Which pages should you include in a technical SEO speed audit?

A technical SEO speed audit should include more than the homepage. Start with the homepage, your primary service or product pages, key category and landing pages, high-traffic content, and pages that support important conversions, such as contact, enquiry, sign-up, basket and checkout pages. Then test representative examples of each page template on both mobile and desktop, including pages with different media, scripts, layouts and third-party integrations.

Begin with pages that have the greatest business and search importance. These pages usually deserve priority because performance problems can affect visibility, user engagement and conversions across the site:

• Homepage: This is often the most visited page and commonly contains large visual assets, animation, navigation components, tracking scripts and other features that can affect loading performance.
• Primary service or product pages: These pages are usually central to organic search visibility and commercial enquiries. Include examples with different content lengths, image galleries, product options, embedded tools or pricing elements.
• Category, collection and directory pages: Listing pages can become slow when they load many images, filters, sorting controls, comparison features or results dynamically.
• Campaign and landing pages: Assess paid and organic landing pages separately where they use bespoke templates, heavy creative assets, form tools or additional tracking.
• High-traffic informational content: Include articles, guides and resource pages that attract substantial organic visits. Their templates may contain related-content modules, advertisements, embedded media, tables of contents or large numbers of images.
• Conversion and transactional pages: Test contact forms, quotation pages, account registration, sign-in, basket and checkout pages where applicable. These pages may load validation scripts, payment services, consent tools or other integrations that are not present elsewhere.

Choose representative pages from every important template. Testing one URL does not establish that every page using the same template performs equally well. Select examples that reflect meaningful variations, such as:

• short and long content;
• pages with and without hero images or video;
• different image formats, galleries or downloadable assets;
• pages with reviews, maps, calculators, chat tools or embedded media;
• pages using filters, accordions, tabs or personalised content;
• recent pages and older pages that may use different components;
• templates managed by different teams or content systems.

This approach helps distinguish a template-level issue from a problem affecting only one URL. If several pages share the same header, navigation, consent mechanism or JavaScript bundle, compare them to identify common causes. If only one page is slow, investigate its individual assets, content or configuration rather than assuming the entire template is at fault.

Include pages that may not receive much organic traffic but still affect the customer journey. A technical speed audit should cover important interactions, not just ranking pages. For example, a slow form, account area or checkout can create friction after a visitor arrives through a fast landing page. Where these areas require authentication or personal data, test them in a secure, controlled environment and avoid exposing customer information in audit tools or screenshots.

Test both mobile and desktop versions. Mobile testing is particularly important because mobile devices and networks can have less processing capacity and more variable connection quality. However, desktop testing remains useful for identifying large assets, layout changes and scripts that behave differently at wider screen sizes. Record the viewport, device conditions and test location so that results can be compared consistently.

Pay attention to the page sections that load before and around the main content. The most useful pages for investigation are often those with:

• large hero images or background videos;
• render-blocking stylesheets or scripts;
• late-loading fonts that change the layout;
• client-side rendering or content loaded after the initial response;
• multiple analytics, advertising, consent or personalisation scripts;
• carousels, pop-ups and sticky navigation;
• third-party forms, maps, reviews, booking tools or payment services;
• images that are not correctly sized for their display dimensions.

These features can affect loading speed, visual stability and the time before a page becomes usable. Include at least one representative page where each feature appears, even if that page is not among the highest-traffic URLs.

Use performance data to refine the page list. Start with organic landing-page data, analytics, server logs and crawl data where available. Look for pages with high impressions, visits, entrances, conversions, exit rates or error rates, as well as pages whose performance differs significantly from other URLs using the same template. A page with lower traffic may still warrant testing if it is strategically important, supports a key service or sits within a critical conversion path.

Review the site structure before selecting URLs. Include important pages that are not obvious from traffic reports, such as recently launched services, priority locations, seasonal landing pages and pages linked prominently in navigation. Also check canonical versions, redirects and URL parameters so that the audit tests the version users and search engines are expected to access.

Do not rely on a single test or a single URL. Performance can vary with caching, network conditions, server load, consent choices and third-party availability. Re-test priority pages under consistent conditions and compare patterns rather than treating one result as conclusive. When a group of pages shares a template, test enough representative variations to establish whether the issue is widespread, then focus remediation on the common component.

A practical audit list therefore contains four layers: priority business pages, important search landing pages, representative examples of every major template, and pages containing unusual or high-risk functionality. Record the URL, page type, template, device context, key integrations and relevant performance findings. This creates a usable audit scope and makes it easier to confirm whether improvements apply across the site rather than to the homepage alone.