Technical SEO Audit for Static Sites: Crawl, Indexation and Templates

Static sites are usually fast and simple, but they still drift: duplicate URLs creep in, templates diverge, sitemaps fall behind, and a small change can quietly create hundreds of indexable variants. A technical SEO audit is how you keep crawl and indexation clean as you publish more content.

1) Confirm the crawl entry points

Crawlers discover your site through links and sitemaps. Validate:

• Homepage discoverability. Navigation links to key sections, especially your blog index.
• Robots policy. robots.txt allows crawling and references your sitemap (see robots and index controls).
• Sitemap health. Sitemap lists canonical URLs only and updates as new pages ship (see sitemap hygiene).

2) Enforce one canonical URL per page

Static sites often produce URL variants: trailing slash vs no slash, index.html vs folder paths, and duplicate pages across environments. Ensure:

• Every page has a self-referential canonical.
• Canonical URLs are unique across the site.
• Internal links use the canonical format consistently.

If you are unsure where to start, define your canonical policy and apply it everywhere (see canonical URLs on static sites).

3) Audit templates, not just pages

Static sites fail at the template layer. Validate on a representative sample:

• Title and meta description. Present, unique, and aligned to search intent.
• Open Graph and Twitter. Consistent previews for sharing.
• Structured data. Use BlogPosting and optional FAQPage only when it matches visible content (see structured data without spam).
• Analytics tags. Exactly one Google tag per page, placed consistently.

4) Validate internal link integrity

Broken internal links waste crawl budget and harm user experience. Check:

• All internal .html links resolve.
• Blog index includes new posts, and new posts link back to the index.
• Cross-links use relative paths that match hosting rules.

Internal linking is also a ranking tool when done intentionally (see topic clusters and internal linking).

5) Review performance fundamentals

Even static sites can ship heavy JS, unoptimised images, and layout shifts. Track Core Web Vitals and apply simple fixes (see Core Web Vitals for static sites).

6) Turn the audit into an automated gate

The best SEO audits are repeatable. Add checks to your build pipeline:

• Unique canonicals.
• Required metadata present.
• Sitemap coverage for all canonical URLs.
• Broken internal link detection.

Technical SEO is not a one-off project. It is a maintenance discipline that keeps discovery and indexing stable while your content grows.