Technical SEO guide
SEO Audit Checklist
A practical way to review the public signals that affect whether a page can be fetched, understood and discovered.
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- Accessibility and HTTP response Inspect the final public status code. Errors, login walls or bot challenges can leave a page unavailable to crawlers.
- HTTPS Confirm the preferred public URL resolves over HTTPS. Mixed or inconsistent protocol redirects can create unnecessary variants.
- Redirect behavior Follow the path from the requested URL to its final destination. A redirect elsewhere may be intentional, but should match the page’s purpose.
- robots.txt Review the relevant Googlebot or wildcard rule. A block can affect crawling; it does not by itself confirm index status. Use the Robots.txt Checker.
- Meta robots and X-Robots-Tag Look for noindex or none in HTML and response headers. A directive can be deliberate on utility pages, but is a strong signal to review on public landing pages. Check directives.
- Canonical URL Compare the canonical with the final URL. A cross-page or cross-site canonical can be valid, but should be intentional. Check a canonical.
- XML sitemap Check whether a valid sitemap is declared or available. Sitemaps can help discovery and provide a structured list of canonical URLs, especially on larger sites. Check a sitemap.
- Title tag Make sure the initial HTML contains one descriptive title. Very short or vague titles can make page purpose harder to communicate.
- Meta description Review whether it gives visitors a clear page summary. Search engines may choose another snippet, so clarity matters more than a rigid length target.
- Heading structure Check for a meaningful H1 and sensible hierarchy. Multiple headings are not automatically wrong; ambiguity is the problem to solve.
- HTML language Confirm the html lang value matches the page language. This supports interpretation and accessibility.
- Visible server-rendered content Verify that the initial response explains the page without waiting for client-side JavaScript. An almost empty HTML response can be a useful warning signal.
- Image alternative text Review informative images for useful alt text. Decorative images may appropriately use empty alt attributes.
- Internal links Check whether important pages can be reached naturally from related pages. Sparse internal links can make discovery and user navigation weaker.
- Structured data Validate that any JSON-LD is parseable and accurately reflects visible content. It is not a guarantee of rich results.
- Mobile viewport Confirm a responsive viewport meta tag is present, then use real-device testing for usability details this check cannot simulate.
- Performance signals Measure a bounded initial response as a clue, not a substitute for field data or Core Web Vitals.
- Retesting After changing redirects, directives or templates, retest the public deployed URL. Staging results do not prove production behavior.
Use the checklist to prioritize, then verify.
AuditLab reads public technical signals; Search Console remains the place to see Google’s own indexing and performance data.