When Airbnb wanted to strengthen its online presence and deliver an even smoother booking experience, it turned to AdLift for a full technical SEO audit.
This went beyond fixing errors to making sure the site could “speak search engine language” while staying true to the brand’s promise of seamless, inspiring travel.
How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit: Key Points
- Airbnb's case shows how a technical SEO audit improves site health, crawlability, and indexing while boosting user experience and search engine rankings.
- Audits should include checking crawlability, analyzing site structure, optimizing content, improving site speed, and ensuring mobile usability.
- Mobile optimization is crucial for SEO, especially with mobile-first indexing.
How To (and Why) Perform An SEO Audi
We'll be covering step-by-step advice with expert insights from AdLift’s work on Airbnb shared by CEO Prashant Puri, showing how a well-executed technical SEO audit can boost search visibility, improve user experience, and support long-term growth.
Who is Prashant Puri?
Prashant is a digital marketing expert with over 20 years of experience working closely with Fortune 500 and Unicorn companies, including PayPal, Airbnb, Shopify, Walmart, Peloton, and Goldman Sachs.
What Is a Technical SEO Audit?
A technical SEO audit is a detailed, behind-the-scenes examination of your website’s infrastructure. It’s meant to ensure your site is search-engine ready, i.e. crawlable, indexable, fast, and user-friendly. Its goal is to reveal the technical roadblocks that might be holding your site back from ranking well and serving visitors efficiently.
As Dan Wiggins, founder and director of RedCore Digital, puts it:
“If the technical foundation of a site such as its structure, speed, or mobile usability is not optimized, even the best content may fail to perform well in search engine rankings.”
But it's not just about technical processes, the real power of a technical SEO audit emerges when combined with strategy.
In their work with Airbnb, Prashant explains that a comprehensive audit was essential to ensuring the site could communicate effectively with search engines.
“We conducted a full technical SEO audit to ensure Airbnb's website was speaking search engine language,” he says.
He explains that this included analyzing URL structure, page speed, and mobile friendliness to ensure the site provided a seamless user experience for both visitors and search engine crawlers alike.
Adlift’s audit touched every essential dimension of site performance to make sure that technical precision directly supported Airbnb’s brand storytelling and user engagement efforts, creating an environment where both users and search engines can easily understand, navigate, and trust your content.
When Should You Conduct a Technical SEO Audit?
You should consider performing a full technical audit:
- Before a major site redesign or migration to prevent disruptions.
- When rankings or traffic drop unexpectedly to catch hidden issues.
- As a recurring maintenance practice, such as quarterly or biannually.
- In response to algorithm changes, which may shift technical ranking signals.
Regular audits stop small issues from becoming expensive problems. And, as AdLift’s work with Airbnb shows, they can also uncover opportunities to align technical performance with brand goals.
How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit in 5 Steps
Breaking the process into clear steps makes it easier to identify and address potential weak spots. While the tools and techniques may vary, the principle remains the same: build a strong technical foundation so your content and brand can perform at their best.
- Step #1: Check your site’s health (crawlability and indexing)
- Step #2: Analyze your site’s structure
- Step #3: Evaluate your site’s content and markup
- Step #4: Check your site’s speed and performance
- Step #5: Improve your mobile experience
Step #1: Check Your Site’s Health (Crawlability & Indexing)
This is where you make sure search engines can actually reach and understand your site. If they can’t crawl or index it, your content won’t appear in search results, no matter how good it is.
That’s why an initial sweep often includes reviewing your robots.txt file, testing your XML sitemap, and checking for crawl errors in Google Search Console.
AdLift prioritized this with Airbnb by making sure the “search engine language” of the site was flawless before any content adjustments were made.
Step #2: Analyze Your Site’s Structure
A clear, logical structure makes it easier for search engines to map your content and for users to navigate it. Think of this as building the blueprint for how your site is experienced.
This includes creating clean, descriptive URLs, using canonical tags to prevent duplicate content issues, and setting up a strong internal linking strategy.
AdLift’s review of Airbnb’s URL structure would have ensured that each page’s role in the site’s hierarchy was clearly defined, in addition to all technical requirements being met.
Step #3: Evaluate Your Site’s Content and Markup
Content needs context. Well-structured metadata, clear headings, and accurate schema markup help search engines understand what each page is about, increasing the likelihood of strong rankings and rich results.
Prashant stressed the importance of this in Adlift's broader approach:
“We also use structured data markup to help search engines understand our clients' content better, potentially boosting their visibility in search results.”
For Airbnb, this would have meant implementing schema types relevant to their business, such as lodging, local business, and review data. This makes for richer and more engaging search listings.
Step #4: Check Your Site’s Speed and Performance
Yes, a slow site frustrates users, but it also hurts rankings. Fast load times, smooth interactions, and optimized performance keep visitors engaged and search engines satisfied.
This step includes testing Core Web Vitals, compressing images, optimizing code, and improving server response times.
Step #5: Improve Your Mobile Experience
With mobile-first indexing, your site’s mobile version is now its primary form in Google’s eyes. If it’s not fast, functional, and user-friendly on smaller screens, you’re likely missing opportunities.
