Running a Technical Site Audit

What the site audit checks

The Technical Site Audit is StretchSEM's deep, SEMrush-class crawl-and-link-graph diagnostic. It runs on StretchSuite's own crawler and link graph — no external data — and costs 1 credit. Two of its most valuable checks come nearly free from data StretchSEM already owns:

• Orphan pages — indexed pages with no inbound internal link, so crawlers and users struggle to reach them.
• Broken links — internal and external link targets that return a 4xx/5xx error (checked with bounded, polite status requests).

On top of those it flags non-200 pages, redirect hops, and a full set of on-page metadata issues, then rolls everything into a weighted Site Health score.

Running an audit

1. Open the Diagnostics tab and choose Site audit (or run it from a project).
2. Enter the domain, for example acme.com.
3. Run. StretchSEM analyzes your crawled pages, checks a bounded set of link targets, and returns a categorized report.

Reading the results

The report groups findings into three severities:

• Errors (critical): broken links (4xx/5xx), pages returning non-200, and missing <title> tags.
• Warnings: orphan pages, missing meta descriptions, missing H1s, thin content (under ~300 characters of extracted text), and non-HTTPS/mixed-content pages.
• Notices: duplicate titles, pages reached via redirect, and over-long titles (which may truncate in search results).

Each issue shows a count, a plain-English detail, and a sample of affected URLs so you can jump straight to the pages that need work. The header shows pages audited and links checked.

The Site Health score

Site Health is a 0–100 score. StretchSEM starts at 100 and subtracts a weighted issue density — errors weigh most, warnings less, notices least — normalized against your page count, floored at 0. Because it's density-based, a handful of issues on a large, healthy site barely moves the score, while the same issues on a small site weigh more. Track the score over time (or via the Domain Monitor) to confirm your fixes are landing.

A realistic example

An audit of acme.com returns Site Health 74 with: 3 broken links (error), 5 pages missing a title (error), 6 orphan pages (warning), 12 pages missing a meta description (warning), and 4 duplicate titles (notice). The team fixes the broken links and adds the missing titles first (biggest score impact), then internally links the orphan pages from relevant hubs. A re-audit two weeks later shows Site Health at 88.

Turning an audit into a plan

1. Fix errors first — broken links and missing titles hurt both users and rankings and carry the heaviest score weight.
2. Resolve orphan pages — add internal links from relevant, well-linked pages so crawlers and visitors can reach them.
3. Fill metadata gaps — add missing meta descriptions and H1s; deduplicate titles.
4. Clean up notices — point links at final URLs instead of redirects, and shorten titles over ~65 characters.
5. Re-audit to confirm the score improved, and consider setting up the Domain Monitor to catch regressions automatically.

Tips

• Crawl the domain in StretchSearch first — the audit reads your crawl index and link graph.
• Run a Backlink scan before auditing if you want the freshest internal link graph for orphan detection.
• Prioritize by severity then count — the report is already sorted that way.
• Re-run after each batch of fixes to measure progress objectively.

Troubleshooting

Few or no orphan pages, but I expected some. Orphan detection depends on the link graph. If StretchSEM hasn't harvested your internal links yet, run a Backlink scan (which builds the graph) and re-audit.

Broken-links count seems low. The audit checks a bounded sample of link targets per run to stay fast and polite. Re-running over time widens coverage.

Site Health looks low on a small site. The score is density-based, so a few issues weigh more on a small site. Fix the errors first and the score recovers quickly.