SEO Technical Checklist

How it works

A technical SEO checklist works by systematically auditing the key factors that affect how search engines interact with a site. The checklist typically covers crawlability, indexation, performance, mobile usability, site architecture, and structured data. Each area is checked against best practices, and issues are documented and prioritised.

The checklist starts with crawlability: verifying robots.txt, XML sitemaps, and ensuring no accidental noindex or blocking directives. Then indexation checks canonical tag usage, redirects, and soft 404s. Performance is assessed through Core Web Vitals on important templates. Internal linking and click depth are reviewed to ensure important pages are reachable. Structured data is validated on key page types. For international sites, hreflang tags are checked.

Tools like Google Search Console provide primary diagnostic data for indexing, Core Web Vitals, and sitemap processing. The checklist should be template-level, not just sample URLs, especially on large sites. JavaScript rendering should be tested by comparing raw HTML with rendered output.

Common mistakes

• Blocking important pages in robots.txt or accidentally applying noindex to pages that should rank.
• Relying on XML sitemaps instead of fixing poor internal linking or site architecture.
• Ignoring JavaScript rendering differences, which can cause content to be visible to users but not fully understood by search engines.
• Auditing only sample URLs instead of template-level and log-file behaviour on large sites.