If your website isn’t ranking the way it should, there’s a high chance technical SEO is holding you back. From crawlability to Core Web Vitals, even small oversights can hurt performance.
Below is your ultimate technical SEO checklist β 50 powerful fixes to unlock better indexing, faster speeds, improved UX, and stronger rankings across the board.
π 1. Crawlability & Indexing: Make Your Site Easy to Discover
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Repair broken internal links (404 errors).
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Eliminate redirect chains for cleaner crawling.
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Ensure important pages arenβt blocked in
robots.txt
. -
Add and submit an XML sitemap to Google Search Console.
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Remove outdated or duplicate sitemaps.
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Use canonical tags to consolidate duplicate content.
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Implement
rel="next"/"prev"
for paginated content (or canonicalize properly). -
Link orphaned pages internally so they can be found and indexed.
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Avoid excessive use of URL parameters and session IDs.
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Set up
hreflang
for multilingual or international pages. -
Block staging/dev environments from being indexed.
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Set your preferred domain (www or non-www) in GSC.
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Apply
noindex
to thin, thank you, or filtered pages that shouldnβt rank.
β‘ 2. Site Speed & Core Web Vitals: Fast Sites Win
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Compress and lazy load images (WebP recommended).
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Minify CSS, JS, and HTML files.
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Leverage browser caching to speed up repeat visits.
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Use a CDN to reduce latency and speed up global delivery.
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Reduce server response time (Time to First Byte).
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Defer or remove render-blocking scripts.
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Enable GZIP or Brotli compression.
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Defer non-essential JavaScript loading.
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Optimize font loading using
font-display: swap
. -
Prevent layout shifts that harm UX (CLS issues).
π± 3. Mobile Optimization & User Experience
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Use a responsive, mobile-first design.
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Fix touch elements that are too close together.
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Remove intrusive interstitials/popups on mobile.
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Optimize mobile page load speed.
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Ensure correct viewport configuration.
π§ 4. Structured Data & Schema Markup
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Implement schema types (e.g., LocalBusiness, Article, Product).
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Validate schema with Google’s Rich Results Test.
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Add breadcrumb schema for better SERP visibility.
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Use FAQ, Event, and HowTo schema where relevant.
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Stick to one primary schema type per page.
π 5. HTTPS & Site Security
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Force HTTPS across all URLs.
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Update all internal links to HTTPS.
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Install a valid SSL certificate and renew it on time.
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Remove mixed content (HTTPS pages loading HTTP resources).
π 6. URL Structure & Optimization
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Use clean, human-readable URLs (no weird characters or long IDs).
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Limit URL depth to 2β3 levels.
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Remove unnecessary URL parameters in internal links.
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Canonicalize filtered or duplicate content URLs.
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Redirect non-canonical versions using 301 redirects.
ποΈ 7. Meta Tags & Content Accessibility
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Ensure each page has a unique, keyword-optimized title.
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Write compelling and relevant meta descriptions.
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Use only one
<h1>
tag per page. -
Eliminate missing or duplicate meta tags.
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Add descriptive alt text to all critical images.
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Maintain a clean heading structure (H1 > H2 > H3).
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Avoid thin or low-value pages β add depth and context.
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Resolve crawl issues flagged in Google Search Console.