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SEO

Technical SEO Checklist

A comprehensive technical SEO audit checklist to ensure your site is crawlable, indexable, and fast. Follow every item for maximum search visibility.

Crawling & Indexing

  • Verify robots.txt is not blocking important pages
  • Submit XML sitemap to Google Search Console
  • Check for orphan pages with no internal links
  • Ensure canonical tags are self-referencing
  • Audit noindex tags on staging or dev environments

Site Architecture

  • Maintain a flat hierarchy — every page within 3 clicks
  • Use descriptive, keyword-rich URL slugs
  • Implement breadcrumb structured data
  • Ensure mobile navigation mirrors desktop
  • Avoid infinite scroll without pagination fallback

Page Speed & Core Web Vitals

  • Achieve LCP under 2.5s on mobile
  • Minimize layout shift — reserve space for images and embeds
  • Defer non-critical JavaScript with async or defer
  • Serve images in WebP/AVIF with srcset
  • Enable text compression (gzip or brotli)

Structured Data

  • Validate JSON-LD with Rich Results Test
  • Include Organization or Person schema on homepage
  • Add Article schema on blog posts
  • Use FAQ schema where applicable
  • Keep structured data free of syntax errors

HTTPS & Security

  • Force HTTPS across the entire site
  • Redirect all HTTP traffic with 301
  • Ensure SSL certificate is valid and auto-renewing
  • Set HSTS header with long max-age
  • Check for mixed content warnings

Monitoring

  • Set up Google Search Console alerts
  • Monitor 404 errors and implement redirects
  • Track index coverage reports weekly
  • Audit backlinks for toxic domains
  • Log and fix crawl anomalies promptly

Run this checklist quarterly. Search engines evolve constantly — staying ahead of technical debt keeps your rankings resilient. Pair this with content SEO best practices for a complete strategy.