AI for Technical SEO Audits & Fixes

Traditional technical SEO audits require manual crawling, log analysis, and troubleshooting. This process is time-consuming and often fails to provide real-time solutions.

AI-powered tools automate diagnostics, prioritize fixes, and provide data-driven insights for resolving site-wide issues efficiently. AI optimizes site speed, indexing, structured data, mobile SEO, and Core Web Vitals with actionable recommendations.

What You’ll Learn

• The biggest technical SEO challenges and how AI simplifies their resolution.
• The best AI-powered tools for technical SEO audits (features, benefits, limitations, costs).
• Hands-on tutorials: Performing an AI-driven site audit & implementing fixes.

Table of Contents

• Challenges of Technical SEO & How AI Automates Fixes
• Best AI Tools for Technical SEO Audits & Fixes
• Tutorial: Conducting a Technical SEO Audit with Screaming Frog
• Tutorial: Conducting Audits with PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse
• Tutorial: Using ChatGPT for SEO Solutions
• Key Takeaways
• Mark Lesson as Complete

Challenges of Technical SEO & How AI Automates Fixes

Technical SEO can be complex and difficult to scale manually. AI automates the process, reducing errors and improving efficiency.

Best AI Tools for Technical SEO Audits & Fixes

AI-powered SEO tools help automate technical audits, detect issues in real time, and provide data-driven recommendations. Choosing the right tool depends on the complexity of your site, the level of automation you need, and your budget.

Below is a comparison of the top AI tools for technical SEO audits, highlighting their advantages, limitations, and cost structure.

Each of these tools provides unique advantages. For deep site crawling and log analysis, Screaming Frog is an excellent choice. If you need a more visualized SEO audit, Sitebulb offers AI-powered insights. For speed and Core Web Vitals analysis, Google PageSpeed Insights + Lighthouse is the best free option. If you want AI-driven indexing diagnostics and backlink monitoring, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a solid choice.

Screaming Frog Technical SEO Audit Tutorial

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is one of the most powerful AI-driven technical SEO tools for performing full website audits. It helps diagnose indexability issues, broken links, duplicate content, and other technical SEO problems.

Step 1: Crawl Your Website

1. Download and install Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
2. Open Screaming Frog and enter your website URL in the search bar.
3. Click the “Start” button to begin the site crawl.
4. Once complete, review the data across different tabs.

Step 2: Identify Indexing & Response Code Issues

Ensuring your pages are properly indexed is crucial for SEO. Screaming Frog provides detailed insights into indexing and response code issues.

Check Response Codes:

• Go to the "Response Codes" tab.
• Use the Filter dropdown to find key response codes:
  • 404 (Not Found): Pages that no longer exist and need redirects.
  • 301 (Moved Permanently): Ensure these redirects point to the correct destination.
  • 500 (Server Errors): Pages with server-side issues that need to be fixed.

Check Indexability:

• Navigate to the "Indexability" tab.
• Review the Indexability Status column:
  • Indexable: These pages are crawlable and appear in search results.
  • Noindex: Pages blocked from appearing in search engines. Ensure only necessary pages are set to "Noindex."
  • Canonical Issues: Check if the canonical tags are pointing to the correct version of the page.

Step 3: Identify On-Page SEO Issues

Meta tags, duplicate content, and missing elements can impact rankings. Use Screaming Frog to detect issues.

Analyze Page Titles & Meta Descriptions:

• Go to the "Page Titles" and "Meta Descriptions" tabs.
• Use the Filters dropdown to find:
  • Missing Titles: Pages without a title tag.
  • Duplicate Titles: Titles that are repeated across multiple pages.
  • Too Long Titles (more than 60 characters): Titles that may be truncated in search results.
  • Too Short Titles (less than 30 characters): Titles that lack descriptive value.
• Repeat the process under Meta Descriptions to find missing or duplicate descriptions.

Check for Duplicate Content:

• Navigate to the "Content" tab.
• Use the "Exact Duplicates" filter to find pages with identical content.
• Use the "Near Duplicates" filter to find pages with highly similar content.

Find Slow-Loading Pages:

• Go to the "PageSpeed" tab (requires API integration with Google PageSpeed Insights).
• Check Core Web Vitals metrics, including:
  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance.
  • First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity delays.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability.
• Pages with high LCP, FID, or CLS scores should be optimized for performance.

