Technical SEO checklist: 15 things that kill your rankings
Fifteen problems we most often find in audits, in order of how much damage they do. Each one comes with how to check it yourself, in five minutes and with no paid tools.
Technical SEO6 min readMiloš
This is the list of what we most often find when we open a site we have not seen before. It is ordered by damage, not by how easy the fix is. Each item comes with how to check it yourself, with no paid tools.
Before you start, open Google Search Console. Half of these checks happen there.
1. Pages that are not in the index
The most expensive problem and the least often noticed. A page that is not in the index cannot appear even in hundredth place.
The check: Search Console, then Page indexing. Compare the number indexed with the number you expect. For an individual page, type site:yoursite.com/path/ into Google.
2. A noindex left over from development
A classic: the site gets developed with a tag saying do not index, and somebody forgot to remove it at launch. The site does not exist for Google for months and everybody wonders why.
The check: open the source of the home page and look for noindex. In WordPress also check Settings, then Reading, then search engine visibility.
3. A robots.txt that blocks too much
One line can close off the whole site. Disallow: / in production is a mistake we see at least twice a year.
The check: open yoursite.com/robots.txt and read it. If you do not understand what it says, that alone is reason enough to have somebody look.
4. Two versions of the same site
With and without www, with http and https, with a trailing slash and without. If all four work and none redirects to one of them, Google sees four sites competing with each other.
The check: type in all four versions and watch whether the address in the browser changes to one single one.
5. Filters creating thousands of empty addresses
The problem of every shop. Colour, size and sorting can generate tens of thousands of nearly identical addresses and use up the entire crawl budget, so Google never reaches the products.
The check: Search Console, then Indexing. If the number of discovered pages is several times the number of products, you have this problem. The solution is on our page about ecommerce SEO.
6. Redirect chains
Address A leads to B, B to C, C to D. Every hop costs time and part of the link strength. It usually builds up after a redesign.
The check: open a few old addresses and watch how many redirects go past before the final page. More than one needs fixing.
7. Slow loading on mobile
Google measures the mobile version, not the desktop one. A site that loads in 1.5 seconds on a desktop can take seven on a phone on an average connection.
The check: PageSpeed Insights, on the mobile tab. Look at the field data, not the lab data.
8. Images nobody resized
A 4 MB photograph straight off a phone, displayed at 400 pixels. The most common single cause of a slow site and the easiest to fix.
The check: right-click an image, open it in a new tab and look at the size. Over 300 KB for an ordinary image on a page is too much.
9. More than one H1, or none
It does not break the site, but it confuses Google and the reader alike. Particularly common with themes that turn every block into a heading.
The check: open the source and count <h1. There should be exactly one.
10. Titles that repeat
Twenty pages with the same title tag means Google does not know which one is for which query. Most often on categories and pagination.
The check: Search Console, then Performance, then look at whether different pages are getting the same queries. More on that in on-page vs off-page SEO.
11. Pages with no internal link at all
If no link on the site leads to a page, Google has trouble finding it, and when it does find it, it treats it as unimportant. Internal linking is the cheapest way there is to lift a page.
The check: pick your most important page and count how many other pages lead to it. If the answer is "only the menu", you have work to do.
12. Content that only appears once a script has loaded
Sites written in JavaScript frameworks can serve an empty page and only then fill in the content. Google usually manages it, but more slowly and less reliably.
The check: turn JavaScript off in your browser and open the page. If it is empty, you have a problem.
13. No structured data
Schema markup does not lift positions by itself, but it produces rich results - ratings, prices, questions - and those produce clicks. For shops it is close to mandatory.
The check: the Google guide and their rich results test tool.
14. A sitemap that lies
A sitemap full of addresses that no longer exist, or missing half the pages that do. Google reads it as a signal of neglect.
The check: open yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml and check five addresses at random. All of them have to return a 200.
15. Hreflang that does not point back
Only for sites with several languages. The tag has to exist on every version and each one has to point at the others. One one-way link and the whole system stops working.
The check: compare the source of two language versions of the same page. Both have to contain both tags. More on our page about multilingual SEO.
The order to fix them in
If you cannot do everything at once, in this order:
- Indexing (items 1, 2, 3) - without this nothing else exists
- Duplicates (4, 5) - they use up the crawl budget
- Speed (7, 8) - the fastest visible win
- Structure (9, 10, 11) - cheap and effective
- The rest
In short
Most technical problems are not hard to fix, they are hard to notice. Go through these fifteen checks and you will find at least three that are costing you traffic.
If you want somebody from outside to go through it, an SEO audit covers 187 checks with the findings ordered by impact and effort. Or book a call and we will look together.