Most SEO problems aren't about content quality — they're about whether Google can find, crawl, and understand your pages in the first place. Before you write another blog post or build another backlink, run through this technical audit.
1. Crawlability
Start with your robots.txt file. Confirm you aren't accidentally disallowing important sections of your site — this happens more often than you'd think after a redesign or migration. Then check your XML sitemap: every important URL should be listed, and no 404s, redirects, or noindex'd pages should appear in it. See Google's official crawling and indexing documentation for the full technical spec.
- Fetch your robots.txt and confirm no critical paths are blocked
- Validate your XML sitemap against Google Search Console's Sitemaps report
- Run a full site crawl (Screaming Frog or similar) and check for orphaned pages with no internal links pointing to them
- Check your crawl budget isn't wasted on faceted navigation or duplicate parameter URLs
2. Indexability
A page can be perfectly crawlable and still be invisible in search if it's accidentally noindexed. This is one of the most common — and most costly — technical SEO mistakes we find during audits.
- Search site:yourdomain.com in Google and compare the result count to your actual page count
- Check every important page for an accidental noindex meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header
- Confirm canonical tags point to the correct, preferred version of each page
- Look for duplicate content across parameter URLs, HTTP/HTTPS, and www/non-www versions
3. Core Web Vitals
Google's Core Web Vitals — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — are now baked directly into ranking algorithms. Run your key pages through PageSpeed Insights and target these thresholds:
- LCP under 2.5 seconds
- INP under 200 milliseconds
- CLS under 0.1
If you're failing any of these, the usual culprits are unoptimized images, render-blocking JavaScript, and missing image dimensions causing layout shift.
4. Structured Data
Schema.org markup helps search engines understand what your page is about — and unlocks rich results like star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, and product pricing directly in the SERP. At minimum, every site should have Organization schema sitewide, and content pages should carry Article, Product, FAQPage, or LocalBusiness schema as appropriate. Run your markup through our free Schema Markup Validator to catch errors before Google's crawler finds them.
5. Mobile and HTTPS
Google indexes the mobile version of your site first, so test every important page on a mobile viewport, not just desktop. Confirm your entire site runs on HTTPS with no mixed-content warnings — an unencrypted page is both a trust signal problem and a minor ranking penalty.
The Bottom Line
Technical SEO isn't glamorous, but it's the foundation everything else sits on. A brilliant content strategy built on top of a technically broken site is like decorating a house with a cracked foundation. Run this checklist quarterly, and re-run it after every major site change or redesign. Want a professional audit instead of doing this manually? See our Aggressive SEO & Organic Dominance service or run a free instant SEO audit on your site right now.