# SOP: Technical SEO Crawl Check

Crawl a site, find the issues that block crawling and indexing, and turn them into a prioritized fix list.

## Objective

Make sure search engines can reach, read and index the pages that matter, and remove what wastes their time.

## When to use

- Quarterly for active clients.
- Before and after a redesign or migration.
- When important pages disappear from search.

## Prerequisites

- A site crawler (desktop or cloud).
- Access to Google Search Console.
- The Technical SEO Template.

## Steps

1. **Crawl the site** — Crawl from the homepage and export all HTML URLs with status codes.
2. **Find broken pages** — List 4xx errors and the pages that link to them.
3. **Check redirects** — Flag redirect chains and redirects that point to irrelevant pages.
4. **Check indexability** — Look for noindex tags, robots.txt blocks and canonicals pointing elsewhere.
5. **Compare with the sitemap** — Indexable pages should be listed; redirects and errors should not.
6. **Review Search Console** — Check the page indexing report for important excluded pages.
7. **Prioritize fixes** — Start with issues on high-value pages, then sitewide patterns.

## Quality checklist

- [ ] Important pages return 200 and are indexable.
- [ ] No internal links point to 404 pages.
- [ ] No redirect chains on key URLs.
- [ ] The XML sitemap lists only indexable URLs.
- [ ] Every issue has an owner and a fix.

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From AJF VA Practice Platform — https://va-practice.alvinjohnferias.com/sops/sop-technical-seo-crawl-check/