Technical SEO helps search engines discover, crawl, understand, and index your important pages. It also supports a smoother user experience. A checklist is a useful starting point, but the right priorities depend on your website, platform, audience, and the problems found during an audit.
1. Check crawling and indexing
- Review Google Search Console for indexing issues and excluded URLs.
- Check that important pages return the correct HTTP status and are not blocked unintentionally by robots.txt or noindex directives.
- Keep XML sitemaps accurate and submit them through Search Console.
- Use canonical tags consistently where duplicate or similar URLs exist.
2. Review page structure and on-page elements
- Give each important page a descriptive, unique title and meta description.
- Use a clear heading hierarchy that reflects the page’s actual content.
- Map target topics to relevant URLs and avoid creating multiple pages that compete for the same intent.
- Write useful image alt text when an image conveys information; leave decorative images with empty alt attributes.
- Use descriptive URLs and breadcrumbs where they help people navigate.
3. Measure speed and mobile usability
Test representative templates on mobile and desktop using PageSpeed Insights and Chrome UX Report data where available. Review Core Web Vitals, image sizes, JavaScript, layout shifts, font loading, and server response time. Fix the issues that affect real users rather than chasing a perfect score alone.
4. Validate structured data
Add structured data only when it accurately describes visible page content and follows Google’s guidelines. Validate it with Google’s Rich Results Test and monitor eligible enhancements in Search Console. Structured data can make pages eligible for certain search appearances, but it does not guarantee a rich result or higher rankings.
5. Find broken links and technical errors
Crawl the website with a tool such as Screaming Frog, then check broken internal links, redirect chains, orphaned pages, duplicate titles, missing metadata, and incorrect status codes. Review analytics and Search Console before removing or redirecting URLs so useful pages and backlinks are not lost.
6. Strengthen internal linking
Link related pages using natural, descriptive anchor text. Important service pages should be reachable from relevant supporting content, and each link should help visitors understand where they will go. Avoid excessive exact-match anchors or adding links that do not serve the reader.
7. Monitor results after changes
Record the issues you fix, the URLs affected, and the date of each change. Monitor indexing, organic clicks, impressions, conversions, and Core Web Vitals over time. Rankings can fluctuate for many reasons, so assess trends rather than judging a change from a single day.
When to get a technical SEO audit
If your site has persistent indexing problems, a migration, slow templates, duplicate URLs, or unexplained organic traffic declines, a structured audit can help prioritise work. Explore our SEO services and technical SEO guide, or contact Qhr Solutions to discuss your website’s needs.
Official resources
- Google SEO Starter Guide
- Google guidance on helpful, reliable content
- Google’s structured data introduction
Key takeaway: Prioritise crawlability, indexability, mobile experience, clear page structure, accurate structured data, and useful internal links. Fix issues based on evidence and measure the impact after implementation.