Ahrefs Site Audit Tutorial: Fixing Technical SEO Issues
Content Angle: Technical crawl guide for web developers and SEO managers.
🖼 Featured Image
- File Name: ahrefs-site-audit-health.webp
- Alt Text: SaaS dashboard displaying site crawl metrics and health score.
- Prompt: A professional SEO dashboard screen displaying a "94% Health Score" badge in bright green, with circular charts showing redirect status codes and slow loading pages. Dark theme, high tech style.
Introduction to Technical Crawls
No matter how high your Domain Authority (DA) is, search engine crawlers cannot rank your content if they run into technical blocks. Broken links, crawl loops, duplicate pages, and slow load times prevent search spiders from indexing your content efficiently.
To find and fix these blocks, you need to run a technical audit. In this ahrefs site audit tutorial, we will show you how to crawl your site, resolve common errors, and boost your technical health score.
Topic Overview: What is Ahrefs Site Audit?
Ahrefs Site Audit is a cloud-based crawler that parses your entire website. It checks for over 100 technical SEO issues across categories like:
- Indexability: Finding pages blocked by robots.txt or noindex tags.
- Redirects: Identifying 404 broken pages, 301 redirects, and redirect loops.
- On-Page Tags: Missing titles, descriptions, or alt tags.
- Page Speed: Flagging pages with poor Core Web Vitals.
Once the crawl is complete, Ahrefs calculates a Health Score based on the ratio of error-free pages.
Deep Semantic Coverage: Fixing Common Technical Errors
When reviewing site audits, prioritize resolving these critical issues:
1. Redirect Loops
A redirect loop occurs when Page A redirects to Page B, which redirects back to Page A. This blocks crawlers and users alike. Check your.htaccess rules or CMS plugins to resolve these loops.
2. Broken Links (404 Page Not Found)
Outgoing links to dead pages waste crawl budget and harm user experience. Use our URL Extractor to catalog outbound links and replace any broken targets.3. Missing Canonical Tags
Ensure every page has a self-referencing canonical tag to prevent duplicate content issues in search indexing.🖼 Body Image 1
- File Name: crawl-errors-list.webp
- Alt Text: List of technical errors: redirect loops and 404 pages.
- Prompt: A mock table UI displaying technical warnings: "404 Page Found", "Redirect Loop Detected", "Missing Canonicals". Warning icons in orange and red. Clean vectors.
Practical Application: Running an Audit Workflow
Follow this technical audit routine:
1. Run Crawl: Set up a crawl schedule in Ahrefs Site Audit or use our On-Page SEO Checker to scan key landing pages.
2. Review Critical Errors: Focus on red-labeled errors first, before warning or notice flags.
3. Implement Fixes: Correct server configurations, update broken hyperlinks, and optimize page load paths.
4. Re-Audit: Run a crawl verify step to confirm the Health Score increases.
🖼 Body Image 2
- File Name: sitemap-indexing-flow.webp
- Alt Text: Flow of search engine crawlers parsing a sitemap.
- Prompt: An abstract diagram showing search engine crawlers reading a sitemap.xml file, indexing high authority pages, and skipping excluded tags. Blue arrows, clean icons.
Semantic Comparison Table
| Issue Severity | Typical Examples | Rank Impact | Recommended Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🔴 Critical Error | Redirect loop, 404 page, noindex money page | Severe | Immediate code correction |
| 🟡 Warning | Missing description, missing image alt tags | Medium | Batch fix during content updates |
| 🔵 Notice | Dofollow outbound link, page excluded from index | Informational | Verify configuration is intentional |
Conclusion
Resolving crawl errors is crucial to ensure search engines can index your site. Run individual page checks using our On-Page SEO Checker and verify domain authority scores with our Domain Authority Checker. Explore our sitemap utilities in our Free SEO Tools Hub and read our technical seo guide to get started. Use the Ahrefs DR Checker for relative benchmarking.
