Technical SEO Checklist: 50 Things to Audit on Your Website

Why Technical SEO Still Matters in 2026

After 20 years in this industry and hundreds of site audits, I can tell you that technical SEO problems are responsible for more ranking losses than bad content or weak links. Google cannot rank what it cannot find, crawl, and understand. This checklist is what I run through whenever I take on a new client. Work through it systematically and you will find issues most site owners never even knew existed.

Crawlability and Indexation (Items 1-10)

1. Verify your robots.txt is not accidentally blocking critical pages or folders
2. Check that your XML sitemap is submitted in Google Search Console
3. Confirm your sitemap only includes canonical, indexable URLs
4. Run a crawl with Screaming Frog or Sitebulb — look for crawl errors and orphaned pages
5. Check for noindex tags on pages that should be indexed
6. Verify there are no accidental “Discourage search engines” settings in WordPress
7. Check Google Search Console Coverage report for Excluded and Error pages
8. Confirm pagination is handled correctly (rel=next/prev or canonical)
9. Check that faceted navigation does not create thousands of thin duplicate pages
10. Verify your internal search results pages are not indexed

Site Architecture and URLs (Items 11-20)

11. Check URL structure is clean, lowercase, and hyphen-separated
12. Confirm no session IDs or tracking parameters are in indexed URLs
13. Verify canonical tags point to the correct preferred URLs
14. Check for www vs non-www redirect consistency
15. Confirm HTTP redirects to HTTPS on all pages
16. Audit redirect chains — every redirect should be direct, not chained 3 hops
17. Check for soft 404s (pages returning 200 status but showing “not found” content)
18. Verify all 301 redirects are in place for any deleted or moved pages
19. Check site depth — important pages should be within 3 clicks of the homepage
20. Review breadcrumb navigation implementation

On-Page Technical Factors (Items 21-30)

21. Every page should have a unique, descriptive title tag under 60 characters
22. Every page should have a unique meta description under 160 characters
23. Each page should have exactly one H1 tag
24. H2-H6 hierarchy should be logical and not skipped
25. Images should have descriptive alt text (not keyword-stuffed)
26. Check for duplicate title tags across the site
27. Check for missing or duplicate meta descriptions
28. Verify Open Graph tags are present for social sharing
29. Confirm Twitter Card tags are implemented
30. Check for keyword cannibalization — multiple pages targeting identical queries

Site Speed and Core Web Vitals (Items 31-38)

31. Run PageSpeed Insights on your homepage, a category page, and a deep page
32. Check Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — target under 2.5 seconds
33. Check Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — target under 0.1
34. Check Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — target under 200ms
35. Verify images are served in WebP or AVIF format
36. Check that images are properly sized — no 4000px images loaded in a 400px container
37. Confirm CSS and JavaScript are minified
38. Verify you are using a CDN and browser caching is enabled

Mobile and HTTPS (Items 39-44)

39. Run Google Mobile-Friendly Test on key pages
40. Check tap targets are not too small on mobile
41. Verify no horizontal scrolling exists on mobile viewports
42. Confirm HTTPS is implemented site-wide with a valid SSL certificate
43. Check for mixed content warnings (HTTP assets on HTTPS pages)
44. Verify HSTS header is set

Structured Data and Schema (Items 45-50)

45. Run Google Rich Results Test on your homepage and key service pages
46. Verify Organization or LocalBusiness schema is on your homepage
47. Check that Article schema is on all blog posts
48. Confirm FAQPage schema is implemented on relevant pages
49. Check BreadcrumbList schema on interior pages
50. Validate all schema with Schema.org validator — fix any errors

Tools I Use for Technical SEO Audits

What to Do After Your Audit

Do not try to fix everything at once. Prioritize by impact. Crawl errors, noindex tags on important pages, and redirect chains are urgent. Site speed and schema can usually be addressed in the next sprint. For a more streamlined version of this process that you can run in an afternoon, see my quick SEO audit guide.

If you need help running through this checklist or want a professional technical audit, check out our SEO services page or get in touch directly. I do a limited number of full site audits per month and they book out fast.