Technical SEO is the part of your site visitors never see. It covers whether Google can reach your pages and read them, whether it can tell which version of each page is the main one, and whether the pages load fast on a phone. If something is wrong here, good content works hard for nothing.
We use this checklist to audit company websites before doing any content work. You can check most items yourself with free tools, and a few need a developer to fix.
- AccessHTTPS and a single version of the site
- Crawlingrobots.txt and the sitemap
- Indexingcanonical and noindex in the right places
- Experiencespeed and mobile
- Maintenanceworking links and correct redirects
Does your site run on HTTPS with a single version?
The site should open on https with a valid certificate, and every other version should send visitors there with a permanent 301 redirect. Try typing your domain four ways: http and https, with and without www. All four should end up at the same URL.
- The certificate renews automatically and does not depend on someone remembering.
- No images or files load over http inside https pages.
- The redirect takes one step, with no chain passing through three URLs.
What should you check in your robots.txt file?
Open your domain followed by /robots.txt. Make sure it does not block the whole site, and that it does not block the CSS and JavaScript files Google needs to render the page the way a visitor sees it. Add a line that points to your sitemap URL.
Keep in mind that this file manages crawling. It does not hide pages from search results; for a page you want kept out of search, use noindex. If you want AI tools to read your site, check the names of their crawlers as we explain in showing up in AI answers.
What makes an XML sitemap correct?
A sitemap is an XML file that lists the pages you want indexed. A good one contains only full canonical URLs, on https and in the version you chose, with no redirected or deleted pages and nothing marked noindex.
- A single file is limited to 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed. Anything larger gets split into several files.
- Google ignores priority and changefreq, and uses lastmod if it is consistently accurate.
- The sitemap updates automatically when you publish a new page, and it has been submitted in Search Console.
What do website speed and Core Web Vitals require?
Google measures page experience with three metrics based on real visitor data. LCP measures how quickly the largest element appears, and the target is within 2.5 seconds. INP measures how quickly the page responds to a tap or click, and the target is under 200 milliseconds. CLS measures how much elements shift around while loading, and the target is under 0.1.
Good scores do not guarantee higher rankings, but a slow site loses visitors before they read anything. Check the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console or use PageSpeed Insights. We go through the common causes in why your website is slow on mobile. Sometimes the server itself is the cause, and then how to choose web hosting will help.
How do you find and fix broken links?
A broken link leads to a 404 page, whether it is an internal link on your site or a link from another site to a page you deleted. Crawl your site with a tool like Screaming Frog (the free version is enough for small sites), and review the 404 pages in the indexing report.
- Correct internal links so they point straight to the right page.
- A page that moved to a new URL needs a 301 redirect to it.
- A deleted page with no replacement can stay a 404. That is normal behavior.
- Avoid redirecting every deleted page to the home page, since Google may treat those as pages that do not exist.
What about canonical tags, mobile and structured data?
Every page needs a canonical tag pointing to its correct URL, its own title and description, and one clear H1 heading. Since Google indexes the mobile version of your site, the same content has to appear on mobile and desktop, with no sections dropped from the mobile version.
Be careful with sites that build their content with JavaScript after the page loads. Google can render JavaScript, but that can be delayed, and some AI crawlers do not render it at all. Open the URL Inspection tool, test the live page, and make sure the text and links are in the HTML that reached Googlebot.
Add the structured data that fits your type of site, such as Organization and BreadcrumbList, as we explain in our guide to schema structured data.
Can you run a technical SEO audit yourself, or do you need a specialist?
Anyone can do the audit itself by following this list alongside Search Console. Fixing things is another matter. Editing robots.txt or submitting a sitemap is easy, but speeding up a theme or planning redirects for a large site needs a developer who knows what they are doing.
We run this audit and fix what it turns up as part of our search and AI visibility service. Send us your website address, and we will send you a list of what we found, ordered by priority.
Questions our partners ask
Does HTTPS improve rankings?
Google uses HTTPS as one signal within page experience, and its effect on rankings is small. The bigger reason is that browsers warn visitors about insecure sites, which drives customers away before rankings even come into it.
Do I need to set priority and changefreq in my sitemap?
No. Google says it ignores both values. The one that helps is lastmod, as long as it is accurate and reflects the last meaningful change to the page.
How often should I run a technical check on my site?
A full check every few months, and after any redesign or change of theme or hosting. In between, keep an eye on Search Console alerts.
Written by the Visual Innovate team, the people who build, host and follow up systems, websites and apps for our clients in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.
