Walk me through how you would perform a technical SEO audit for a large e-commerce site like Shopee.
RoleDigital Marketing Associate
DifficultyMedium
TopicTechnical
Asked at
Why This Is Asked
The employer wants to see if you have a systematic, tool-based approach to diagnosing technical issues common on large e-commerce platforms, which directly impacts site performance and user experience.
General Approach
Start with the most common steps: crawling the site with a tool, checking for crawl errors in Search Console, reviewing site structure and internal links, then analyzing Core Web Vitals. Explain your prioritization method (e.g., fixing high-traffic pages first) and how you document your findings.
General Answer
A technical SEO audit for a large e-commerce site follows a structured, tool-based process. Start with a full site crawl, using a tool such as Screaming Frog or Sitebulb, to surface broken links, redirect chains, duplicate title tags and meta descriptions, and thin or duplicate content, which is especially common on e-commerce sites due to filter and sort parameters generating near-identical category pages. Next, check indexation health in Google Search Console: the coverage report to see which pages are excluded and why, sitemap submission status, and whether robots.txt or noindex tags are unintentionally blocking important pages. Then review site architecture and internal linking, since a large catalog needs a clear hierarchy from category to subcategory to product so crawl budget is spent on pages that matter, and confirm canonical tags are correctly implemented on faceted navigation and paginated pages to avoid duplicate content issues. Core Web Vitals (largest contentful paint, interaction to next paint, and cumulative layout shift) should be checked next, since page speed and interactivity affect both rankings and conversion. Structured data, particularly product schema for pricing, availability, and reviews, should be validated as well. Findings should be prioritized by traffic and revenue impact, fixing issues on high-traffic category and product pages first, and documented with clear before-and-after tracking so the impact of each fix can be measured.
PH Interview Gotcha
Common mistake: Saying 'I will just check the site manually' without mentioning specific tools or processes. Instead, name the tools (Google Search Console, Screaming Frog) and the steps you take to categorize and fix issues.
Sample STAR Answer▾
S
Situation
In my previous role as a junior SEO associate for a local online retailer, our site had been experiencing a sudden drop in organic traffic and a spike in 404 errors.
T
Task
I needed to identify and resolve the technical issues causing the traffic loss, particularly focusing on crawl errors and page speed.
A
Action
I started by exporting all crawl errors from Google Search Console, categorizing them by type (404s, soft 404s, redirect loops). Then I used Screaming Frog to crawl the entire site and cross-reference the errors. I created a spreadsheet listing every broken URL, its source, and recommended a 301 redirect or a removal. For page speed, I ran a Core Web Vitals report on key product listing pages and identified that large, unoptimized images were the main culprit.
R
Result
After implementing the redirects and compressing the images, our crawl error count dropped by 85% and the site's Largest Contentful Paint score improved by 30%, which helped recover 20% of our lost organic traffic within a month.
Key Takeaway
A structured, data-driven audit is the most reliable way to identify and prioritize technical SEO fixes for an e-commerce site.
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