Original framework
Evidence-led audit register
Record every material finding in a format that connects diagnosis to implementation and validation.
1. Establish scope before crawling
Document priority services, genuine operating areas, important templates, conversion actions, recent releases and available first-party access. A crawl without this context cannot reliably distinguish commercial blockers from harmless noise.
- Canonical production hostname
- Priority services and locations
- Known migrations or traffic changes
- Search Console, analytics and log access
- People who approve and deploy changes
2. Check discovery and crawling
Confirm that important URLs are linked internally, return the intended status code and are not unintentionally restricted by robots rules. Review XML sitemaps as discovery aids, not as proof that a URL will be indexed.
- robots.txt and relevant meta directives
- HTTP status codes and redirect chains
- XML sitemap status and URL quality
- Orphan and low-link-depth pages
- Crawler traps, parameters and duplicate paths
3. Test rendering and page templates
Compare initial HTML with rendered output on representative templates. Verify that headings, service copy, links, canonical elements and conversion journeys remain available when scripts fail, load slowly or change state.
- Server and rendered content
- JavaScript-dependent links
- Lazy-loaded primary content
- Mobile navigation and enquiry actions
- Template consistency across representative URLs
4. Review indexation and consolidation
Use Search Console evidence where available to separate discovery, crawling, canonical selection, quality and processing issues. Inspect canonical tags, redirect behavior and internal links together because search engines interpret multiple signals.
- Indexability of priority pages
- Declared and Google-selected canonicals
- Duplicate and near-duplicate templates
- Soft 404 and low-value URL patterns
- Internal links to canonical destinations
5. Review architecture and internal linking
Check whether the site hierarchy helps customers and crawlers reach priority services, industries and genuine locations. Important pages should not depend on isolated sitemap discovery.
- Navigation and breadcrumb relationships
- Service-to-industry contextual links
- Descriptive anchor text
- Orphan pages
- Pagination and faceted paths where applicable
6. Test experience, markup and measurement
Review Core Web Vitals patterns on representative templates, validate structured data against visible content and confirm that enquiry measurement records meaningful success rather than button presses alone.
- Field and lab performance evidence
- Mobile layout and interaction stability
- Valid, eligible structured data
- Successful forms and confirmed bookings
- Call, WhatsApp and cross-domain limitations
7. Prioritize and define QA
Group repeated findings by root cause and template. Assign impact, confidence, effort and dependencies, then write acceptance criteria before implementation begins.
Automated tools cannot independently confirm business priority, canonical intent, lead quality, production ownership or whether a proposed fix is safe for the platform.
Primary sources
Platform behavior and documentation can change. These primary references were reviewed for this guide: