Technical SEO Audit¶

Comprehensive technical audit framework covering prioritization, duplicate pages, server response codes, hosting requirements, content validation, and CMS development requirements.

Audit Prioritization Framework¶

Priority Levels¶

1. Errors blocking page indexation - hosting issues, JS rendering, mirrors/canonicals, page duplicates
2. Errors blocking correct content indexation - JS not rendering, markup issues
3. Errors blocking page ranking - duplicate tags, broken links, duplicate content, deep nesting, over-optimized content
4. Other - lower priority fixes

Priority Rules¶

• Focus on tasks affecting maximum number of pages
• Fix incorrect paginated redirects (high priority) over 5 broken links to 404s (low priority)
• Deploy new title template (high priority) over updating HTML sitemap (low priority)
• Understand client budget required for implementation; implement result-producing tasks first

Priority by Site Size¶

• Small sites (<50 pages): low priority - errors have minimal impact
• Medium sites: medium priority
• Large sites (50k+ pages): critical - one structural error can exclude thousands from index

Setup and Monitoring¶

Proactive Monitoring¶

1. Top 1000 queries from Metrika -> position tracking
2. Same queries -> Yandex Webmaster Favorites
3. Top 100 traffic pages -> "Important Pages" in Webmaster
4. Configure Webmaster notifications
5. Connect meta-scanner (Rush Analytics) for daily page change detection
6. Don't clog robots.txt; use clean-param for GET parameters

Meta-Scanner¶

Tracks baseline page changes before they affect traffic: - Monitors: Title, Description, H1, URL, Meta robots, Canonical, robots.txt, Text content - Push notification on discrepancy - Prevents traffic loss from unnoticed developer changes

Hosting Requirements¶

• HTTP/2: Check at http2.pro/; contact hosting to enable
• SSL/TLS: Check at ssllabs.com/ssltest/; recommend TLS 1.2; configure DNS CAA Policy
• Load testing: loadimpact.com
• Stability: Connect Metrika alerts

Duplicate Pages¶

Types and Solutions¶

Finding Duplicates¶

• Yandex Webmaster (Duplicate pages section)
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Search operators: site:domain.ru

Server Response Codes¶

Required Behavior¶

• 200 OK - all valid pages
• 301 - permanent redirect (always use for SEO, never 302)
• 404 - broken pages must return actual 404 (not 200)
• 503 - during maintenance (not 403 or 502)
• 500 - not acceptable, fix immediately

Link Quality¶

• Zero links to 3xx/4xx pages in full site crawl
• Zero broken links in Screaming Frog crawl

Basic Merges (Required on Every Project)¶

All redirect with 301 to canonical URL: 1. http:// -> https:// (SSL required) 2. www.domain.ru -> domain.ru (pick one, 301 the other) 3. domain.ru/page/ -> domain.ru/page (trailing slash normalization) 4. domain.ru/Page -> domain.ru/page (uppercase normalization)

Check each with Redirect Path browser extension.

Content Audit Checks¶

Hidden Text¶

1. Disable styles and scripts
2. Check 5-10 pages of each type
3. Hidden relevant text CAN be used but NEVER via display:none
4. Mobile-First: content under spoilers/collapsibles does NOT receive weight reduction (Google confirmed)

Content Quality¶

• Check 5-10 pages per type for uniqueness (content-watch.ru for batch)
• Spam/auto-generation: look for inconsistent text, keyword stuffing, semantic tag spam
• Generated text must be static

Markup/Layout Audit¶

• Disable JS and CSS, verify: content, prices, photos visible
• Styles in .css files (no inline); JS in external files
• Max 20 external CSS/JS files per page
• Default charset: UTF-8

Anti-Parsing Defense¶

Ineffective Methods¶

• User-Agent restrictions (easily bypassed)
• Country/provider restrictions (loses real traffic)
• CAPTCHA (bypassed, annoys users)

Effective Methods¶

1. Fingerprinting - multi-parameter client evaluation
2. Traffic classification - good bots, bad bots, browsers, suspicious
3. Rate limiting - per minute, per session, by duration
4. ML/Statistical classification - pattern identification
5. Behavioral biometrics - mouse movements, device orientation

Blocking Fake Bot Scraping¶

Reverse DNS validation: 1. Bot claims GoogleBot/YandexBot -> extract IP 2. Reverse DNS -> get hostname 3. Verify: Google = googlebot.com/google.com; Yandex = yandex.ru/.net/.com 4. Forward DNS: hostname -> IP 5. IPs don't match -> fake bot -> block

CMS/Development Requirements¶

• Title, Description, H1, SEO text: independently editable per page AND via templates
• Alt and Title for images: individually and via fillable templates
• Users and robots see identical content; no hidden text in source
• When JS disabled: links to all pages accessible from homepage
• favicon.ico in site root
• Static resources: gzip compression; caching headers >= 3 days; cache bust via timestamp
• All dev/staging closed from robots via HTTP auth

Tools¶

Infrastructure note: For crawling large sites (hundreds of thousands of pages), buy a dedicated server, install Screaming Frog, crawl for days.

Repeat Audit Schedule¶

Gotchas¶

• robots.txt controls crawling, not indexation - pages blocked in robots.txt can still appear in index if linked from elsewhere
• 302 redirects do NOT transfer ranking signals - always use 301 for permanent moves
• Previous contractors often leave bad robots.txt rules - always review manually before any other work
• CloudFlare can cause false 403 responses in audit tools like bertal.ru
• "Page quality insufficient" in Webmaster usually means thin content on auto-generated pages, not technical error
• Developer changes can silently break SEO - meta-scanner catches problems before traffic drops

See Also¶

• robots txt sitemaps indexation - robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and indexation deep dive
• core web vitals performance - Page speed and Core Web Vitals
• site structure urls - URL rules and structure validation
• seo analytics reporting - Monitoring and diagnostics workflow