Technical SEO Checklist for 2026

You can write the most useful page in your industry and still never rank, if Google cannot crawl it, index it or load it properly on a phone.

That is what technical SEO is about. This technical SEO checklist covers the checks we run on every site before content or link building starts, grouped into eight areas and sorted by priority. It is part of our complete SEO guide for businesses, and every check can be done with free tools.

What technical SEO covers

Technical SEO is the work that lets search engines find, understand and serve your pages. It does not make content better. It makes sure good content is not held back.

If you are not sure where your site stands, run a full SEO audit first. This checklist goes deeper into the technical part of that audit.

1. Crawling

Google discovers pages by following links and reading sitemaps. If it cannot reach a page, nothing else matters.

• Robots.txt does not block important sections. Check yourdomain.com/robots.txt and the robots.txt report in Search Console.
• CSS and JavaScript files are not blocked. Google needs them to render the page as a visitor sees it.
• An XML sitemap exists and is submitted in Search Console.
• The sitemap lists only live, indexable URLs that return a 200 status. No redirects, 404s or noindexed pages.
• Every important page has at least one internal link. Pages with no internal links, called orphan pages, are hard for Google to find.
• Navigation links are real HTML links, not buttons that only work with JavaScript.

A clean robots.txt for most business websites looks something like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

2. Indexation

• Review the Pages report in Search Console. Look at why pages are excluded, especially "Crawled, currently not indexed" and "Discovered, currently not indexed".
• No accidental noindex tags on pages that should rank. This often happens after a staging site goes live.
• Thin, duplicate and utility pages are kept out of the index where they add no value: tag archives, internal search results, filtered URLs.
• Important pages are indexed. Use URL Inspection in Search Console to check key service, product and category pages one by one.

3. Site architecture and internal links

• Important pages are within three clicks of the homepage.
• URLs are short, readable and consistent, for example /services/local-seo/ rather than /page?id=482.
• Related pages link to each other with descriptive anchor text.
• Breadcrumbs are used on deeper pages, especially on ecommerce sites.
• Pagination and filters do not create thousands of crawlable duplicate URLs.

Good architecture also helps visitors. A clear structure of services, categories and supporting articles is what our on page SEO checklist builds on.

4. Speed and Core Web Vitals

Google's Core Web Vitals measure real user experience. A page passes when at least 75% of visits meet the "good" threshold.

INP replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in March 2024, so older audits that only mention FID are out of date.

Checks:

• Field data in Search Console's Core Web Vitals report, not only lab scores from a single test
• Hero images compressed, served in WebP or AVIF, with width and height set
• The main image is not lazy loaded, since it is the element LCP usually measures
• Unused JavaScript and CSS reduced, especially from plugins and third party scripts
• Caching and a CDN in place
• Server response time, measured as Time to First Byte, under about 0.8 seconds

Most speed problems on WordPress can be fixed without a rebuild. Our guide to fixing Core Web Vitals on WordPress explains how.

5. Mobile

Google uses mobile first indexing, which means it evaluates the mobile version of your site for ranking.

• The same content appears on mobile and desktop. Content hidden or removed on mobile may not be counted.
• Text is readable without zooming, and buttons are large enough to tap.
• Pop ups do not cover the main content on arrival.
• Test on real phones, including a mid range Android phone on mobile data, not only on a fast laptop.

6. HTTPS and site versions

• Every page loads over HTTPS with a valid certificate.
• No mixed content, where images or scripts still load over http.
• One version of the site. http, https, www and non www should all redirect to the same preferred version with a single 301 redirect.
• Trailing slashes are consistent. /services and /services/ should not both return a 200.

7. Redirects, status codes and canonicals

• Broken internal links fixed. Update links that point to 404 pages.
• Redirect chains removed. Each old URL should redirect directly to its final destination in one step.
• 301 redirects used for permanent moves, not 302s.
• Canonical tags present on every indexable page, pointing to the preferred URL.
• Canonicals and redirects agree. A page should never canonicalise to a URL that redirects elsewhere.
• A useful custom 404 page that links visitors back to key sections.

Redirects matter most during a rebuild or domain change. If you are planning one, read our website migration SEO guide before launch day.

8. Structured data

Structured data, or schema markup, tells search engines what a page represents: an organisation, a service, a product, an article, a set of questions.

• Organization schema on the homepage, with name, logo, contact details and social profiles
• LocalBusiness schema for businesses that serve an area
• Product schema with price and availability on product pages
• Article or BlogPosting schema on articles
• BreadcrumbList schema on deeper pages
• No errors in the Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator

Be realistic about rich results. Google removed HowTo rich results in 2023 and stopped showing FAQ rich results in May 2026, so add FAQ markup for clarity, not for a special listing. Structured data also helps AI systems understand your content, which we cover in schema markup for AI search.

A technical check for AI search

AI assistants use their own crawlers. If your robots.txt blocks them, your pages cannot be cited in ChatGPT search or Perplexity answers.

• Check robots.txt for OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. These are the crawlers that decide whether your pages can appear in ChatGPT search and Perplexity answers, so allow them if you want to be cited. User triggered fetchers such as ChatGPT-User may not follow robots.txt at all.
• Make sure key content is in the HTML, not loaded only after JavaScript runs, since many AI crawlers do not render JavaScript.

How to prioritise technical fixes

On one industrial manufacturer's WordPress site, mobile LCP on a key page was 4.1 seconds. By fixing configuration rather than rebuilding, we brought it to 2.3 seconds, inside Google's "good" threshold. See the industrial B2B SEO case study.

Get a technical SEO review

Technical issues are often invisible until someone looks for them. If you want specialists to check your site, request a free SEO audit and we will send a prioritised list of technical fixes. You can also see how technical work fits into our ongoing SEO services.