Technical SEO Checklist for Business Websites

What is technical SEO and why do I need a checklist?

Technical SEO is the practice of making it easier for search engines to crawl, render, index and understand
your website. It’s less obvious than a blog post, but incorrectly configured settings can hide whole
sections of your site.

Over time, businesses accumulate technical debt: old plugins, outdated landing pages, leftover staging rules,
or URLs changed during a redesign. A technical SEO checklist stops this building up and gives you something
tangible to pass to your developer or agency.

1Crawling

Robots.txt

The robots.txt file tells crawlers which URLs they can request. Open yours (yourdomain.com/robots.txt) and
make sure you haven’t blocked any pages, scripts or stylesheets you want crawled. A common launch mistake is
a leftover Disallow: / line.

It’s easy to confuse crawling with indexing. As Google’s documentation states, a page blocked in robots.txt
can still be indexed if other sites link to it. To keep a page out of search results, use a noindex tag, and
leave the page crawlable so Google can see it.

Status codes and redirects

Run a crawl and check the status codes. Important pages should return 200. Pages that have moved should use a
301 redirect to the most relevant page. Avoid chained redirects, and check that your internal links don’t
lead to 404 pages.

JavaScript

Google can render JavaScript, but it’s safest to keep your main content, internal links and meta tags in the
original HTML. In Google Search Console, use the URL Inspection tool to see the rendered HTML. If your main
text or links are missing, a developer needs to look at how the page is built.

2Indexing

XML sitemap

An XML sitemap lists the URLs you want search engines to find. Only include canonical, indexable pages that
return 200. Don’t add redirects, noindex pages or pages blocked in robots.txt, as these send conflicting
signals.

A single sitemap is generally limited to 50,000 URLs or 50 MB (uncompressed). If your site is larger, use a
sitemap index. Submit your sitemap in Search Console and reference it in your robots.txt file.

Canonical tags and noindex

Add a canonical tag where similar versions of a page exist, for example URLs with tracking parameters,
sorting or trailing slashes. Google treats it as a strong hint rather than a command. Every indexable page
should have a canonical pointing to itself, and your sitemap and internal links should use the preferred
URL.

Use noindex for pages that should be accessible but not shown in search, such as internal search results or
thank-you pages. Then review the page indexing report in Search Console. Statuses like “Crawled, currently
not indexed” or “Excluded by noindex tag” are fine if intentional, but can be a warning sign if not.

3Site architecture and internal links

Make sure your site has a clear structure. Important pages should be reachable within a couple of clicks from
the homepage. Keep URLs short and readable, and add breadcrumbs to deeper pages.

Avoid orphan pages, which have no internal links pointing to them and are hard for search engines to find.
Link to relevant pages with descriptive anchor text: service pages should link to supporting articles, and
vice versa. If you’re also reviewing page titles, headings and content, see our guide to on-page SEO.

4Page experience and Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals measure how fast your pages load, how quickly they respond and how stable they are. They’re
based on real users and assessed at the 75th percentile, so three out of four visits should fall in the
“good” range.

INP replaced FID in March 2024, so any advice that still lists FID as a Core Web Vital is outdated. Test your
key templates (homepage, service page, blog post, contact page) in PageSpeed Insights, and compare field data (real users) with lab data.

Common fixes for business websites:

• Compress images and serve them at the correct size.
• Add width and height attributes to images to avoid layout shift.
• Defer non-essential third-party scripts, such as chat widgets and trackers.
• Remove plugins you no longer need.

If the template itself is the problem, a developer may need to restructure it. Our website development team can help.

5Mobile-first indexing

Google mainly uses the mobile version of your content to index and rank pages. Your mobile pages should
therefore have the same main content, headings, internal links, meta robots tags and structured data as
desktop. Content hidden or removed on mobile could be lost from the index.

Check a few key pages on a real phone, and make sure menus, buttons and forms are easy to use.

6HTTPS, security and redirects

Make sure every page uses HTTPS, redirect all HTTP URLs with a 301, and fix any mixed content issues. Keep
your CMS, themes and plugins up to date: if your site is hacked, spam pages can be added and harm your
search presence. If you’d like help keeping your site stable and current, see our maintenance and support service.

7Structured data (schema)

Structured data labels the entities on your page so machines can understand them. For most business websites,
a good starting point is:

• Organization schema on your homepage.
• LocalBusiness schema for physical locations.
• Service or Article schema on relevant pages.

Use JSON-LD, make sure it matches what’s on the page, and validate it with Google’s Rich Results Test.

8Multi-location and multi-language

If your website serves customers in several countries or languages, give each version its own crawlable URL
and use hreflang tags. Each language version should reference all the others, and itself. Avoid redirecting
users automatically by IP address, as crawlers may never see the alternative versions.

For multi-location businesses, create a unique page for each location with real local information.

9Monitoring

Set up Google Search Console and regularly check page indexing, Core Web Vitals and sitemaps. Re-crawl your
site with an SEO crawler at regular intervals, and always after a redesign, migration, CMS change or large
content update. Quarterly is a good starting point for most business websites.

Fix issues in order of importance: pages that can’t be crawled or indexed first, followed by speed, structure
and the rest.

Quick technical SEO checklist

FAQ

Conclusion

Technical SEO isn’t about chasing a score. It’s about removing the barriers that stop search engines finding
your pages. Start with crawling and indexing, then move on to speed, mobile and structured data, and keep
monitoring.