You can write the best content in your industry, but if search engines can’t crawl, understand or index your pages, they won’t rank. That is where technical SEO comes in.
Technical SEO covers the behind-the-scenes setup of your website: how pages are discovered, how fast they load and how clearly they communicate with search engines. Use this checklist to find the most common problems.
1. Make Sure Your Important Pages Can Be Indexed
Open Google Search Console and check the Pages report. It shows which pages are indexed and why others are not. Look out for important pages marked “Excluded by noindex tag” or “Crawled – currently not indexed”. A single wrong setting, such as a “Discourage search engines” option left on in WordPress, can hide an entire website.
2. Check Your robots.txt File
The robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which parts of your site they may visit. Visit yourwebsite.com/robots.txt and make sure it is not blocking important folders, pages, CSS or JavaScript files. Blocking the wrong path is one of the most common — and most damaging — technical mistakes.
3. Submit an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap lists the pages you want search engines to find. Most SEO plugins create one automatically. Submit it in Google Search Console and make sure it only includes live, indexable pages — not redirects, broken pages or thin tag archives.
4. Use HTTPS Everywhere
Your website should load securely on HTTPS, with every HTTP version redirecting to it. Check that images and scripts also load over HTTPS, so browsers don’t show “not secure” warnings that scare visitors away.
5. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
Google primarily uses the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking. Test your pages on a real phone: text should be readable without zooming, buttons should be easy to tap and no content should be hidden or cut off on small screens.
6. Improve Page Speed and Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals measure real visitor experience. The three current metrics are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how quickly the main content loads.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the layout jumps around while loading.
Use PageSpeed Insights to test your pages. Common fixes include compressing images, using modern formats such as WebP, enabling caching, removing unused plugins and setting image dimensions to stop layout shifts.
7. Fix Broken Links and Redirect Chains
Broken internal links waste crawl budget and frustrate visitors. Redirect chains — where one URL redirects to another, then another — slow everything down. Crawl your site with a tool like Screaming Frog, fix broken links and point redirects straight to the final page.
8. Handle Duplicate Content With Canonical Tags
The same content can often be reached at several URLs, for example with tracking parameters or product filters. Canonical tags tell Google which version is the main one, so ranking signals aren’t split between duplicates.
9. Keep URLs Clean and Internal Links Logical
Short, descriptive URLs such as /#services are easier for people and search engines to understand. Link related pages to each other and make sure every important page can be reached within a few clicks from the homepage.
10. Add Structured Data (Schema Markup)
Structured data helps search engines understand your content — for example your business details, services, products, articles or FAQs. Add relevant schema and test it with Google’s Rich Results Test to check for errors.
Tools for a Technical SEO Audit
- Google Search Console – indexing, sitemaps and page experience data.
- PageSpeed Insights – speed and Core Web Vitals.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider – crawls your site to find broken links, redirects and missing tags.
Get a Professional Technical SEO Audit
Technical problems are often invisible until rankings drop. Our technical SEO services start with a full website audit that finds and prioritises every issue. Request your free SEO audit to see what’s holding your site back.
