Every site we take on starts the same way: a full technical audit before we touch anything else. It does not matter how good the content strategy is or how strong the backlink profile looks — if Google cannot crawl your site cleanly, if your pages load in six seconds, or if you have duplicate content fragmenting your authority, those investments are being wasted. Over 1,000 keywords ranked at position 1 across our client portfolio, and every single one of those wins started with a solid technical foundation. This is the checklist that makes it possible.
Why Technical SEO Comes Before Content or Links
Think of technical SEO as the plumbing of your website. You can have the most beautiful kitchen in the world, but if the pipes are blocked, nothing flows. The same is true for search. Google needs to be able to find your pages, understand what they are about, confirm they are trustworthy, and deliver them quickly to users. Any one of those steps failing is enough to suppress rankings entirely.
We have audited sites that had been producing high-quality content for two years with almost no organic traffic — because a single misconfigured robots.txt was blocking Googlebot from crawling the entire domain. We have seen sites with strong backlink profiles stuck on page two because their Core Web Vitals scores were pushing them below technically-superior competitors. Technical issues are silent and expensive.
The checklist below is structured in the order we work through it: start with crawlability, confirm indexation, optimise architecture, then move to performance and advanced signals. Each section includes the specific items we check and the tools we use to check them.
1. Crawlability
- ✓robots.txt is present, accessible, and not accidentally blocking important pages or directories.
- ✓XML sitemap exists, is submitted to Google Search Console, and contains only canonical, indexable URLs.
- ✓No noindex tags on pages you want Google to rank.
- ✓No accidental nofollow on internal links to important pages.
- ✓Googlebot can reach your server (no IP blocks, no login walls over public content).
- ✓Crawl budget is not being wasted on low-value URLs (faceted navigation, session IDs, print pages).
2. Indexation
- ✓Use site:yourdomain.com in Google to get a rough count of indexed pages — compare to your actual page count.
- ✓Check Google Search Console > Pages > Not Indexed to identify why pages are being excluded.
- ✓Confirm your most important pages are indexed using the URL Inspection tool.
- ✓No soft 404s — pages that return a 200 status but show empty or error content.
- ✓Pagination is handled correctly (no duplicate index issues across /page/2/, /page/3/, etc.).
3. Site Architecture & URL Structure
- ✓URL structure is flat where possible — important pages are reachable within 3 clicks from the homepage.
- ✓URLs are clean, descriptive, and lowercase (hyphens not underscores).
- ✓No dynamic parameters in URLs for pages you want ranked (?id=123&cat=4 style).
- ✓Category and subcategory hierarchy is logical and reflects how users actually search.
- ✓Breadcrumb navigation is implemented and reflects URL structure.
Core Web Vitals are a direct Google ranking factor — LCP, CLS, and INP all need to pass.
4. Page Speed & Core Web Vitals
Since 2021, Google's Core Web Vitals have been an official ranking factor. The three signals that matter most are:
| Metric | What It Measures | Good Threshold |
|---|---|---|
| LCP | How fast the largest visible content element loads | Under 2.5s |
| CLS | How much the page layout shifts during load | Under 0.1 |
| INP | How fast the page responds to user interaction | Under 200ms |
- ✓LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) under 2.5 seconds — measure in Google PageSpeed Insights and Chrome UX Report.
- ✓CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) score below 0.1 — images and ads have defined dimensions.
- ✓INP (Interaction to Next Paint) below 200ms — JavaScript execution is not blocking user interaction.
- ✓Images are served in WebP or AVIF format, compressed, and lazy-loaded below the fold.
- ✓A content delivery network (CDN) is in place for global audiences.
- ✓Unused JavaScript and CSS are deferred or removed.
- ✓Server response time (TTFB) is under 800ms.
5. Mobile-Friendliness & HTTPS
- ✓Site passes Google Mobile-Friendly Test — no viewport errors, no content wider than screen.
- ✓Tap targets (buttons, links) are at least 48px apart to avoid accidental taps.
- ✓Full site is served over HTTPS — no pages loading over HTTP.
- ✓No mixed content warnings — all resources (images, scripts, fonts) load over HTTPS.
- ✓SSL certificate is valid and not expiring within 30 days.
6. Structured Data & Schema Markup
- ✓Organization schema on the homepage (name, logo, contact info, social profiles).
- ✓BreadcrumbList schema on all inner pages.
- ✓Article or BlogPosting schema on all blog and news content.
- ✓Product schema on e-commerce product pages (price, availability, reviews).
- ✓LocalBusiness schema for brick-and-mortar businesses (address, hours, phone).
- ✓FAQPage schema where you answer common questions — earns rich results in SERPs.
- ✓All schema validated via Google Rich Results Test — no errors, no warnings.
7. Canonical Tags & Duplicate Content
- ✓Every page has a self-referencing canonical tag.
- ✓Paginated pages do not canonicalize to page 1 (this suppresses the indexed content).
- ✓www and non-www versions redirect to one canonical version.
- ✓HTTP redirects to HTTPS everywhere.
- ✓Trailing slash is consistent — /about and /about/ do not both return 200.
- ✓No content syndicated to external sites without a canonical pointing back to the original.
8. Internal Linking & Orphan Pages
- ✓Every important page receives at least one internal link from another indexed page.
- ✓No orphan pages — pages with zero internal links pointing to them are invisible to crawlers.
- ✓Anchor text in internal links is descriptive and keyword-relevant (not just 'click here').
- ✓Top-performing pages receive more internal links to pass PageRank to them intentionally.
- ✓Navigation menus link to the most strategically important pages.
9. Broken Links & Redirect Chains
- ✓No internal 404 links — crawl the site monthly with Screaming Frog or Ahrefs.
- ✓No redirect chains longer than one hop (A → B → C should be A → C).
- ✓No redirect loops.
- ✓External links to high-authority domains are still live (broken outbound links hurt credibility).
- ✓301 redirects are in place for any deleted or moved pages.
10. Hreflang for Multi-Language Sites
- ✓hreflang tags are implemented for every language/region variant of each page.
- ✓hreflang tags are reciprocal — each alternate page points back to all other variants.
- ✓x-default hreflang is set for the fallback language version.
- ✓Country-specific URLs use the correct ISO language and region codes (e.g., en-GB, tr-TR).
- ✓Hreflang is validated — no orphaned or broken hreflang references.
How We Use This Checklist at Lead Magneters
Every new client engagement starts with a full technical audit against this checklist. We use Screaming Frog for crawl data, Google Search Console for indexation and Core Web Vitals field data, Ahrefs for broken links and redirect chains, and Google PageSpeed Insights for lab-based performance metrics.
The audit produces a prioritised issue list ranked by SEO impact. Critical blockers — anything preventing crawling or indexation — get fixed in week one. Performance and structured data improvements follow in weeks two and three. By the time we begin content or link building work, the technical foundation is solid.
The result: clients who previously had strong content but weak technical SEO typically see measurable ranking improvements within 60–90 days of the technical fixes going live — before any new content is published.
Technical SEO is not a one-time task. Google crawls your site continuously, and your developers deploy code changes that can introduce new issues at any time. We run a lightweight version of this checklist monthly for every client on retainer and a full audit quarterly.
If you want to run this checklist on your own site and are not sure where to start, open Google Search Console and head to the Pages report. The errors and warnings listed there are your highest-priority items. Fix those first, then work through the rest of the list. Or let us do it for you — we will deliver a full prioritised audit within one business day.