Twenty checks, not two hundred
Most technical SEO checklists are padded to look thorough. This is the list we actually work through, ordered so that the things which can silently destroy your traffic come first.
Indexing: can Google see it at all
- ✓robots.txt is not blocking anything important. We have found staging rules left live on production more than once. It is catastrophic and takes thirty seconds to check.
- ✓No stray noindex tags on pages that should rank.
- ✓Search Console coverage report read properly. "Discovered but not indexed" at scale usually signals a quality or crawl budget problem.
- ✓XML sitemap is current, contains only indexable 200-status URLs, and is submitted.
- ✓Canonicals point where you intend. Self-referencing on the canonical version, consistent across parameters.
Duplication and consolidation
- ✓One version of the site resolves. http and https, www and non-www, all redirecting to a single canonical version with 301s.
- ✓Trailing slash consistency. Minor, but it splits signals when inconsistent.
- ✓Parameter and faceted URLs are not generating thousands of near-duplicate pages.
- ✓Pagination handled sensibly, with each page self-canonical.
Structure and internal linking
- ✓Nothing important is more than three clicks from the homepage.
- ✓No orphan pages. If nothing links to it, it will not rank, whatever the sitemap says.
- ✓Navigation is crawlable HTML links, not JavaScript-only menus.
- ✓Anchor text is descriptive. "Read more" tells Google nothing about the destination.
- ✓Redirect chains flattened. Point old URLs directly at the final destination.
Internal linking is consistently the most under-used lever we find. It is free, entirely within your control, and most sites do it badly.
Performance and rendering
- ✓Core Web Vitals field data in the green for mobile. Field, not lab.
- ✓Content renders without JavaScript, or is server-rendered. Test with JS disabled and see what survives.
- ✓Images sized correctly, in a modern format, with width and height set.
Markup and metadata
- ✓One h1 per page, with a logical heading hierarchy beneath it.
- ✓Titles and meta descriptions unique and written for a human deciding whether to click.
- ✓Schema markup valid and matching what is visible on the page. Organisation, Article, Product, FAQ, LocalBusiness where relevant.
- ✓hreflang correct if you serve multiple languages or regions, including return tags.
The order matters
Work top to bottom. An indexing problem makes everything below it irrelevant, and there is no point optimising heading structure on a page Google has been told not to index.
If you want this run on your site with the findings prioritised by likely commercial impact rather than by severity label, that is the audit that starts our SEO, AEO and GEO engagements.
Frequently asked questions
How often should technical SEO be audited?
A full audit twice a year, plus a monthly check on Search Console coverage and Core Web Vitals. Run a focused audit after any site migration, redesign or CMS change.
What is the most common technical SEO problem?
Accidental blocking, either robots.txt rules carried over from staging or stray noindex tags. It is the fastest to fix and the most damaging while it persists.
Do small sites need technical SEO?
Less of it, but the fundamentals still apply. A twenty page site rarely has crawl budget problems, but it can still be blocked, slow, or missing schema.
