If you run a website, you know technical SEO can make or break your rankings. But most folks don’t have hours to spend untangling crawl errors and jargon-filled reports. This guide is for anyone who wants to actually fix technical SEO issues—without getting lost in the weeds or buying into hype. We’ll walk through how to use Ahrefs Site Audit tool to find what matters, skip what doesn’t, and keep your site running smoothly.
Let’s get started.
Step 1: Set Up Your Project in Ahrefs Site Audit
Before you can audit anything, you need to give Ahrefs access to crawl your site.
Here’s how:
- Log in to Ahrefs. Head to the Site Audit tool from your dashboard.
- Add your project. Click “+ New Project,” and enter your website’s URL. Use the root domain (like
https://yourdomain.com) unless you have a good reason to audit a subfolder. - Verify ownership. For best results, verify you own the site—this unlocks more crawl options and avoids missing pages blocked to outsiders.
- Set crawl settings.
- Crawl source: Choose whether Ahrefs should crawl your site as a regular user or with extra data (e.g., from Google Search Console). If you have Search Console access, connect it. You’ll get better coverage.
- User-agent: Stick with the default unless you’re troubleshooting something specific.
- Crawl speed: Don’t set this too high, especially on smaller or shared hosting—otherwise, you might tank your own site while Ahrefs hammers it.
- Schedule audits (optional): You can set weekly or monthly crawls so you don’t forget to check back.
Pro tip: If your site is password-protected or staging, you can add credentials in the settings.
Step 2: Run the Crawl and Wait (Patiently)
Once you hit “Start Audit,” Ahrefs will crawl your website. For small sites, this might take a few minutes. Larger sites (10,000+ pages) could take hours.
Don’t panic if you see a wall of red errors. Most sites—especially older ones—aren’t perfect. The key is to focus on what’s actually hurting your SEO.
Step 3: Understand the Dashboard (and What Actually Matters)
When the crawl finishes, you’ll see an overview dashboard. It can look overwhelming at first—Ahrefs throws a lot of numbers at you.
Here’s a breakdown of what’s worth your time:
Key Metrics
- Health Score: Ahrefs’ quick summary of your site’s technical issues, scored out of 100. Don’t obsess over this number. It’s just a snapshot.
- Top Issues: These are the main problems Ahrefs thinks you should fix. Focus here, but use common sense.
- Crawled Pages: How many pages Ahrefs actually scanned. If this is way lower than your sitemap or what you expect, something’s blocking access (robots.txt, noindex, or crawl budget limits).
What to Ignore (Most of the Time)
- “Warnings” about social tags, favicons, or minor meta issues: These rarely affect rankings.
- Low-priority accessibility suggestions: Good to fix someday, but not urgent for SEO.
Bottom line: Start with errors that affect crawling, indexing, and user experience.
Step 4: Prioritize Real SEO Problems
Not all technical issues are urgent. Here’s what’s actually worth fixing first:
1. Crawlability & Indexing
- Broken pages (4xx, 5xx errors): If important pages are broken, Google can’t see them. Fix or redirect these.
- Blocked by robots.txt or noindex: Are important pages being excluded? Sometimes this is intentional (like admin pages), but double-check.
- Redirect chains/loops: Too many redirects slow things down and can waste crawl budget.
2. Duplicate Content
- Duplicate titles and meta descriptions: If lots of pages look the same to Google, that’s a problem.
- Canonical issues: Make sure each page has a single, clear canonical URL. Otherwise, search engines might ignore your preferred version.
3. Internal Linking
- Orphan pages: Pages with no internal links are hard for Google to find.
- Too many links on a page: Rare, but if your nav has hundreds of links, clean it up.
4. Performance & Core Web Vitals
- Slow pages: Ahrefs flags slow-loading pages. Fixing these helps users and rankings.
- Large resources: Oversized images or scripts can drag down load times.
5. HTTPS & Security
- Mixed content: Secure sites shouldn’t load images or scripts over HTTP.
- Outdated SSL: Unlikely if you’re set up right, but worth a look.
What you can probably skip: Minor CSS/JavaScript warnings, missing alt text (unless you’re in a highly visual niche), or “low word count” issues—unless they actually affect your key pages.
Step 5: Fix Issues, Don’t Just Watch Them
Ahrefs will provide a list of affected URLs for each issue. Here’s how to tackle them without losing your mind:
Triage Like a Pro
- Start with sitewide problems: If your robots.txt is blocking your whole site, fix that first.
- Move to high-traffic pages: Use analytics to prioritize fixes on your most important pages.
- Batch similar fixes: Updating meta descriptions? Do them in one sitting.
How to Actually Fix Common Issues
- Broken links: Update or remove links to dead pages. If external, consider finding a new source.
- Redirects: Set up 301 redirects for pages you’ve removed or moved.
- Meta/canonical tags: Update titles, descriptions, and rel=canonical tags in your CMS or templates.
- Performance problems: Compress images, cut unnecessary scripts, and consider a CDN.
- Orphan pages: Add internal links from relevant, existing pages.
Don’t just close issues in Ahrefs and call it a day. Make the changes on your site, then re-crawl to confirm they’re fixed.
Step 6: Re-crawl and Monitor
After you’ve made fixes, rerun the Site Audit.
- Check if issues are resolved. Some may linger because of caching or crawl delays—give it a day if you don’t see immediate changes.
- Track over time. Schedule audits to catch new issues before they pile up.
If you see the same problem popping up repeatedly, it probably means there’s a deeper issue with your CMS, plugins, or deployment process. Don’t just patch it—fix the root cause.
Pro Tips and Honest Advice
- Don’t chase a perfect score. Google doesn’t care if you score 100. Fix what matters for real users and search engines.
- Automate where you can. Set up scheduled audits so you don’t forget.
- Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Not every warning is an emergency. Use your judgment.
- Keep a changelog. Log what you fix and when. It’ll help you spot patterns (and save your sanity if something backfires).
- Stay skeptical of “urgent” warnings. Some tools flag harmless stuff just to look smart. Always ask: Will this actually help my users or rankings?
Keep It Simple—And Repeat
Technical SEO isn’t rocket science, but it does require regular checkups. Use Ahrefs Site Audit as a tool, not a crystal ball. Fix what matters, ignore the noise, and check back in every couple months. Don’t let “perfect” get in the way of “good enough.” Your site—and your sanity—will thank you.