Running a solid technical SEO checklist is how you protect every other investment your client makes in content and links. If Googlebot can't crawl a page, or the server takes four seconds to respond, rankings suffer regardless of how good the copy is. This guide walks through the core areas — crawlability, indexing, page speed, HTTPS, canonical tags, and structured data — with actionable checks you can run right now.

Crawlability and Site Architecture

Before anything else, make sure Google can actually get through the site.

Check robots.txt first. Visit domain.com/robots.txt and confirm it isn't accidentally blocking important directories. A common culprit: WordPress sites where the staging environment had Disallow: / and the rule carried over to production.

Review crawl budget on large sites. For sites with 500+ pages, open Google Search Console > Settings > Crawl stats. If Googlebot is spending time on paginated archive pages, filters, or session IDs, you're wasting crawl budget that should go to product or service pages.

Fix broken internal links. Run a crawl with Screaming Frog or Sitebug. Any internal 404 or redirect chain longer than one hop wastes crawl resources and dilutes link equity.

| Issue | Where to Find It | Fix | |---|---|---| | robots.txt blocking key pages | domain.com/robots.txt | Update disallow rules | | Crawl budget waste | GSC Crawl stats | Noindex thin/filter pages | | Broken internal links | Screaming Frog crawl | Update or remove links | | Redirect chains | Screaming Frog > Response Codes | 301 directly to final URL |

Indexing and Sitemap Health

Crawlability and indexing are different problems. A page can be crawled and still not indexed.

Submit a clean XML sitemap. Your sitemap should only include canonical, indexable URLs. No noindex pages, no redirect URLs, no parameter variants. Submit it through Google Search Console and check for errors under the Index > Sitemaps report.

Use the URL Inspection tool for spot checks. If a key service page isn't appearing in search, inspect it in GSC. Look at "Page is not indexed" reasons — the most common are: duplicate without user-selected canonical, crawled but not indexed, and discovered but not yet indexed.

Check for noindex tags in the wrong places. This happens more than you'd think after a site migration. Use Screaming Frog (Directives column) to scan for pages with noindex that should be live.

Verify canonical tags are self-referencing correctly. Every indexable page should have a canonical tag pointing to itself, or to the version you want indexed if there are near-duplicate variants (e.g., HTTP vs HTTPS, trailing slash vs none).

Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

Page speed directly affects both rankings and conversion rates. A one-second delay in mobile load time can drop conversions by up to 20%.

Run the client's site through PageSpeed Insights and record the Core Web Vitals:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Should be under 2.5 seconds. Usually caused by unoptimized hero images or render-blocking scripts.
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Should be under 200ms. Heavy JavaScript is the typical culprit.
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Should be under 0.1. Often caused by images without defined dimensions or late-loading ads.

Practical fixes to prioritize:

1. Compress and serve images in WebP format
2. Implement lazy loading for images below the fold
3. Eliminate render-blocking resources (defer non-critical JS, inline critical CSS)
4. Use a CDN for static assets
5. Enable browser caching with appropriate cache-control headers

For local business clients on shared hosting, a simple move to a performance-optimized host or a caching plugin like WP Rocket often gets LCP under 2.5 seconds without touching code.

HTTPS, Security, and Technical Signals

HTTPS is a baseline ranking signal. If any client site is still on HTTP, fix it immediately. Check that:

• SSL certificate is valid and not expired
• All pages redirect from HTTP to HTTPS (not just the homepage)
• No mixed content warnings exist (HTTP resources loaded on HTTPS pages)

Use Chrome DevTools > Security tab to check for mixed content. Tools like Why No Padlock can surface insecure elements quickly.

Check hreflang for multilingual sites. If your client serves multiple regions or languages, incorrect hreflang implementation causes pages to rank in the wrong market. Each page needs a self-referencing hreflang tag plus tags for all alternates.

Canonical Tags and Structured Data

Canonical tags prevent duplicate content from diluting rankings. Common scenarios where you need them:

• E-commerce product pages accessible via multiple category paths
• Blog posts with /page/2/ pagination variants
• Pages with UTM parameters generating separate URLs

Audit canonicals with a crawl export. Filter for pages where the canonical URL differs from the crawled URL and verify each case is intentional.

Structured data gives search engines explicit context about your client's business, which matters especially for local SEO. At minimum, implement:

| Schema Type | Best For | Key Properties | |---|---|---| | LocalBusiness | All local clients | Name, address, phone, hours, geo coordinates | | FAQPage | Service/landing pages | Question, accepted answer | | BreadcrumbList | Multi-level sites | Item, position, name | | Review / AggregateRating | Service businesses | Rating value, review count |

Use Google's Rich Results Test to validate markup before publishing. Errors in structured data don't cause penalties, but they do prevent rich result eligibility.

One practical workflow: When onboarding a new local client, run a LocalBusiness schema audit before touching anything else. Missing or incorrect NAP data in schema often conflicts with what's in Google Business Profile, which creates trust signals Google has to reconcile.

Running This Checklist Efficiently

For agencies managing multiple clients, the key is systematizing these checks rather than doing them ad hoc. Build a recurring audit schedule:

• Monthly: GSC index coverage, crawl errors, Core Web Vitals field data
• Quarterly: Full site crawl, structured data review, canonical audit
• On-site changes: Re-run URL inspection, check for new noindex/redirect issues

Document findings in a shared format your clients can understand. Screenshot the before state — when speed improves or indexing issues clear up, you need evidence to show value.

If you're producing monthly SEO reports for clients alongside this technical work, Campaignly's reporting tools let you pull GSC, GA4, and ranking data into branded reports automatically — so you spend less time in spreadsheets and more time fixing the actual issues this checklist surfaces.