical URLs to prevent content duplication. With these tags in place, search engines know which pages to focus on when there are indexing issues. 

JavaScript rendering issues

B2B SaaS websites may rely heavily on JavaScript for unique dynamic content. However, search engines often don’t know what to do with this content. The information JavaScript serves might not be immediately visible to the search engines, which can negatively impact search engine optimization. 

Technical SEO audits uncover critical content that’s hidden from the search engines. During the crawl analysis, search engine bots compare the content they can see with the content visible to users. If content hides behind JavaScript or CSS, the audit may recommend fixes like dynamic rendering for JavaScript content. 

How can you improve your technical SEO after an audit? 

SEO audits break down the technical aspects of your site into more digestible pieces. Here are a few tips for assembling those pieces following an audit. 

Prioritize your fixes

Tackle issues based on the impact they have on site performance and SEO. You’ll want to include high-priority issues like site speed, broken links, and mobile usability at the top of your list. These issues deserve your full attention because they influence user experience and search visibility.

Use the right tools (or get more support) 

You can likely resolve some issues on your own. Tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and Semrush can help you catch and fix technical SEO challenges. But for the more advanced issues, you might need help from an SEO expert. 

Agencies like Ten Speed can step in to help resolve the tricky SEO issues you don’t have the time or skill to fix alone. DIY technical SEO tools are invaluable, but if you lack experience, you can create more problems than you fix. 

Likewise, if you’ve fixed the problems, but your site still isn’t getting traffic, it might be time to hire an agency to get to the bottom of your poor SERP rankings.

Develop an ongoing maintenance plan 

Create a plan for building momentum after the initial fixes. We recommend conducting regular site audits, using automated tools to monitor performance, and reviewing key metrics quarterly or bi-annually. 

B2B SaaS companies that perform technical SEO audits at least once a year can stay ahead of algorithm updates. They’re also able to quickly detect and resolve issues that creep up as their websites evolve.

If your team doesn’t have the capacity to tackle scheduled website audits, call in an agency for long-term support. 

Ready to optimize your site with a technical SEO audit? 

Technical SEO audits are routine check-ups that keep your site running like it should. These audits are imperative for B2B SaaS websites, as prospective customers have complex user journeys and need all the support they can get from an optimized, user-friendly site. 

The challenge is that technical SEO is . . . well, technical. Without a strong tech background and SEO expertise, it’s hard to even track down issues, much less correct them. That’s where agencies like Ten Speed come in.

We’ll conduct a full technical SEO audit of your site, highlight issues that are confusing search engines or creating a poor user experience, and help you get your site running smoothly.

Need a comprehensive technical SEO audit to support your SEO strategy? Schedule a call with our team!