Why Technical SEO Audits Matter for Nonprofits

Technical SEO problems are invisible to the people visiting your website but clearly visible to search engines. A page that looks fine in a browser might have a broken canonical tag, missing alt text, crawl errors that prevent indexing, or page speed issues that cause Google to deprioritise it in rankings.

For nonprofits, technical SEO audits are particularly important because most charity websites are built and then left without systematic technical review. Content gets added, plugins are installed, domains migrate — and the technical foundations quietly degrade.

This guide covers how to conduct a technical SEO audit on a nonprofit Webflow site, what to look for, and how to prioritise what you find.

Before You Start: The Right Tools

A proper technical SEO audit needs tools that can crawl your site the way search engines do. The main options:

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: The industry standard for site crawls. Free up to 500 URLs; paid beyond that. Identifies broken links, redirect chains, missing meta data, duplicate content, and much more. Essential for any meaningful audit.
• Google Search Console: Free and provided by Google itself. Shows crawl errors, coverage issues, Core Web Vitals data, and which pages are (or aren't) indexed. Should be set up on every live site.
• PageSpeed Insights: Free tool from Google that analyses page performance and Core Web Vitals for both mobile and desktop.
• WAVE or Axe: Accessibility checkers. Not strictly SEO tools, but accessibility issues often correlate with technical SEO issues (missing alt text, poor heading structure, etc.).
• Ahrefs or Semrush: Paid tools that provide backlink analysis, keyword tracking, and site auditing. Useful for a comprehensive audit but not essential for a technical-only review.

Phase 1: Crawl the Site

Start with a Screaming Frog crawl. This gives you a complete picture of every URL the crawler finds, with data on status codes, meta data, heading structure, and more.

Configuration before crawling:

• Set your user agent to Googlebot to simulate how Google crawls
• Check that JavaScript rendering is enabled if your site uses it heavily
• Add your sitemap URL so Screaming Frog can compare crawled URLs against submitted URLs

After the crawl, work through each data category systematically.

Phase 2: Indexation and Coverage

Check What's Being Indexed

In Google Search Console, go to Coverage (or Indexing → Pages in newer versions). Look at:

• Valid pages: How many pages are indexed? Does this match how many pages you expect to be indexable?
• Error pages: Pages that should be indexed but aren't due to errors
• Excluded pages: Pages not indexed and why — noindex tags, redirect targets, crawl anomalies

robots.txt

Check your robots.txt file (yourdomain.com/robots.txt) for any rules that might be inadvertently blocking search engine access to important pages. Common issues:

• Disallow rules that are too broad (blocking entire sections)
• Blocking CSS or JavaScript resources that search engines need to render pages correctly
• Outdated rules from a previous site structure

Noindex Tags

In Screaming Frog, filter for pages with meta robots "noindex" directives. Verify that every page marked noindex should be marked noindex. It's surprisingly common to find important pages accidentally noindexed — particularly after a site migration or CMS change.

Canonical Tags

Canonical tags tell search engines which version of a URL is the "master" version when multiple URLs have similar content. Check that:

• Every page has a canonical tag
• The canonical tag points to the correct URL (self-referencing on non-duplicate pages)
• Paginated content and filtered views have appropriate canonicals
• There are no canonical chains (canonical pointing to a page that itself has a different canonical)

Phase 3: On-Page Technical Elements

Title Tags

In Screaming Frog, filter by title tag data. Check for:

• Missing title tags
• Duplicate title tags across multiple pages
• Title tags over 60 characters (will be truncated in search results)
• Title tags under 30 characters (probably not sufficiently descriptive)
• Title tags that are just the site name repeated

Meta Descriptions

Same process:

• Missing meta descriptions
• Duplicate meta descriptions
• Over 160 characters (truncated)
• Under 70 characters (missed opportunity)

Heading Structure

• Pages missing an H1
• Pages with multiple H1s
• Heading hierarchy that skips levels (H1 to H3 without H2)

In Webflow, heading levels need to be set in element settings, not just styled visually. A common issue is text styled to look like a heading but set as a paragraph element.

Image Alt Text

Filter for images missing alt text. For nonprofits, this is both an SEO issue and an accessibility compliance issue — WCAG AA requires all informative images to have descriptive alt text.

For full accessibility requirements, see my guide on WCAG AA compliance for nonprofit websites.

Phase 4: Links and Redirects

Broken Internal Links

Screaming Frog identifies all internal 404 errors. Fix these by either correcting the link or implementing a redirect. Every internal broken link is both a user experience issue and a signal to search engines that the site isn't well maintained.

Broken External Links

External broken links don't directly affect your rankings, but they're a credibility issue, especially on pages that reference sector resources or partner organisations.

Redirect Chains and Loops

Filter for 3xx redirects and look for chains (A redirects to B redirects to C) and loops (A redirects to B which redirects back to A). Both waste crawl budget and dilute link equity. Resolve chains to point directly to the final destination.

For a comprehensive guide to managing redirects, particularly during site migrations, see my article on 301 redirects for nonprofit website migrations.

Internal Link Distribution

Which pages have the most internal links pointing to them? This data reveals your site's implicit link hierarchy. Check that your most strategically important pages — services, key resources, donation page — are appropriately interlinked from other content.

Phase 5: Performance and Core Web Vitals

Run PageSpeed Insights on your homepage and several key landing pages. Look at both mobile and desktop scores separately.

The Core Web Vitals metrics:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How long it takes for the main content to load. Target: under 2.5 seconds.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Responsiveness to user interactions. Target: under 200ms.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): How much the page shifts as elements load. Target: under 0.1.

Common performance issues on nonprofit Webflow sites:

• Unoptimised images (large file sizes, wrong formats)
• Animation libraries (GSAP, Lottie) loaded on pages that don't need them
• Third-party scripts (analytics, chatbots, donation widgets) that add significant load time
• Webflow Interactions that trigger unnecessary repaints

Phase 6: Mobile and Structured Data

Mobile Usability

Google Search Console's Mobile Usability report shows pages with mobile experience issues: text too small to read, clickable elements too close together, content wider than the screen.

In Webflow, mobile responsiveness requires explicit design work at each breakpoint — it doesn't happen automatically.

Structured Data

Check your structured data implementation using Google's Rich Results Test. Are the schema types you've implemented valid? Are there errors or warnings?

For nonprofits that haven't yet implemented schema, this audit is a prompt to start. See my guide on schema markup for nonprofits for implementation guidance.

Prioritising What You Find

A technical audit typically surfaces more issues than can be addressed immediately. Prioritise by impact:

Fix immediately: Indexation errors, broken canonical tags, pages accidentally noindexed, broken forms, missing HTTPS.

Fix in the next sprint: Missing title tags, duplicate meta descriptions, broken internal links, redirect chains, significant performance issues.

Plan for: Image optimisation programme, heading structure corrections, schema implementation, alt text completion.

Monitor ongoing: New broken links (especially for sites with frequent content changes), Core Web Vitals in Search Console, coverage changes.

Audit Frequency

For most nonprofit sites, a comprehensive technical audit once or twice a year is appropriate, with lighter monthly checks on Search Console data. Sites that publish frequently or have ongoing migration work need more frequent reviews.

This audit framework feeds into the broader SEO approach I describe in my guide on SEO for nonprofit websites, and the pre-launch version of these checks is covered in the pre-launch checklist.

If you'd prefer a structured audit done for you rather than conducting one yourself, the Blueprint Audit covers technical SEO alongside accessibility, governance, and content as an integrated assessment of your site's current state.