Technical SEO Checklist
Short answer
In order of impact: whether important pages are indexable, whether crawlers can reach them, whether duplicate versions are consolidated with canonicals, whether the site is fast on mobile, whether internal linking passes authority to commercial pages, and whether structured data accurately describes the content. Indexation problems outrank everything else, because a page that cannot be indexed cannot rank regardless of quality.
Published 2026-09-05 · Updated 2026-09-05
1. Indexation: check this first
Nothing else matters if the page is not in the index. Check Search Console coverage for pages excluded by noindex, blocked by robots.txt, marked as duplicates without a user-selected canonical, or discovered but not crawled.
The most common serious finding is a noindex or robots block left over from a staging environment. It is a one-line fix that can restore an entire section of a site.
2. Crawlability and site structure
Search engines need to reach pages through links. Pages reachable only through JavaScript-driven navigation, faceted filters or a search box are frequently missed.
- Every important page reachable within three clicks of the homepage
- No orphan pages: pages in the sitemap with no internal links pointing at them
- Navigation rendered as real anchor tags, not click handlers
- XML sitemap containing only indexable, canonical, 200-status URLs
- Redirect chains collapsed to a single hop
3. Duplication and canonicals
Duplication is rarely deliberate. It comes from parameter URLs, filter combinations, HTTP and HTTPS variants, trailing-slash inconsistencies, and pagination.
Each duplicate set needs one canonical URL, declared consistently and matching the version in the sitemap and internal links. Canonicals that point to a page which itself canonicalises elsewhere are a common and self-defeating error.
4. Core Web Vitals and mobile performance
Test on a mid-range mobile device on a realistic connection, not on a desktop browser. Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds, and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1 are the working targets.
The usual culprits are unoptimised hero images, render-blocking fonts and third-party scripts: chat widgets, tag managers and analytics that nobody has audited since installation.
5. On-page structure
One H1 per page describing what the page is about. Headings in a logical hierarchy rather than chosen for visual size. Descriptive URLs. Unique titles and descriptions across the site. Real alt text on images that carry meaning.
Duplicate title tags across dozens of pages is one of the most common and most easily fixed findings on Indian ecommerce sites.
6. Internal linking
Internal links decide how authority flows. Commercial pages that make money should receive more internal links than a blog archive page, and in practice the opposite is often true.
Use descriptive anchor text. Links reading click here or read more waste the strongest relevance signal you control.
7. Structured data
Add schema that accurately describes what is on the page: Organization, LocalBusiness for genuine physical locations, Product, Article, BreadcrumbList, and FAQPage only where the questions and answers are visible to users.
Structured data that describes content not present on the page is a policy violation and can result in manual action. Accuracy matters more than coverage.
8. JavaScript rendering
For sites built as single-page applications, verify that content exists in the rendered HTML. Google can render JavaScript, but it costs crawl budget and delays indexing, and several AI answer engines do not execute JavaScript at all.
Server-side rendering or prerendering removes the question entirely, which is why content-critical pages on modern frameworks should not rely on client-side rendering alone.
Related questions
What is the most common technical SEO problem?
Indexation issues, usually caused by accidental noindex tags, robots.txt blocks, or canonicals pointing at the wrong URL. They are also the highest-impact fixes, because a blocked page produces nothing no matter how good it is.
Do Core Web Vitals really affect rankings?
They are a ranking factor, but a comparatively small one against relevance and authority. Their larger effect is on conversion: slow mobile pages lose visitors before they read anything. Fix them for revenue reasons; the ranking benefit is a bonus.
Does a single-page app hurt SEO?
It can, if content only exists after JavaScript runs. Google generally renders it but with delay and cost. Several AI crawlers do not render at all. Prerendering or server-side rendering removes the risk and is worth doing for any content that matters commercially.
How often should a technical audit be run?
A full audit annually, or after any significant site change: a redesign, a platform migration, a new template. Between audits, monitor Search Console coverage monthly, since most serious problems announce themselves there first.