Technical SEO checklist: 30 points to check on your website

Tools you’ll need

Three free tools and one desktop crawler:

• Google Search Console — indexing, errors, search queries and the Core Web Vitals report from real users.
• Bing Webmaster Tools — the same for Bing.
• PageSpeed Insights — speed for a specific page on mobile and desktop.
• A crawler (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb or similar) — crawls your site like a search bot and reports broken links, duplicates and empty metadata.

Mark each point as you go: “yes”, “no” or “partly”. Everything marked “no” is your to-do list.

Indexing and crawler access

1. The site resolves to one address. www and non-www, http and https variants 301-redirect to the primary one.
2. HTTPS works, the certificate is valid, and there’s no mixed content (images or scripts over http).
3. robots.txt exists and doesn’t block what matters. It’s available at /robots.txt, admin areas are blocked, service pages, catalog and blog are not.
4. robots.txt points to your sitemap. A line like Sitemap: https://your-site.com/sitemap.xml.
5. UTM parameters and filters don’t create duplicates. Each variant has a canonical pointing to the main page.
6. Important pages aren’t noindex. A classic mistake after moving from staging: the whole site still blocks indexing.
7. The 404 page returns a 404 status, not 200, and helps people find their way: search and links to main sections.

Sitemap

8. sitemap.xml exists and is submitted to Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
9. It lists only indexable pages — no noindex, redirects or 404s.
10. Pages have a lastmod date that changes only when content actually changes.

Duplicates and canonicals

11. Every page has a canonical — an absolute URL pointing to itself.
12. No duplicate titles or descriptions. Your crawler will flag pages with identical metadata.
13. One URL format. For example, always with a trailing slash: /services/ and /services are different pages to a search engine; the second should redirect to the first.
14. Pagination on blogs and catalogs: each page canonicals to itself and isn’t noindex.

Metadata and structure

15. Unique titles, up to 60 characters, main keyword near the start.
16. Unique meta descriptions, 140–160 characters, with a clear benefit and specifics.
17. One H1 per page with the main keyword; H2 and H3 for subtopics, without skipping levels.
18. A dedicated page per service and query group, not one “Services” page for everything.
19. Internal links: service pages link to related services, case studies and articles with descriptive anchor text instead of “learn more”.
20. No broken internal links or redirect chains (A → B → C).

Speed and mobile

21. Core Web Vitals in the green on mobile: LCP under 2.5 s, INP under 200 ms, CLS of 0.1 or less. Google uses these in its ranking systems.
22. Images in AVIF or WebP, with width and height set, lazy-loaded below the fold.
23. Fonts self-hosted as woff2 with font-display: swap, only the weights you use.
24. No unnecessary scripts: widgets, chat and analytics load deferred and don’t block rendering.
25. Mobile is usable: text is readable without zooming, tap targets at least 44 px, no horizontal scrolling.

Markup and language versions

26. Schema markup: Organization site-wide, BreadcrumbList on inner pages, Service with pricing for services, FAQPage only when the questions are visible, BlogPosting for articles.
27. Open Graph: title, description and a 1200×630 image for good previews in chat apps and social media.
28. hreflang for language versions. Each version lists itself and every other version, plus x-default. Links must be reciprocal or search engines ignore them.

Analytics

29. Analytics is installed: GA4 with conversion events for form submissions, phone and messenger clicks.
30. Ownership is verified in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Quick 15-minute check

No time for a full audit? Check five things — they catch most serious problems:

1. Open /robots.txt — make sure it doesn’t contain Disallow: / for all bots.
2. Search site:your-site.com in Google — does the number of indexed pages roughly match reality?
3. Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights on mobile — what’s the score and LCP?
4. Open a non-existent URL like /test-404/ — does a 404 page appear, or does the site redirect to the homepage?
5. Open the Pages report in Search Console — how many pages aren’t indexed, and why?

If anything looks off, start there.

What to fix first

Not every point matters equally:

• Urgent: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 — access and indexing errors cut off traffic entirely.
• First month: 8–14 and 20 — duplicates, sitemaps and broken links keep search engines from understanding your structure.
• Next: 15–19 and 21–28 — this is what moves rankings and conversion.
• From day one: 29–30 — without analytics you can’t tell what worked.

How we handle it

Most of these points shouldn’t depend on someone remembering them. On the Astro sites we build, canonicals, hreflang, sitemaps, schema and OG images are generated automatically from page data, and before every release a script checks titles, descriptions, H1s, links and language pairs. Technical errors don’t creep back in after the next update.

Bottom line

Run a technical audit before investing in SEO, after a redesign or migration, and whenever traffic drops. For a full review with developer tickets for every point, order a technical SEO audit. For a quick first look, request a free audit, and for what keeps a site from converting beyond the technical side, read Why your website isn’t generating leads.