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If you’re not sure your website is technically set up for search engines and AI tools to crawl, index, rank and cite it, it may be time to hire an expert to conduct a technical SEO audit. Time is money, and spending hours trying to understand technical optimization can be costly. Technical SEO elements such as sitemaps, robots.txt rules for search and AI bots, canonical URLs, JavaScript rendering, schema, crawl errors, redirect chains and other elements can be daunting.
Kern Media® takes the guesswork out of technical SEO. With over 20 years of experience, we audit your website for both Google and AI search tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, and provide specific recommendations so your content can be found, ranked and cited.
AI tools mostly cite company websites, and they keep returning to the same stable, recently updated URLs. If crawlers can’t reach or read your pages, your brand gets left out of the answer.
Research figures come from the Kern Media AI Search Citation Study (2026), an analysis of 1,044 AI answers, mostly from ChatGPT, with a head-to-head test of Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. Client results are anonymized; see our case studies.
Benefits of a Technical SEO Audit
- Improve search engine ranking potential by fixing broken pages, redirects, indexation problems and other technical SEO issues.
- Improve user experience by fixing broken links, broken images, orphaned pages and other user experience issues.
- Improve visibility in AI answers by making sure search engines and AI crawlers can read your key content, including content loaded with JavaScript, tabs or review widgets.
- Enhance your search listings and AI citations with schema markup that helps search engines and LLMs understand your company, people, products and content.
- Take the guesswork out of technical SEO, implement professional recommendations and move on to your other marketing efforts.
On a free 30-minute call, we’ll take a first look at your site and point out where the biggest technical wins are.
Conducting Your Technical SEO Audit
Kern Media offers technical SEO audits that make sure your website is properly set up for search engine and AI crawling and indexation, so your content strategy and promotional efforts can have maximum impact. The process is very data-heavy, but recommendations are written so website owners and developers can understand and implement them.
Crawling Your Website to Identify Technical Issues
The starting point for a technical SEO audit is crawling your website the way search engines and AI bots do, to find issues that may limit indexation, ranking potential, AI visibility and usability. Tools such as Screaming Frog are used to run the crawl and identify issues such as the following:
- 4XX errors (404, 410, 400, 401, 403, etc.)
- 3XX redirects (301, 302, etc.)
- 5XX errors (500, 502, 503, etc.)
- Redirect chains
- Pages blocked by robots.txt (for search engines and AI bots)
- Incorrect meta robots tag implementation
- Incorrect canonical URL implementation
- Pagination and orphaned page issues
- Duplicate titles, H1s and meta descriptions
The crawl data will be thoroughly analyzed, and clear, prioritized recommendations will be provided to fix any issues discovered.
Reviewing Indexation in Search Engines
Your website’s indexation in search engines is important to keep in check. With too many low-quality pages indexed, or important pages excluded from search engine indexes, your overall “content quality” (in terms of indexation) can be put at risk.
Situations of “indexation bloat” can hurt your site’s overall ranking potential in search engines (especially Google), and important pages blocked from indexation (due to any number of factors) can limit your organic search traffic and your chances of being cited in AI answers.
Kern Media takes a close look at your website’s indexation by analyzing data in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, and comparing it to the crawl data mentioned above.
Reviewing Google Analytics, Search Console & AI Traffic
Google Analytics (GA4) and Google Search Console provide important data for analyzing SEO efforts, including traffic sources, engagement, conversions and revenue. We also separate out the traffic, leads and revenue coming from AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, so you can see what AI visibility is actually worth to your business. Google Analytics settings and conversion tracking can also be reviewed and improved as needed.
Google Search Console offers important data on indexation, sitemaps, page experience, and query and page-level performance. We also look for long, prompt-style queries that can signal AI search activity, and when available, review server logs for visits from AI bots such as ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and PerplexityBot.
Analyzing Website Architecture & Taxonomy
A well-structured website uses topical hierarchy (like service hubs and knowledge base sections) to organize content logically for users, search engines and LLMs. This also lets internal link equity flow through the site for optimal ranking potential, and helps AI tools understand which topics you’re an authority on. Taxonomy will be reviewed and recommendations will be made to improve it (if necessary).
Optimizing the Robots.txt File
Your website’s robots.txt file tells search engine and AI “bots” how to crawl your website. Blocking important pages limits ranking (and traffic) potential, while allowing crawl of low-quality pages can cause “indexation bloat.” AI bots add another layer: some fetch pages to answer users’ questions and cite sources, while others collect training data. Kern Media will make sure your robots.txt file lets the right bots in, blocks the ones you don’t want, and doesn’t have conflicting rules that keep search engines like Bing from rendering your pages.
