Technical SEO Checklist – The Roadmap to a Complete Technical SEO

We talk about off-page SEO a lot. Building, managing, and auditing your backlinks is a critical aspect of SEO, and it keeps getting trickier. On-page SEO is a hot topic too; particularly now that Google's increasingly shifting to semantic search, and the old-school tactics don't seem to work as well as they used to.

No doubt those are very important aspects of SEO, but there's one thing we tend to forget about. SEO isn't either off- or on-page. The technical part of the process is just as important; in fact, if you don't get the technical foundation right, your other SEO efforts might bring no results at all.

In this article, I'll focus on the main aspects of technical SEO that will help you maximize usability, search engine crawling, indexing, and ultimately rankings. Let's roll!

I. Website Loading Speed Time

1. Improve Server Response Time
2. Optimize & Reduce Image Size Without Affecting the Visual Appearance
3. Minimize the Render-Blocking Javascript and CSS
4. Limit the Number of Resources & HTTP Requests
5. Set a Browser Cache Policy
6. Reduce the Number of Redirects & Eliminate Redirect Loop
7. Avoid Loading Your Site With Too Much Stuff

II. Website Functionality & Usability

1. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Friendly
2. Build Search Engine Friendly URLs
3. Use the Secure Protocol – HTTPs
4. Set Preferred Version
5. Set up Correctly the 301 Redirects After Site Migration
6. Make Sure Your Resources Are Crawlable
7. Test Your Robots.Txt File to Show Google the Right Content
8. Verify the Indexed Content
9. Review Your Sitemap to Avoid Being Outdated
10. Review Blocked Resources (Hashbang URLs) with Fetch as Google
11. Optimize Your Crawl Budget
12. Avoid Meta Refresh for Moving a Site
13. Use Redirect for Flash Site to the HTML Version
14. Use Hreflang for Language and Regional URLs
15. Make Sure Your Tracking Is Working Properly

III. Content Optimization

1. Redirect/Replace Broken Links & Resources
2. Audit Internal Links to Improve Your Chances to Rank Higher
3. Get Rid of Duplicate Content
4. Use Structured Data to Highlight Your Content
5. Keep a Reasonable Number of Links On-Page
6. Avoid Canonicalizing Blog Pages to the Root of the Blog

IV. User-Friendlier Website

1. Set up Your AMP the Right Way – Mobile Friendlier
2. Add Breadcrumbs for a Better Navigation
3. Test On as Many Platforms and Devices as Possible