Technical SEO Checklist

Crawlability

Robots.txt

• Robots.txt file exists at /robots.txt
• Important pages are not blocked
• CSS and JavaScript files are accessible to crawlers
• Sitemap URL is referenced
• No syntax errors in the file

XML Sitemap

• Sitemap exists and is accessible
• Submitted to Google Search Console
• Contains only canonical, indexable URLs
• Under 50MB and 50,000 URLs per sitemap
• Uses sitemap index for large sites
• Lastmod dates are accurate

Internal Linking

• All important pages are linked from the homepage
• Logical site structure with clear hierarchy
• No orphan pages (pages with no internal links)
• No broken internal links (404 errors)
• Reasonable crawl depth (important pages within 3 clicks)

Indexing

Canonical Tags

• Every page has a canonical tag
• Self-referencing canonicals on unique pages
• Canonical URLs are absolute, not relative
• No conflicting canonical signals
• Pagination handled correctly

Meta Robots

• Important pages have index,follow (or no tag)
• Thin/duplicate content has noindex
• No accidental noindex on important pages
• X-Robots-Tag headers align with meta tags

Duplicate Content

• www vs non-www redirected consistently
• HTTP redirects to HTTPS
• Trailing slashes handled consistently
• URL parameters don't create duplicates
• Pagination doesn't create duplicate content

Site Speed

Core Web Vitals

• LCP under 2.5 seconds
• INP under 200 milliseconds
• CLS under 0.1

Performance Optimization

• Images optimized (WebP/AVIF, proper sizing, lazy loading)
• CSS and JavaScript minified
• Gzip or Brotli compression enabled
• Browser caching configured
• CDN used for static assets
• Critical CSS inlined
• JavaScript deferred or async where possible

Mobile Optimization

• Responsive design or mobile-specific version
• Viewport meta tag present
• Text readable without zooming
• Tap targets appropriately sized (48x48px minimum)
• No horizontal scrolling required
• No intrusive interstitials
• Content same on mobile as desktop

Security

• HTTPS enabled site-wide
• Valid SSL certificate
• HSTS header configured
• No mixed content (HTTP resources on HTTPS pages)
• Security headers configured (CSP, X-Frame-Options, etc.)

Structured Data

• Organization/LocalBusiness schema on homepage
• Breadcrumb schema on internal pages
• Article schema on blog posts
• Product schema on product pages
• FAQ schema where appropriate
• No structured data errors in Search Console
• JSON-LD format preferred

International SEO

• Hreflang tags for multi-language sites
• Self-referencing hreflang on each page
• X-default hreflang for fallback
• Consistent URL structure across languages
• Correct language/region codes