Airbnb’s audience is heavily mobile-based, so a deep dive into mobile responsiveness and usability would have been a key part of AdLift’s audit. Everything from page load times on mobile networks to the accessibility of navigation and tap targets would have been scrutinized.
Technical SEO Audit Checklist
A comprehensive checklist helps ensure no critical areas are overlooked:
- Robots.txt review
- Sitemap validation
- Crawl error analysis
- URL structure & hierarchy
- Canonical tags clean and correct
- Metadata optimized (titles, descriptions)
- Structured data implemented
- Core Web Vitals measured & optimized
- Load times tested (desktop & mobile)
- Mobile usability checked
- HTTPS enforced
- Redirects and broken links fixed
- Internal linking strategy in place
Top Tools to Use for a Technical SEO Audit
The best tools for performing technical SEO audits are easy to use, have a great user interface, offer a wide range of features, and support SEO automation.
While Ahrefs is the top choice for analyzing backlinks, domains, and content, as well as employing features like keyword discovery and link analysis, here are other options to consider:
- Google Search Console: Monitor site performance and indexing
- Screaming Frog: Crawl and ientify website health issues
- Lumar: Enterprise-level site crawling and technical insights
- Xenu's Link Sleuth: Check for broken links
- W3C Markup Validation service: Validate HTML markup compliance
1. Google Search Console: Monitor Site Performance & Indexing
Google Search Console (GSC) is by far the most popular tool for monitoring your site's performance and search presence. This free tool provides information about impressions, clicks, and average position in Google search results. It also allows you to submit sitemaps, test robots.txt files, and monitor index coverage.
The tool helps you answer questions like:
- Are my pages being indexed correctly?
- How frequently is Google crawling my site?
- What queries are bringing traffic to my pages?
Google Search Console provides query and page-level data, including which keywords generate impressions and clicks, and whether your site is mobile-friendly. In 2024, Google added a “Recommendations” feature that suggests improvements for technical SEO and site health.
It is important to note that GSC does not provide metrics such as unique visitors or bounce rate, which are available in Google Analytics. Its focus is strictly on search visibility and indexing.
2. Screaming Frog: Crawl & Identify Website Health Issues
Screaming Frog is a desktop program you can use for technical SEO audits. It's available for Mac, PC, and Linux.
The program crawls websites’ links, images, CSS, and scripts to find errors and provide data on site health. This information can then be used to identify potential issues with your website. It also allows you to check for broken links, redirect chains, duplicate content, and metadata issues.
Screaming Frog crawls the entire website, including all subdomains, and produces detailed reports that can be exported into Excel or Google Sheets for analysis.
The free version allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs per website, while the paid version, priced at about $279 per year, gives you unlimited crawling and additional features.
3. Lumar: Enterprise-Level Site Crawling & Technical Insights
Lumar, previously known as DeepCrawl, is a technical SEO auditing tool that helps with crawling and indexation. It is trusted by large brands including PayPal, Microsoft, and Adobe.
Lumar is a web-based application designed to crawl websites of any size and provide data on how to improve technical SEO. It allows you to crawl URLs, titles, metadata, and other elements across millions of pages. It also offers advanced features such as custom reports, dashboards, and over 200 built-in audit reports.
Lumar analyzes XML sitemaps, images, CSS, and other static content, crawling at speeds of up to 450 URLs per second. Pricing is provided on request.
4. Xenu's Link Sleuth: Check for Broken Links
Link Sleuth is a free, standalone tool that crawls your website and checks for broken links. It produces a report listing all the broken links on your site and the pages where they're located. Link Sleuth is simple to use and effective, though its interface is dated.
This free tool is only compatible with Windows devices.
5. W3C Markup Validation Service: Validate HTML Markup Compliance
The W3C Markup Validation Service is a free online tool used to check if a web page is properly formatted according to HTML or XHTML standards. It helps you check the markup of your web pages for technical SEO audits.
Simply enter the URL of your page into the service, and it will analyze the code to find any errors. If there are, the service will provide a list of them, along with information on how to fix them. Plus, the W3C Markup Validation Service can also help ensure compliance with web standards.
How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit: Final Thoughts
AdLift’s work with Airbnb shows that a technical SEO audit can be far more than a mindless checklist. From their review of URL structure, page speed, and mobile friendliness, three clear lessons stand out:
- User experience and technical SEO are inseparable, as performance and usability drive rankings and engagement.
- Structured data helps search engines present brands effectively.
- Technical audits should support brand storytelling by providing a strong foundation lets the message shine in search results and on-site
In short, a well-executed audit builds the infrastructure for visibility, user satisfaction, and growth. Following the steps outlined here, supported by the right tools and expert insight, can set your site up for long-term success.
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How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit FAQs
1. What are the long-term benefits of performing a technical SEO audit?
A technical SEO audit lays the groundwork for sustained growth by addressing issues like crawlability and speed, which improve rankings, user engagement, and traffic over time.
2. How does a technical SEO audit align with brand storytelling and user engagement?
By improving site speed, mobile usability, and content structure, a technical SEO audit ensures a smooth user experience, making it easier for search engines to present your brand and enhance visibility.
3. What role do tools like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog play in a technical SEO audit?
Google Search Console helps monitor indexing and crawl errors, while Screaming Frog identifies site issues like broken links and duplicate content, streamlining the audit process.
