Technical SEO Checklist

Overview

Technical SEO is the foundation that determines whether search engines can find, crawl, render, and index your content. Without it, even the best content strategy fails. This checklist covers the critical technical areas that affect organic performance: crawlability, indexation, site speed, Core Web Vitals, structured data, and mobile experience. Use it as a quarterly health check or as part of a site migration.

Step-by-Step Framework

1. 1

   Crawlability and Robots Configuration

   Review your robots.txt to ensure it is not blocking important pages or resources. Run a crawl using Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to identify orphan pages, broken internal links, and redirect chains longer than two hops. Verify your XML sitemap is submitted, up-to-date, and contains only indexable URLs.

2. 2

   Indexation Health Check

   Use Google Search Console to compare indexed pages against your sitemap. Identify pages that should be indexed but are not, and pages that are indexed but should not be (thin content, duplicate pages, staging URLs). Resolve issues with canonical tags, noindex directives, or content improvements.

3. 3

   Core Web Vitals and Performance

   Measure Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) using PageSpeed Insights and Chrome UX Report data. Target LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds, and CLS under 0.1. Address the largest contributors: image optimisation, JavaScript execution time, and layout stability.

4. 4

   Mobile Experience Audit

   Test your top 20 landing pages on actual mobile devices, not just Chrome DevTools. Check for tap target sizing, horizontal scroll issues, font readability, and intrusive interstitials. Google uses mobile-first indexing, so your mobile experience directly determines your rankings.

5. 5

   Structured Data Implementation

   Implement JSON-LD structured data for your organisation, services, articles, FAQs, and breadcrumbs. Validate every schema using the Rich Results Test tool. Monitor Search Console for structured data errors and fix them within 48 hours of detection.

6. 6

   HTTPS, Security, and International Setup

   Verify that all pages serve over HTTPS with no mixed-content warnings. If you serve content in multiple languages or regions, implement hreflang tags correctly and test them with a dedicated validator. Ensure canonical URLs are consistent and self-referencing on every page.

Key Metrics to Track

Common Mistakes

Next Steps

Create a recurring calendar event to run this checklist quarterly. After each audit, log findings in a shared tracker with owner, priority, and deadline. Pair technical fixes with your content calendar so that new pages launch on a solid foundation from day one.