An audit should find barriers that affect real pages and customer journeys. Prioritise verified issues over long lists of generic recommendations.
Check access and page identity
Sample important service and article URLs. Confirm their status codes, indexing directives and canonical destinations. Inspect unexpected redirects and duplicate variants. Compare the intended pages with the sitemap and internal navigation. Start with a concrete affected URL rather than changing site-wide settings on suspicion.
Review discoverability and rendering
Check that important content is available in the rendered page and linked from relevant sections. Test mobile usability, headings and broken resources. Review Search Console evidence where available. Separate a crawl problem from weak content relevance; the corrective action is not the same.
Turn findings into a repair plan
For each issue, record the example URL, evidence, impact and proposed fix. Validate changes on a sample before broader rollout. Recheck affected URLs after deployment and retain the baseline. Avoid promising rankings from technical fixes alone; they support access and understanding rather than guarantee demand.