Technical SEO Checklist for Business Websites

This is the checklist we work through, ordered so that the things that block everything else come first. You can run most of it yourself with a crawler, Search Console and a browser.

1. Indexing — can search engines reach and keep your pages?

• robots.txt exists, returns 200, and doesn’t block anything important. Check CSS and JavaScript aren’t blocked.
• No noindex on production templates. Check the rendered HTML, not just the source.
• The number of indexed pages roughly matches the number of pages you want indexed. Wildly more means duplication; wildly fewer means a blocker.
• Search Console coverage report reviewed: every excluded reason understood, not just noted.
• XML sitemap contains only canonical, indexable, 200-status URLs — and is referenced in robots.txt.
• No orphan pages: every important URL has at least one internal link.

2. Duplication — one URL per piece of content

• One hostname. Pick www or non-www; the other redirects with a 301.
• HTTPS everywhere; HTTP redirects once, not through a chain.
• Consistent trailing slashes.
• Self-referencing canonical on every indexable page, pointing at the absolute, correct URL.
• Parameters (tracking, sorting, filtering) don’t create indexable duplicates.
• Pagination handled deliberately — each page self-canonical, not all pointing at page one.
• No two pages targeting the same query. Cannibalisation is common and easy to miss.

3. Redirects

• All redirects are 301 unless genuinely temporary.
• No chains — A to B to C should be A to C.
• No loops.
• No mass redirects to the homepage; they’re treated as soft 404s.
• 404 pages return an actual 404 status. A "not found" page returning 200 is a soft 404.

4. Rendering

• Main content, links and metadata are present in the server-rendered HTML.
• Test with JavaScript disabled, and with Search Console’s URL inspection.
• Internal links use real <a href> elements, not click handlers.
• Lazy-loaded content isn’t hiding text that should be indexed.

5. Architecture and internal linking

• Every important page is three clicks or fewer from the homepage.
• Breadcrumbs on all pages below the top level, with matching structured data.
• Descriptive internal anchor text — not "click here" or bare URLs.
• Related content links between articles and to the commercial pages they support.
• Navigation is crawlable HTML.

6. On-page fundamentals

• One h1 per page, describing the page’s topic.
• Heading levels don’t skip; they describe structure, not visual size.
• Unique title tags, leading with the query rather than the brand.
• Unique meta descriptions written to earn a click, not to repeat the title.
• Meaningful alt text on informative images; empty alt on decorative ones.
• No important content locked inside images.

7. Performance

• Core Web Vitals measured with field data: LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1.
• Images in modern formats, sized for their container, lazy-loaded below the fold.
• Explicit width and height on images to prevent layout shift.
• Fonts self-hosted, subset, with font-display: swap.
• Third-party scripts audited — each one justified or removed.
• Caching and compression enabled at the server or CDN.

More detail in how website speed affects SEO.

8. Structured data

• Organization markup on the site, with consistent name and URL.
• Breadcrumb markup matching the visible breadcrumbs.
• Article markup on posts with accurate dates and author.
• Product, FAQ or Service markup where it genuinely applies.
• Validates without errors, and — importantly — every claim in it is true.

9. International and local, if relevant

• hreflang correct and reciprocal, if you run multiple languages.
• One canonical version per language, not translated pages canonicalising to English.
• Consistent name, address and phone number if you have a physical presence.

10. Monitoring

• Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools connected.
• Alerts for coverage errors and sudden traffic changes.
• A scheduled crawl — monthly is enough for most sites — to catch regressions.
• Uptime monitoring. Downtime during a crawl is a ranking problem, not just an availability one.

How to use this

Work top to bottom. Items in sections 1–3 block everything below them: there’s no point optimising metadata on pages that can’t be indexed.

Most business sites we audit have two or three real problems in the first three sections, and those account for most of the missing performance. The rest is refinement.

If you’d rather have someone run it — and, more usefully, implement the fixes — that’s what an SEO audit with us involves.