Technical SEO Audit Prompts

The AI Developer

Technical SEO is code. LLMs are great at code. While AI can't crawl your site (you need Screaming Frog for that), it can analyze the data and code snippets you find.

1. The "Robots.txt" Validator

"Analyze this robots.txt file. Are there any conflicting rules? Is it accidentally blocking the 'Googlebot' user agent from accessing the '/blog/' directory? Explain what is allowed and what is disallowed in plain English. File: [PASTE ROBOTS.TXT]"

2. The Schema Markup Generator/Validator

"I need 'Product' schema for a page selling '[PRODUCT NAME]'. Price: $50. Currency: USD. Availability: In Stock. Rating: 4.5 stars (100 reviews). Generate the JSON-LD code. Ensure it meets Google's Rich Snippet requirements."

"Validate this JSON-LD code. Are there any syntax errors? missing commas? unclosed brackets? Code: [PASTE CODE]"

3. The ".htaccess" Rewrite Rule Writer

"Write a .htaccess rewrite rule to 301 redirect all URLs from the old directory '/articles/' to the new directory '/blog/'. Ensure it preserves the slug (e.g., /articles/post-1 -> /blog/post-1)."

4. The Canonical Logic Checker

"I have a product available in 3 colors (Red, Blue, Green). Each has its own URL. URL A (Red): /product-red URL B (Blue): /product-blue URL C (Green): /product-green All content is identical except the color name. How should I handle the Canonical tags to avoid duplicate content? Write the canonical tag code for each page assuming Red is the primary version."

5. The Hreflang Map Builder

"Create an XML Sitemap entry for a page that has 3 language variations (en-us, de-de, fr-fr). Include the xhtml:link rel='alternate' tags for hreflang. URLs: domain.com/en/page domain.com/de/page domain.com/fr/page"

6. The Core Web Vitals Advisor

"My LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is 3.5 seconds. The LCP element is a large hero image. Suggest 5 technical fixes to improve load time for this specific element. (e.g., Preload, WebP, Lazy Loading logic)."

7. The Log File Analyzer (Pattern Matching)

"I have a sample of server logs. Identify the HTTP status codes. Calculate the percentage of 404 errors vs 200 OK. [PASTE 50 LINES OF LOG DATA]"

8. The Sitemap Validator

"Check this XML sitemap structure. Is it valid XML? Does it follow the standard protocol? Are there any errors in the date format? [PASTE XML]"

9. The Regex Generator for Redirect Maps

"I am migrating a site. I need a Regex pattern to match any URL that starts with '/category/' and ends with a number (pagination). Example: /category/seo/page/2/ I want to redirect them to the root category page."

Conclusion

AI is your Technical Assistant. It doesn't replace the crawl tool, but it replaces the time spent staring at documentation to remember the syntax for a complex 301 redirect. Always test code in a staging environment before deploying.

Advanced audit prompts: hreflang at scale, JS rendering, and redirect QA

Basic prompts validate isolated snippets. Production audits require pattern detection across templates, sitemaps, and log samples. Crawl budget is the limited attention a search engine allocates to a site. Log-pattern triage is the classification of server responses into actionable crawl-waste categories.

10. The Hreflang Cluster Auditor

"Audit this hreflang cluster for [URL SET]. Check: every locale has reciprocal return links, x-default is present, language-region codes are valid ISO values, and canonical tags do not point outside the cluster. List violations by URL with corrected link elements. Cluster data: [PASTE URLS AND TAGS]"

Hreflang failures are cluster failures. One missing return link can invalidate the entire language group. Always audit the full cluster rather than a single page.

11. The JavaScript Rendering Triage

"Compare the raw HTML and rendered DOM summaries for [URL]. Identify SEO-critical content present in rendered DOM but absent from raw HTML: main copy, canonical tag, product price, review content, internal links. Classify each finding as critical blocking, deferred enhancement, or cosmetic. Raw HTML: [PASTE]. Rendered summary: [PASTE]"

This separates framework concerns from content concerns. Copy missing from raw HTML needs server-side rendering or pre-rendering. Behavioral widgets missing from raw HTML usually do not.

12. The Redirect Chain and Regex QA

"Validate this redirect map for [MIGRATION SCOPE]. Flag chains longer than one hop, redirect loops, regex overmatches that would capture [EXCLUSION EXAMPLES], and destination canonical mismatches. Produce a corrected two-column source-to-destination table. Map: [PASTE MAP]"

Regex overmatch is the dominant migration risk. A pattern intended for paginated category URLs can accidentally capture product URLs with trailing numbers. Require exclusion tests with every regex.

| Audit area | AI-assisted workflow | Human gate | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | robots plus sitemap | Draft allow and disallow interpretation | Verify against Search Console crawl stats | | Schema | Generate and syntax-check JSON-LD | Validate with Rich Results Test on live URLs | | Redirects | Generate rewrite rules and regex | Test in staging with header inspection | | Hreflang | Detect missing return links | Confirm in Search Console international targeting | | Log analysis | Classify status-code patterns | Correlate with crawl stats before blocking | | Core Web Vitals | Prioritize LCP element fixes | Measure with field data before closing |

Q&A

What should never be delegated fully to AI? Redirect deployment, robots changes, and canonical logic. AI drafts the implementation; header checks, staging tests, and Search Console verification authorize it.

What input quality matters most? Complete context. Paste full headers, full clusters, and sufficient log lines. Truncated inputs produce confident but incomplete audits because pattern violations live in the omitted rows.