Auditing the XML Sitemap
Your website’s XML sitemap offers a roadmap of URLs for search engines to crawl and index. Having errors in your XML sitemap (4XX response codes, 3XX response codes, noindexed URLs, etc.) can decrease search engines’ trust in your XML sitemap and limit its effectiveness. Your XML sitemap will be reviewed to ensure accuracy and limit errors reported in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Analyzing Page Load Time
Your website’s speed contributes to its ranking potential in search engines, especially Google. The faster your website loads (especially on mobile devices), the more likely your visitors are to stay and read your content. Google measures this with Core Web Vitals, and page speed best practices (image optimization, caching, script minification, etc.) will be reviewed and advised upon.
Reviewing Mobile Friendliness
Google now uses the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking (mobile-first indexing). Your website will be reviewed to make sure the mobile version has the same content, links, structured data and metadata as the desktop version, and that it’s easy to use on small screens. Responsive design is almost always the best choice, and it’s the approach Google recommends.
Identifying Structured Data Opportunities
Structured data (schema markup) helps search engines and LLMs understand who you are and what your content is about, and it’s a core part of answer engine optimization (AEO), since it helps AI Overviews and AI tools pull your pages as direct answers. Appropriate schema opportunities will be provided based on your content types, such as Organization, Person, Product, Review, FAQ, Article and Event schema. Consistent Organization and Person schema can also help correct AI tools that confuse your company or people with others.
Reviewing Duplicate Content Issues
Internal and external duplicate content issues limit your pages’ value to search engines, and fixing these issues (as much as possible) can improve your overall content quality in the eyes of search engines and AI tools. If your website has duplicate content issues, specific recommendations will be provided so you know how to handle them and improve your content and ranking potential.
Reviewing JavaScript Rendering for Search & AI
JavaScript-heavy websites can hide content from crawlers. Google can render JavaScript, but most AI crawlers (like GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot) mostly read the raw HTML and don’t run JavaScript. That means content in tabs, accordions, mega menus, carousels, review widgets or client-side frameworks may be invisible to the AI tools your buyers use. We test your key page types with JavaScript turned off, compare the raw HTML to the rendered page, and recommend fixes like server-side rendering, pre-rendering or moving key content into the HTML.
Why Technical SEO Matters for AI Search
AI tools can only recommend what they can read. In our AI search citation study, 84% of AI citations went to the websites of the companies being recommended, and brands whose own site was cited were recommended 96% of the time, compared to 18% when it wasn’t. A few technical findings stood out:
What You Get
Technical SEO Case Study
Online Retailer: Separating AI Overview Losses From a Site Rebuild
After a platform rebuild, organic clicks fell. We separated the AI Overview trend from the rebuild, then audited indexing, page structure and schema.
Is Kern Media a Good Fit?
- You have an established website and leads or sales from search that matter to the business.
- You have marketing, content or development resources (in-house or outsourced) who can implement changes.
- You want senior strategy from an experienced consultant rather than a large agency account team.
See pricing for typical retainers and projects, or company facts for more on how we work.
Technical SEO Audit FAQs
How long does a technical SEO audit take?
It depends on the size and complexity of your website. Most audits take a few weeks from kickoff to the walkthrough of findings, and larger sites with many templates or subdomains take longer.
How much does a technical SEO audit cost?
Technical SEO audits are billed at our standard month-to-month rates. Scope depends on the size of your website and the depth of the analysis. You’ll get exact pricing after a free consultation. See our pricing page for how projects and retainers work.
Does the audit cover AI crawlers?
Yes. We check robots.txt rules for AI bots like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, ChatGPT-User and Claude-User, test whether key content is readable without JavaScript, and review schema and indexation for both Google and AI tools.
Which crawl warnings actually matter?
Most crawl tool warnings are low priority. The issues that usually matter most are important pages that Google or AI crawlers can’t reach or index, broken redirects and internal links, duplicate pages competing with each other, content that only appears with JavaScript, and template problems that affect many pages at once. We rank every issue by how many important pages it affects and how hard it is to fix, so your developers start with the fixes that pay off.
Do you implement the fixes?
We write clear, prioritized recommendations and technical specs your developers can implement, answer their questions, and review changes before and after launch. Ongoing implementation support is available through a monthly retainer.
What tools do you use?
Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics 4, Ahrefs and server logs when available, plus manual testing in Google and AI tools. Every recommendation comes from expert human review.
Can you help with a website migration or redesign?
Yes. We plan redirects, indexation and launch checks before a migration, and diagnose problems after one. If a rebuild already caused a traffic drop, see our traffic recovery services.
Ready for a Technical SEO Audit? We Can Help
Stop the guesswork and get a professional technical audit that improves how your website performs in Google and AI search. Contact Kern Media for a free consultation.
You’ll talk directly with founder Dan Kern, not a salesperson, and get a custom proposal after the call.
