Technical SEO Checklist For Better Rankings

Technical SEO allows you to optimise the crawling and indexing of your website to rank higher in the search results. If your website is up-to-date then it will lead to more ranking keywords, organic traffic and conversions.
When you make any major changes to your website you can go through the following checklist to make sure your website is technically sound.
Technical SEO checklist
- Make your website mobile-friendly by using a responsive web design. Having a mobile-friendly website is essential as the number of mobile users is increasing. To know if your website reaches Google’s criteria for mobile users you can use PageSpeed Insights.
- If your website is slow and takes a lot of time to load then Google may penalise your website. Therefore it is important to improve the page loading speed. To speed up your website you can optimise your images, use browser caching, enable site compression, lower server response time and use Content Delivery Network(CDN).
- Try to improve your Core Web Vitals like First Input Delay (FID), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). You can use Google Search Console to measure your Core Web Vitals.

- Make sure that your website does not have any crawl errors. You can choose tools like ScreamingFrog or Google Search Console to check if the 301 redirects are implemented correctly and if all your 4xx and 5xx errors are redirected.
- Internal links are used to link a page to another page on the same website. Links help search engines to better understand the information structure of your website. Poor link structure can affect the user experience and search engines. You should not use an internal linking structure that is too deep.
- Optimising images will lead to a better performance of your website. Keep your Alt-text descriptive and use keywords in them.
- You should delete duplicate content on your website. Duplicate content is caused by many reasons like page replication from faceted navigation, creating multiple versions of your website, and scraped or copied content.
You can use tools like SEMrush to fix the issues. You can use canonical tags to avoid any issues.

- Fix all broken links on your website as they can harm the user experience. You can either update the URL or remove the link completely.
- Google made HTTPS a ranking factor in 2014 therefore you should make a switch to HTTPS protocol for your website. This will keep your data safe and the data is also encrypted to avoid hacking.
- Perform a Technical SEO Audit to find all the errors and mistakes that may be causing your website not to rank higher in the search results. All the technical issues should be fixed so that your website can be crawled and indexed easily.
- The XML sitemaps make crawling and indexing easy for the search engine. A Sitemap has a list of all the pages that can be crawled and indexed. It also ensures that the crawl budgets are used properly by the search engines.

- The structure of your URLs should be as simple as possible. Overall complex URLs can cause problems for crawlers.
- The robots.txt file gives instructions to the search engine about how to crawl your website. You should make sure that only your important pages are being crawled and indexed. You can use this file to avoid indexing your temporary pages, checkout pages, search-related pages, admin pages and more.
- You should minimise the render-blocking JavaScript, structure HTML and CSS as they can cause a delay in the execution of a page.
- Structured data is used to provide information about your page to search engines. This helps search engines make you stand out in the search results. There are different types of structured data like people, places, local businesses, reviews and more.
- To improve the speed of your website you can try to reduce the number of HTTP requests and resources. The larger the file sizes the more time is required to load.
Technical SEO Element | Description | Implementation Tools/Methods | Source |
HTTPS Implementation | Ensures secure data exchange between the user and the website, which is a ranking factor. | Obtain and install an SSL certificate; verify HTTPS status in browser. | SEMRUSH |
XML Sitemap Creation | Lists all important pages, aiding search engines in efficient crawling and indexing. | Use CMS features or plugins to generate sitemap; submit via Google Search Console. | SEMRUSH |
Robots.txt Configuration | Directs search engines on which pages to crawl or avoid, optimizing crawl budget. | Create/edit robots.txt file; test using Google Search Console's robots.txt tester. | SEMRUSH |
Mobile-Friendliness | Ensures the website is optimized for mobile devices, enhancing user experience and rankings. | Implement responsive design; test with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool. | SEMRUSH |
Page Speed Optimization | Improves load times, reducing bounce rates and improving user experience. | Compress images; minify CSS/JS; leverage browser caching; use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. | SEMRUSH |
Structured Data Markup | Adds schema markup to help search engines understand content context, enabling rich snippets. | Implement JSON-LD schema; validate with Google's Structured Data Testing Tool. | SEMRUSH |
Canonicalization | Prevents duplicate content issues by specifying the preferred version of a webpage. | Add canonical tags in the HTML head; ensure consistency across similar pages. | SEMRUSH |
URL Structure Optimization | Creates clean, descriptive URLs that are user-friendly and include relevant keywords. | Use hyphens to separate words; avoid special characters; keep URLs concise. | SEMRUSH |
404 Error Management | Handles broken links effectively to maintain user engagement and inform search engines. | Create custom 404 pages with helpful navigation; regularly check for and fix broken links. | SEMRUSH |
Internal Linking Strategy | Enhances site navigation and distributes link equity across pages, aiding in crawl efficiency. | Use descriptive anchor text; link to deep pages; maintain a logical site hierarchy. | SEMRUSH |
Duplicate Content Resolution | Identifies and mitigates duplicate content to prevent ranking dilution. | Use canonical tags; set up 301 redirects; utilize tools like Copyscape to detect duplicates. | SEMRUSH |
Breadcrumb Navigation | Provides a secondary navigation scheme, helping users and search engines understand site structure. | Implement breadcrumb schema; ensure breadcrumbs reflect site hierarchy. | SEMRUSH |
Hreflang Implementation | Indicates language and regional targeting for multilingual websites, ensuring correct content delivery. | Add hreflang tags in the HTML head or sitemaps; validate with hreflang testing tools. | SEMRUSH |
Log File Analysis | Reviews server logs to understand how search engines crawl the site, identifying potential issues. | Use log analysis tools to monitor crawl patterns and detect errors. | SEMRUSH |
Core Web Vitals Optimization | Focuses on key user experience metrics like loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability, which are critical ranking factors. | Monitor and improve LCP, FID, and CLS metrics using tools like Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. | SEMRUSH |
- You can use a browser cache strategy that allows the browser cache to automatically save the resources on a user's computer. When the user accesses the website the second time it will assist to get the information faster.
- Try to reduce the number of redirects as it will slow down the speed of your website. The more redirects the more time is required for a user to reach the right page.
- You should load only the required files and delete the unnecessary media files, images, plugins and functionalities that you do not use.
- Use the preferred version of your website. For example, if you are using https://www,abc.com then the other version should 301 redirect to the preferred version.
- You should handle the 404 error efficiently and create a custom page that is displayed whenever the user finds such an error.
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