The 2026 technical audit checklist and deliverables pack

0:00 The 2026 audit checklist

You've now run a complete technical SEO audit on Kiran Home, from scoping to verification. In this final lesson, we'll distil everything into a master checklist for twenty twenty-six and a standard deliverables pack you can reuse on every client. You'll learn how to use the checklist to plan, run and quality-assure an audit, see the handiest regex and commands, and see how one agency turned it into a proportionate product for small and large sites alike.

0:33 How to use it

First, how to use it. Use the checklist to plan: which checks apply to this site? Use it to run: what evidence proves each one? And use it to quality-assure your own deliverable before it goes to the client. Not every item applies to every site, so mark items as not applicable deliberately, rather than skipping them silently. That one habit makes your audits more consistent and much easier to defend.

1:04 1–2: Access and crawling

Sections one and two: access and crawling. Access means a Search Console Domain property with bulk export on, Bing Webmaster Tools with sitemaps and AI Performance, GA4 with an AI assistants channel, four or more weeks of logs, and a saved, versioned crawl config with the crawler allow-listed. Crawling means robots.txt returns two hundred on every host with no sitewide disallow and no blocked resources, AI crawler groups match a written policy with CDN rules aligned, verified Googlebot crawl share by segment is quantified, and server errors and response times are checked.

1:44 3: Indexing and duplication

Section three: indexing and duplication. Page indexing by sitemap segment, with the top not-indexed reasons explained by samples. Canonicals: one, absolute, self-referencing, in raw HTML, pointing to indexable two-hundred URLs. Redirects: one hop, permanent for permanent moves, no home-page dumping, and legacy URLs with links covered. Soft four-oh-fours by cause, with zero-result facets returning four-oh-four. And sitemaps with only canonical, indexable, two-hundred URLs, accurate lastmod, and segmentation.

2:13 4–5: Rendering, architecture, international

Section four: rendering and content access. A raw versus rendered diff per template for canonical, robots, content, links and JSON-LD. No content or links that only appear after interaction. HTML under Googlebot's two-megabyte limit with key content early. And no reliance on JavaScript to change indexing on non-two-hundred or noindexed pages. Section five: architecture and international. Sensible depth, no orphans, descriptive anchors, breadcrumbs, crawlable pagination, and hreflang that's complete, reciprocal, self-referencing and valid, with no forced IP redirects.

2:47 6–7: Structured data and performance

Section six: structured data and feeds. The Rich Results Test per template with errors fixed, and no recommendations for retired types like FAQ or HowTo. JSON-LD that matches visible price, currency and availability, with one entity per fact source. And product feeds consistent with pages. Section seven: performance and page experience. CrUX seventy-fifth percentile metrics per template, phone first, with the dominant sub-part identified. Real-user monitoring with INP attribution on key templates. Mobile parity, clean HTTPS, a security header baseline, and security issues and manual actions checked.

3:25 8–9: AI readiness and deliverables QA

Section eight: AI search readiness. Key facts, like price, delivery, returns and eligibility, as text in raw HTML. Indexed in Google and Bing. An AI exposure baseline from Search Console's generative AI report, Bing's AI Performance and GA4. The Search generative AI control decision documented. And an accuracy spot-check of assistant answers, traced back to sources. Section nine is deliverables QA: evidence IDs and examples on every finding, typed and scored root causes with the top three stress-tested, tickets with binary criteria, an executive summary that leads with the answer, listed non-issues and caveats, and a verification plan.

4:08 Regex and commands

Now the handy regex and commands from the lesson text. A non-brand filter using a negative lookahead for the brand name. A page filter for UAE product URLs. A pattern for facet and sort parameters. A pattern for legacy URL formats. And two curl one-liners: one that shows status, redirect location, X-Robots-Tag and Link headers, and one that extracts the raw canonical tag from the HTML. Keep them in a snippets file; you'll use them on every audit.

4:42 The deliverables pack

The deliverables pack has five parts. A findings workbook with tabs for scope, crawl config, evidence log, findings, root causes, scores, non-issues and AI readiness. A roadmap with sprints, owners and leading indicators. Tickets in the client's tracker using the template. An executive summary: one page plus three to five slides. And a verification and monitoring plan with checks, dates, alerts and owners. Five artefacts, each with a clear audience.

5:12 Example: one pack, two sizes (illustrative)

Worked example, illustrative. A Karachi agency turns this checklist and pack into its standard audit product. For a three-hundred-page Lahore law firm, it marks half the e-commerce and international items not applicable, completes the rest in four days, and delivers eight tickets. For a fifty-thousand-URL Dubai marketplace, it uses every section and a three-week timeline. Same structure, proportionate depth, and every deliverable passes the QA section before it's sent.

5:42 Watch me do it: scoping with the checklist

Watch me do it. I'll use the checklist to scope a new, small audit in fifteen minutes. The client is a three-hundred-page law firm in Lahore, with English and Urdu pages. Step one: I copy the checklist into a new workbook tab. Step two: I go section by section and mark not applicable deliberately. Faceted navigation: not applicable, no filters. Merchant feeds: not applicable. Product structured data: not applicable. Pagination: applies, for the blog. hreflang: applies, English and Urdu. AI search readiness: applies; clients ask assistants for lawyers in Lahore. Step three: for each remaining item, I write the evidence source I'll use. Logs? They're on shared hosting, so I request Apache logs. Search Console? A URL-prefix property only, so I add a Domain property to the access request. Step four: I estimate time. With half the items not applicable, it's four days. Step five: I pre-fill the deliverables pack: workbook tabs, a roadmap template, and the ticket template in their project tool. Step six: I run section nine, deliverables QA, against the empty pack to make sure every template has the fields I'll need. The result is a proportionate proposal with a clear rationale.

7:07 Example: 50k-URL marketplace (illustrative)

One more worked example, the large end. A fifty-thousand-URL Dubai property marketplace, illustrative. Here every section applies, and the checklist changes how you schedule the work. Week one: access, crawl configuration and the log export, because logs take longest to arrive. Week two: crawling, indexing and rendering sections in parallel, with the log lab running once the data lands. Week three: architecture, international, structured data, performance and AI readiness, then triage, tickets and the executive summary. The deliverables QA section runs on the last day, before anything is sent. Same checklist as the law firm, but a three-week plan, because depth scales with the site and structure doesn't.

7:54 Checklist pitfalls

Common mistakes when using any checklist. Treating it as the audit, rather than a tool for thinking. Ticking items without evidence. Silently skipping items instead of marking them not applicable. And sending deliverables that haven't passed your own QA section. A checklist makes you consistent. Judgement and evidence make you valuable.

8:16 Recap and next steps

Recap and congratulations. You've scoped, crawled, gathered evidence, analysed logs, checked rendering and structured data, found root causes, prioritised, written tickets, worked with developers, verified fixes, reported honestly, and audited AI search readiness. Try this now: copy the checklist, mark the not-applicable items for your next audit, and run section nine against your last deliverable. For deeper study, continue with Technical SEO Mastery, AI Search Optimization, and, if your clients publish at scale, Programmatic SEO and AI Content at Scale.