Fifteen technical checks that uncover most of the issues holding websites back, with what to look for and how to fix each one.
Technical SEO is about removing friction between your website and search engines. If crawlers can't reach, render or understand your pages, the quality of your content barely matters. The good news is that most technical problems fall into a familiar set of categories.
Here are fifteen checks that uncover the majority of issues on small and mid-sized websites. You'll need Google Search Console, a crawler (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb or similar) and PageSpeed Insights.
Open the Page indexing report in Search Console. Compare the number of indexed pages with the number of pages you expect to rank. Look at the reasons pages aren't indexed. "Crawled – currently not indexed" and "Discovered – currently not indexed" often point to quality or crawl-priority issues; "Excluded by noindex tag" might be intentional or a mistake.
Visit yoursite.com/robots.txt. Make sure it isn't blocking important sections, CSS or JavaScript files Google needs to render pages, and that it references your XML sitemap. A leftover Disallow: / from a staging site is one of the most damaging and most common mistakes.
Your sitemap should list only canonical, indexable pages that return a 200 status. Remove redirected, noindexed and error URLs. Submit it in Search Console and check for errors.
Crawl the site and filter for pages with a noindex robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header. Confirm each one is intentional. Plugins and themes sometimes noindex categories, tags or even whole sites by default.
Every indexable page should have a self-referencing canonical or point to the preferred version of duplicate content. Check for canonicals pointing to redirected or 404 pages, to the wrong protocol or domain version, or to unrelated pages.
Your site should resolve to one version: HTTPS, and either www or non-www, with the other versions 301-redirecting to it. Check for mixed content warnings (HTTP images or scripts on HTTPS pages).
Crawl for 3xx responses. Each redirect should go directly to the final URL in one hop. Chains (A to B to C) waste crawl effort and slow users. Use 301 for permanent moves. Update internal links to point straight to the final destination.
Find internal links that return 404 and fix or remove them. For deleted pages that had traffic or backlinks, redirect them to the most relevant live page. Watch for "soft 404s", pages that return 200 but show an empty or error state.
Check the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console (field data from real Chrome users) and run key templates through PageSpeed Insights. The three metrics are Largest Contentful Paint (loading), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness, which replaced First Input Delay in 2024) and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). Common fixes: compress and correctly size images, preload the main hero image, reduce render-blocking CSS and JavaScript, limit third-party scripts and reserve space for images and embeds.
Google uses the mobile version of your site for indexing. Make sure mobile pages contain the same important content, headings, structured data and internal links as desktop, that text is readable without zooming and that tap targets aren't cramped.
Important pages should be reachable within a few clicks of the homepage. Look for orphan pages (no internal links pointing to them) and deep pages buried in pagination. Use descriptive anchor text and link related services and articles to each other.
Look for pages with identical or near-identical titles, headings or body text, such as URL parameters, printer versions, tag archives or near-duplicate location pages. Consolidate, canonicalise or noindex as appropriate. Pages with very little unique content may be better merged.
Crawl for missing, duplicate, overly long or generic titles and meta descriptions. Each page should have one clear H1 and a logical heading structure. These are simple fixes with a direct effect on relevance and click-through.
Test key templates with the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator. Fix errors and make sure markup reflects visible content. Organization, LocalBusiness, Product, Article and BreadcrumbList are useful on most sites.
If your site relies on JavaScript frameworks or heavy page builders, use the URL Inspection tool's live test in Search Console to view the rendered HTML. Confirm that main content, links and metadata appear. If key content only appears after user interaction or isn't in the rendered HTML, consider server-side rendering or static generation for important pages.
An audit will surface dozens of issues. Rank them by impact and effort:
Fix in that order, re-crawl to confirm and monitor Search Console over the following weeks. Technical SEO isn't a one-off job; new pages, plugins and redesigns introduce new issues, so a lighter version of this audit every few months keeps things healthy.
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