The Short Answer
A proper technical SEO audit for an Ottawa law firm checks: site speed and Core Web Vitals, schema markup presence and accuracy, whether pages are actually being indexed by Google, mobile usability, internal linking structure, and — specific to a bilingual market like Ottawa — whether hreflang tags are correctly implemented if the site has French-language pages. Many audits sold by generalist agencies skip several of these entirely.
The Full Checklist, Explained
Site speed & Core Web Vitals: How quickly pages load and become interactive, measured against Google's specific performance thresholds. Schema markup: Whether structured data is present, accurate, and matches visible content exactly. Indexing status: Whether Google is actually crawling and indexing every important page, or silently skipping some due to technical errors.
Mobile usability: Whether the site genuinely works for a phone-first visitor, not just resizes to fit — see how to test this yourself. Hreflang implementation: For any bilingual site, whether Google correctly understands which page serves English versus French searchers — a step most local audits never check because so few local agencies work with bilingual sites regularly.
A Thorough Audit vs. a Superficial One
One Piece of a Larger Puzzle
Think of this as one piece of a larger puzzle for a Ottawa law firm. The adjacent pieces are What Keywords Should an Ottawa Law Firm Target for SEO?, How Often Should an Ottawa Law Firm Blog for SEO?, How Do Ottawa Law Firms Build Backlinks Ethically?, and Do Legal Directories Like Avvo and Justia Still Help SEO for Ottawa Firms? — and a bit further out, What Should a Firm Look for When Hiring an Ottawa SEO Agency?, How Much Does Google Ads (PPC) Cost for a Law Firm in Ottawa?, and Are Facebook and Meta Ads Worth It for an Ottawa Law Firm?. The Ottawa growth hub shows how all of it connects, with AI Website Design for Ottawa Law Firms and AI SEO for Ottawa Law Firms as the two services underneath.