Technical SEO checklist

How to use this checklist

Work through the sections in order. Crawling and indexing come first, because nothing else matters if Google can’t reach your pages. Re-check monthly, since sites change.

Crawling and indexing

• Your most important pages are indexed. Check in Google Search Console under Indexing, then Pages.
• Your robots.txt file does not block key pages, styles or scripts.
• You have an XML sitemap listing only live, indexable pages, and it is submitted in Search Console.
• No important page has an accidental noindex tag, which often survives from a staging site.
• Every page has a canonical tag pointing to its preferred address.

Redirects and errors

• Broken pages (404 errors) with links or traffic redirect to the closest relevant page.
• Redirects are single steps, not chains.
• The site uses one version of the address: https, and either www or non-www.
• There are no server errors (5xx) in your crawl.

Speed and Core Web Vitals

• Largest Contentful Paint is 2.5 seconds or better.
• Interaction to Next Paint is 200 milliseconds or better.
• Cumulative Layout Shift is 0.1 or lower.
• Images are compressed, in a modern format such as WebP, and have set dimensions.
• Unused plugins and scripts are removed, and caching is on.

Test with PageSpeed Insights and check the field data in Search Console.

Mobile and security

• The site works well on a phone, with readable text and spaced tap targets.
• The whole site loads over HTTPS with no mixed content warnings.
• Intrusive popups don’t block the content.

Structure and links

• Important pages are within three clicks of the home page.
• URLs are short, readable and lowercase.
• Every page can be reached through internal links, with no orphan pages.
• Breadcrumbs show where a page sits in the site.

Structured data

• Your business has Organization or LocalBusiness markup with accurate details.
• Pages use fitting markup, such as Service, Article or Breadcrumb.
• Markup validates in Google’s Rich Results Test and matches what visitors see.

Monitoring

• Search Console is set up and checked weekly for errors.
• You re-crawl the site monthly with a tool such as Screaming Frog.

Need a hand?

Our technical SEO service fixes these problems, and a free SEO audit shows where to start.