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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, a technical SEO audit will show you what to fix. Sitemaps, robots.txt rules for search and AI bots, canonicals, JavaScript rendering, schema and redirects are easy to get wrong.
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 give you specific fixes 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.
- Improve your search listings and AI citations with schema markup that helps search engines and LLMs understand your company, people, products and content.
- Know exactly what to fix, hand your developers a prioritized list and move on to your other marketing work.
On a free 30-minute call, we’ll talk through your site and where the biggest technical wins are likely to be.
Conducting Your Technical SEO Audit
Our technical SEO audits make sure your website is set up for search engines and AI crawlers to crawl and index it, so the rest of your SEO work pays off. The process is data-heavy, but we write the recommendations so website owners and developers can understand and implement them.
Crawling Your Website to Identify Technical Issues
We start by crawling your website the way search engines and AI bots do, to find issues that limit indexation, rankings, AI visibility and usability. We run the crawl with Screaming Frog and look for issues like these:
- 4XX errors (404, 410, 400, 401 and 403)
- 3XX redirects (301 and 302)
- 5XX errors (500, 502 and 503)
- 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
We analyze the crawl data and give you clear, prioritized fixes for every issue we find.
Reviewing Indexation in Search Engines
What Google has in its index matters as much as what it crawls. Too many thin or duplicate pages in the index (index bloat) drag down how Google judges your whole site, and important pages left out of the index can’t rank or get cited in AI answers.
We compare the indexation data in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics against the crawl, so you can see which pages are indexed that shouldn’t be, and which pages are missing.
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. We can also fix GA4 settings and conversion tracking while we’re in there.
Google Search Console shows 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. It also spreads internal links to the pages you want to rank, and helps AI tools understand which topics you’re an authority on. We review your site structure and recommend changes if it needs them.
Optimizing the Robots.txt File
Your robots.txt file tells search engine and AI bots how to crawl your website. Blocking important pages limits rankings and traffic, while letting bots crawl low-quality pages causes index bloat. AI bots add another layer: some fetch pages to answer users’ questions and cite sources, while others collect training data. We 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. Errors in your sitemap (4XX and 3XX URLs, noindexed URLs and URLs that canonicalize elsewhere) make search engines trust it less. We check every URL in your sitemap and clear the errors Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools report.
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. We review the usual fixes (image optimization, caching and script minification) and tell your developers which ones matter for your site.
Reviewing Mobile Friendliness
Google uses the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking (mobile-first indexing). We check that the mobile version of your site 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. We recommend the schema that fits 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, we tell you exactly how to handle it so your pages rank and get cited.
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) read only 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.
On a free 30-minute call, we’ll talk through your site, your goals and where a technical audit would help most.
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. That makes crawlability the first thing to get right:
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 Working With Kern Media for 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. Dan sets the strategy, guides the analysis and prepares the recommendations.
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?
Get a technical audit that shows how your site performs in Google and AI search, and what to fix first.
You’ll talk directly with founder Dan Kern, not a salesperson, and get a custom proposal after the call.
