Technical SEO Checklist

Crawlability & Indexation

• robots.txt exists and does not block critical pages
• XML sitemap exists, is valid, and submitted to GSC
• Sitemap includes only canonical, indexable URLs
• No important pages blocked by noindex meta tag
• Canonical tags point to correct URLs (no self-referential errors)
• No orphan pages (all pages reachable from internal links)
• Crawl depth ≤ 3 clicks from homepage for important pages
• Pagination handled correctly (rel=next/prev or infinite scroll signals)

Core Web Vitals

HTTPS & Security

• All pages served over HTTPS
• HTTP automatically redirects to HTTPS (301)
• SSL certificate valid and not expiring soon
• No mixed content (HTTP resources on HTTPS pages)
• HSTS header set
• Security headers present (CSP, X-Frame-Options, etc.)

Mobile & Structured Data

• Mobile-friendly (responsive design or separate mobile URL)
• Viewport meta tag present
• No intrusive interstitials on mobile
• Structured data (JSON-LD) for key page types
• No structured data errors in Rich Results Test
• Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags set

URL & Site Architecture

• URLs are clean, descriptive, and lowercase
• No URL parameters causing duplicate content
• 301 redirects for all changed/removed URLs
• No redirect chains (A→B→C, use A→C)
• Custom 404 page returns HTTP 404 (not 200)
• Hreflang tags correct for multilingual sites
• Consistent URL format (trailing slash or not)

robots.txt Example