Step 4: Implement Fixes

After identifying issues, apply the following SEO improvements:

• Fix Broken Links: Redirect 404 pages using 301 redirects.
• Optimize Meta Tags: Rewrite missing or duplicate titles and descriptions.
• Canonical Tag Adjustments: Ensure pages reference the correct canonical version.
• Optimize Slow-Loading Pages: Reduce page size, leverage caching, and optimize images.
• Resolve Indexing Issues: Allow search engines to crawl important pages and remove "Noindex" where necessary.

Step 5: Validate Fixes & Monitor Improvements

After making changes, run another Screaming Frog crawl to ensure issues have been resolved. For continuous monitoring, integrate Screaming Frog with Google Search Console.

Relevant Screaming Frog Resources

• Official Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• How to Use Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Screaming Frog Tutorials
• Screaming Frog SEO Audit Guide

PageSpeed Insights & Lighthouse SEO Performance Tutorial

Google’s PageSpeed Insights (PSI) and Lighthouse provide AI-powered insights into site speed, user experience, and performance issues affecting search rankings.

Step 1: Analyze Your Page with PageSpeed Insights

1. Go to PageSpeed Insights.
2. Enter the URL of the page you want to analyze.
3. Click “Analyze” and wait for PSI to generate your performance report.

Step 2: Review Core Web Vitals & Performance Metrics

PageSpeed Insights provides a detailed breakdown of Core Web Vitals and performance scores:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how fast the largest content element (image, text, video) loads.
• First Input Delay (FID): Tracks responsiveness—how fast a page reacts to user interactions.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Evaluates visual stability (e.g., content shifting unexpectedly).
• Time to Interactive (TTI): The time it takes for the page to become fully interactive.

Each metric is scored on a scale of 0-100, color-coded as:

• 90-100 (Good): No major performance issues.
• 50-89 (Needs Improvement): Moderate issues affecting performance.
• 0-49 (Poor): Severe performance problems need urgent attention.

Step 3: Run a Lighthouse Audit in Chrome DevTools

Lighthouse provides additional in-depth performance insights and accessibility checks:

1. Open Google Chrome and navigate to the page you want to audit.
2. Right-click anywhere on the page and select Inspect (or press F12 or Ctrl + Shift + I).
3. In DevTools, go to the "Lighthouse" tab (or click the “>>” icon if it’s hidden).
4. Select the categories you want to analyze:
   • Performance: Speed metrics and loading issues.
   • Accessibility: Checks for contrast issues, missing ARIA labels, and usability.
   • Best Practices: Security and coding standard checks.
   • SEO: On-page SEO factors like meta tags and mobile-friendliness.
5. Click "Analyze Page Load" and wait for Lighthouse to generate a report.

Step 4: Prioritize & Implement Fixes

Use the recommendations from PSI and Lighthouse to improve page performance. Focus on fixes in this order:

1. High-Priority (Critical Issues Affecting User Experience & Rankings)

• Fix Render-Blocking Resources: Minimize CSS/JavaScript that delays loading.
• Optimize Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Compress large images, lazy load assets, and enable browser caching.
• Reduce Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Set explicit dimensions for images and avoid dynamic content shifts.

2. Medium-Priority (SEO & Mobile Usability Improvements)

• Enable Lazy Loading: Defer loading of offscreen images.
• Improve First Input Delay (FID): Reduce unnecessary JavaScript execution.
• Eliminate Unused CSS & JavaScript: Remove unnecessary code that slows page speed.

3. Low-Priority (Enhancing Accessibility & Best Practices)

• Improve Accessibility Scores: Add alt text, optimize keyboard navigation.
• Ensure HTTPS Security: Check that all assets load over HTTPS.

Step 5: Validate Fixes & Monitor Performance

After implementing optimizations:

• Re-run the PageSpeed Insights test to check for improvements.
• Use Google Search Console to monitor Core Web Vitals over time.
• Regularly test performance to ensure consistent speed and usability.

Bonus: How to Analyze Multiple Pages with PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights typically analyzes one page at a time, but for bulk testing:

• Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights API to analyze multiple URLs programmatically.
• Leverage third-party tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider (with PageSpeed API integration) to test multiple pages.

