How much does a technical SEO audit cost?
We price technical SEO audits as a fixed fee based on the size and complexity of the site, quoted after a free initial review so you know the number before any work starts.
Size matters less than structure. A 40-page service site on a clean theme is quick. A store with faceted navigation, thousands of product variants and a JavaScript front end takes far longer, because the crawl has to render pages, the parameter rules have to be understood and every issue needs to be traced to the template that causes it.
Two things change the scope: whether we get server logs, and whether you want implementation support. Logs add analysis time but give the truest picture of how bots crawl you. Implementation support can be an add-on or part of an ongoing SEO engagement.
Be wary of audits priced so low that nobody reads the crawl. An automated export with no prioritization is a list of warnings, not an audit.
Should I block AI crawlers like GPTBot in robots.txt?
Only block AI training crawlers if you've decided you don't want your content used to train models, and never block the search and retrieval crawlers if you want to be cited in AI answers.
The bots are separate. OpenAI lists GPTBot for training and OAI-SearchBot for showing sites in ChatGPT search, and blocking one does not block the other. Google uses a separate Google-Extended token to control use in its AI models, while AI Overviews eligibility comes from normal Googlebot indexing. A blanket disallow written years ago to stop scrapers can quietly remove you from AI search.
In audits, we read the robots.txt rule for each AI user agent, then check that your CDN or firewall isn't blocking the bots you allowed. Robots.txt saying yes doesn't help if a bot protection setting says no.
For most businesses that want leads from AI search, I'd allow the search crawlers and make the training decision deliberately. More on this in AI search optimization.
Sources: OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers, Google: Google's common crawlers, Google Search Central: AI features and your website
What should I fix first after a technical SEO audit?
Fix anything that stops important pages from being crawled or indexed first, then problems that repeat across a whole template, then performance, then structured data and polish.
Indexing blockers come first because nothing else matters if Google can't see the page: a stray noindex, a robots.txt disallow, canonicals pointing to the wrong URL, or key content that only appears after JavaScript runs. Next come template issues, because one fix to a product or service template can correct thousands of URLs at once. Redirect chains and broken internal links sit here too.
Core Web Vitals work follows, usually starting with the hero image and third-party scripts. Schema, alt text and minor warnings come last.
Every item in our fix list has an impact estimate, an effort estimate and an owner, so developers aren't guessing. If a fix touches URLs, plan it like a migration, not a quick change.
Sources: Search Console Help: Page indexing report
What is crawl budget, and does it matter for my site?
Crawl budget is how many URLs Google is willing and able to crawl on your site in a given period, and for most small and mid-size sites it isn't the problem.
Google's own guide on crawl budget is written for very large sites and sites whose content changes very often. If you have a few hundred pages and they get indexed within days of publishing, your time is better spent on content and internal links.
Where it does matter: ecommerce sites whose filters and sort options create endless URL combinations, sites with internal search pages open to crawling, and sites that generate calendar or session parameters. Google spends its visits on near-duplicates while new product pages wait.
The quick check is the Crawl stats report in Search Console. If most requests go to parameter URLs or redirects, crawl waste is real, and the fix is usually robots.txt rules, canonicals and cleaner internal linking rather than asking Google for more crawling.
Sources: Google: Crawl budget management for large sites, Google Search Central: Robots.txt introduction and guide
Why do server logs matter in a technical SEO audit?
Server logs show what search engine and AI bots actually requested and what your server sent back, which no crawler tool or analytics report can tell you.
A crawl shows what a bot could reach. Logs show what it did. With 30 days or so of access logs, we can see which sections Googlebot visits often and which it ignores, how much of its time goes to redirects, errors and parameter URLs, and whether AI search bots are getting errors you didn't know about.
One caution we apply: user agent strings are easy to fake. Before trusting that a hit came from Googlebot, we verify it with a reverse DNS lookup, the method Google documents.
Logs aren't required for every audit. For a small brochure site, Search Console's crawl stats are usually enough. For large stores, publishers and JavaScript-heavy sites, logs often explain the problems the page indexing report only describes. If your host can export them, send them over with your audit request through the contact form.
Sources: Google: Verify requests from Google crawlers and fetchers
Can I run a basic technical SEO check myself with free tools?
Yes, Google's free tools will surface most serious technical problems in under an hour: Search Console, the URL Inspection tool, PageSpeed Insights and the Rich Results Test.
Start with the page indexing report in Search Console and read the reasons pages aren't indexed. Then run your three most important pages through URL Inspection. Check that the Google-selected canonical matches yours and that the rendered HTML contains your main content, not an empty shell. Next, test the same pages in PageSpeed Insights and look at the field data from real users, not just the lab score. Finally, run them through the Rich Results Test to see if your structured data is valid.
What free tools won't do is tell you which issue is costing you the most, or trace a warning back to the template or plugin causing it. That's the part our audit adds, along with a fix list your developers can work from. Results from our free audit come back within 48 hours.
Sources: Search Console Help: URL Inspection tool, PageSpeed Insights, Google Rich Results Test
