Technical SEO is the foundation of organic rankings. No matter how good your content, if Google can't properly crawl, understand and index your site — you won't rank. Use this checklist to audit your site against 25 critical technical SEO factors.
Crawling & Indexation
robots.txt is correct
Check robots.txt is not blocking important pages or the entire site. Verify at yourdomain.com/robots.txt and Google Search Console.
XML sitemap submitted
Your sitemap should be at /sitemap.xml, submitted to Google Search Console, and contain all indexable pages (no 404s, no noindex pages).
No accidental noindex tags
Check for <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> on important pages. Many sites accidentally noindex their homepage or key pages after a settings change.
Crawl errors in Search Console
Check Google Search Console → Coverage report. Investigate and fix all Errors and Excluded pages that should be indexed.
URLs & Redirects
Single canonical version of the domain
www and non-www should redirect to one version. HTTP should redirect to HTTPS. Check: does http://www.yourdomain.com redirect to https://yourdomain.com?
No redirect chains
A→B→C redirect chains waste crawl budget and lose link equity. Every redirect should go directly to its final destination.
No broken links (404 errors)
Crawl your site with Screaming Frog or Ahrefs and fix all internal 404 links with 301 redirects to the correct URL.
Canonical tags are correct
Every page should have a self-referencing canonical tag, or a canonical pointing to the preferred version. No contradicting canonicals.
On-Page Technical
Every page has a unique title tag
Title tags should be 50–60 characters, unique per page, and include the primary keyword naturally.
Every page has a meta description
While not a direct ranking factor, meta descriptions significantly affect click-through rate from search results.
Single H1 per page
Each page should have exactly one H1 tag containing the primary keyword. Multiple H1s confuse Google about the page's topic.
Images have descriptive alt text
All meaningful images should have descriptive alt text. Decorative images should have empty alt="" attributes.
Speed & Core Web Vitals
PageSpeed score 60+ on mobile
Google's ranking signal. Test at pagespeed.web.dev. Below 50 on mobile is significantly hurting your rankings.
LCP under 2.5 seconds
Largest Contentful Paint — the time for the main content to appear. Over 4 seconds is "Poor" and hurts rankings.
CLS under 0.1
Cumulative Layout Shift — pages shouldn't jump as they load. Common causes: images without dimensions, late-loading ads, web fonts.
INP under 200ms
Interaction to Next Paint replaced FID in 2024. Measures responsiveness to user interactions. Heavy JavaScript is the main culprit.
Structured Data
Organization schema on homepage
Adds your business name, logo, contact details and social profiles to your Knowledge Panel.
Product schema on product pages
Enables price, availability and review stars in Google search results — significantly improves click-through rate.
FAQ schema on relevant pages
Expands your search result to show questions and answers — takes up more SERP real estate and improves CTR.
BreadcrumbList schema on inner pages
Shows your site structure in search results, helping users (and Google) understand page hierarchy.
Mobile & Security
Passes Mobile Usability test
Check in Google Search Console → Mobile Usability. Fix tap target too small, content wider than screen, text too small errors.
Valid HTTPS with no mixed content
All resources (images, scripts, stylesheets) must load over HTTPS. Mixed content (HTTP resources on HTTPS pages) triggers browser warnings.
No manual action in Search Console
Check Google Search Console → Security & Manual Actions. A manual action can completely remove you from search results.
International & Advanced
Hreflang for multilingual sites
If your site serves content in multiple languages or for different regions, hreflang tags tell Google which version to show which users.
Pagination handled correctly
Blog archives, product category pages with pagination — use rel="next" and rel="prev" or a proper canonical strategy to avoid duplicate content.
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