Relevant Google Resources

• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Google Lighthouse Overview
• Understanding Core Web Vitals
• PageSpeed Insights API

Using ChatGPT to Fix Technical SEO Issues

While ChatGPT cannot perform full technical SEO audits like Screaming Frog or PageSpeed Insights, it can help in fixing identified issues by providing tailored recommendations, code snippets, and checklists. This tutorial will guide you through leveraging ChatGPT for:

• Improving Page Speed based on audit outputs
• Generating Custom Technical SEO Checklists
• Fixing PageSpeed Insights & Lighthouse Issues

ChatGPT for Improving Page Speed

Once you've identified site speed issues using PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse, you can use ChatGPT to generate actionable fixes for specific problems like large image sizes, unoptimized JavaScript, and render-blocking resources.

Step 1: Identify the Performance Issues

After running an audit in Google PageSpeed Insights, note down key problem areas such as:

• Reduce Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) time
• Eliminate render-blocking resources
• Optimize unused JavaScript & CSS
• Improve server response time (TTFB)

Step 2: Use ChatGPT to Get Optimization Strategies

Use this optimized prompt to get customized fixes based on your PageSpeed Insights results:

Act as a technical SEO expert. My website has the following PageSpeed Insights issues:

- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is [X] seconds.
- Render-blocking resources are affecting performance.
- Unused JavaScript & CSS detected.
- Time to First Byte (TTFB) is slow.

Provide step-by-step optimization strategies for each issue, considering WordPress and non-WordPress solutions.
    

Step 3: Get Code Suggestions for Fixes

ChatGPT can generate specific code snippets for common speed improvements, such as:

• Lazy-loading images using JavaScript
• Deferring non-critical JavaScript
• Minifying CSS and JavaScript using Gulp or Webpack
• Optimizing .htaccess rules for caching

For example, use this prompt to generate lazy-loading code:

Write a JavaScript snippet to lazy-load all images with the class "lazy-load" to improve Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
    

ChatGPT for Generating Custom Technical SEO Checklists

A technical SEO audit often results in long lists of issues that need prioritization. ChatGPT can help by categorizing and ranking these issues into a structured action plan.

Step 1: Extract Key Issues from Your SEO Audit

From your Screaming Frog or PageSpeed Insights audit, list key areas that need improvement.

Step 2: Use ChatGPT to Prioritize Fixes

Use this optimized prompt to generate a prioritized SEO action plan:

I have completed a technical SEO audit, and I need a prioritized action plan.

Issues found:
1. Broken internal links (45 instances)
2. Missing meta descriptions (130 pages)
3. Large uncompressed images (20MB total)
4. Duplicate title tags (60 instances)
5. Slow TTFB on key pages

Prioritize these issues in high, medium, and low impact, with specific recommended fixes.
    

Step 3: Get an Automated SEO Task List

ChatGPT can format its response as a task list to assign to a developer or SEO team.

ChatGPT for Fixing PageSpeed Insights & Lighthouse Issues

Google's Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights often highlight complex issues like JavaScript execution time, excessive DOM elements, and inefficient CSS. ChatGPT can suggest precise fixes.

Step 1: Extract the Specific Lighthouse Issues

For example, PageSpeed Insights may flag:

• Reduce JavaScript execution time
• Reduce DOM size (too many elements on a page)
• Eliminate render-blocking CSS

Step 2: Use ChatGPT to Generate Fixes

Use this optimized prompt:

My Google Lighthouse report shows these issues:

1. Reduce JavaScript execution time.
2. Reduce DOM size – excessive elements slowing page load.
3. Eliminate render-blocking CSS.

Explain how to fix each issue, including JavaScript optimizations, CSS strategies, and performance best practices.
    

Step 3: Get Implementation Code for Fixes

ChatGPT can provide JavaScript or CSS solutions like:

• Using code splitting to reduce JavaScript execution time.
• Minimizing DOM elements by restructuring HTML.
• Generating critical CSS and deferring non-critical CSS.

Key Takeaways

• AI automates site audits, eliminating manual crawling and log analysis.
• AI instantly detects indexing issues, Core Web Vitals problems, and JavaScript errors.
• AI tools provide prioritized action items for faster implementation.
• AI-powered diagnostics reduce errors & improve search visibility.