Technical SEO Checklist

Submit XML sitemap to Google Search Console

Ensure your sitemap is properly formatted, includes all important URLs, and is submitted through GSC for faster discovery.

Configure robots.txt correctly

Verify your robots.txt allows crawling of important pages and blocks access to admin areas, duplicate content, and internal search results.

Fix crawl errors in Search Console

Review and resolve 404 errors, server errors, and redirect issues that prevent Googlebot from accessing your content.

Implement proper canonical tags

Add self-referencing canonical tags to all pages and cross-domain canonicals where needed to prevent duplicate content issues.

Check for noindex tags on important pages

Audit your site for accidental noindex directives that might be blocking valuable pages from appearing in search results.

Ensure proper URL structure

Use clean, descriptive URLs with hyphens as separators. Avoid dynamic parameters, excessive subdirectories, and uppercase characters.

Optimize Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Ensure your largest visible element loads within 2.5 seconds by optimizing images, fonts, and server response times.

Minimize Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Prevent unexpected layout shifts by setting explicit dimensions for images and videos, and avoiding dynamic content injection above the fold.

Improve Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

Optimize JavaScript execution and event handlers to ensure the page responds to user interactions within 200 milliseconds.

Enable browser caching and compression

Configure cache headers for static assets and enable Gzip or Brotli compression to reduce file transfer sizes.

Optimize and lazy-load images

Use modern formats like WebP or AVIF, serve responsive sizes, and implement lazy loading for below-the-fold images.

Minimize render-blocking resources

Defer non-critical JavaScript and CSS to prevent them from blocking the initial page render.

Add Organization schema markup

Implement Organization structured data with your logo, contact info, and social profiles to enhance your brand's knowledge panel.

Implement breadcrumb schema

Add BreadcrumbList structured data to help search engines understand your site hierarchy and display breadcrumbs in search results.

Add FAQ schema where appropriate

Mark up frequently asked questions with FAQPage schema to potentially earn expanded search result listings.

Validate structured data with testing tools

Use Google's Rich Results Test to verify your structured data is error-free and eligible for rich result features.

Implement article schema for blog posts

Add Article or BlogPosting structured data to your content pages with author, date published, and featured image information.

Add sitelinks search box markup

Implement WebSite schema with SearchAction to potentially display a search box directly in your brand's search results.

Enforce HTTPS across all pages

Ensure every page serves over HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate and proper redirects from HTTP to HTTPS.

Set up proper redirect chains

Audit and fix redirect chains longer than two hops. Replace chains with direct redirects to the final destination URL.

Configure hreflang for multilingual sites

Implement hreflang tags correctly if your site targets multiple languages or regions to prevent duplicate content across locales.

Monitor server uptime and response codes

Set up monitoring to detect downtime and 5xx errors that could damage your crawl budget and rankings.

Implement proper 404 and error pages

Create custom 404 pages that help users navigate to relevant content and return proper HTTP status codes.

Optimize crawl budget for large sites

Manage crawl budget by removing low-value pages from the index, fixing soft 404s, and prioritizing important content.