The 47-Point Technical SEO Checklist Every Site Needs in 2025

Technical SEO is the foundation every other SEO tactic rests on. You can produce the best content in your niche and earn excellent backlinks — but if your site has crawlability issues, poor page speed, or broken indexation, Google will not reward you as much as it should.

1. Crawlability & Indexation (10 checks)

Verify robots.txt is not blocking critical pages. Confirm your XML sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console and returns no errors. Check for crawl errors in GSC Coverage report. Audit canonical tags — ensure every page either is canonical or points to the correct canonical. Confirm noindex tags are intentional and not accidentally applied. Review crawl depth — key pages should be reachable in 3 clicks or fewer. Check internal linking for orphan pages. Ensure pagination is handled correctly with rel=next/prev or infinite scroll handled via JS. Review redirect chains — keep them to a single hop. Check for 4XX and 5XX errors in server logs.

2. Core Web Vitals (8 checks)

Measure Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — target under 2.5 seconds. Measure Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — target under 200ms. Measure Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — target under 0.1. Optimise hero images with next-gen formats (WebP/AVIF) and explicit width/height attributes. Defer non-critical JavaScript. Preload the LCP image. Review third-party script loading — tag managers, chat widgets, and analytics are frequent CLS offenders. Use CDN for static assets.

3. Structured Data & Schema (7 checks)

Implement Organisation schema on every page. Add WebPage or specific page-type schema (AboutPage, ContactPage) to appropriate pages. Add FAQPage schema to all FAQ sections. Implement Service schema on all service pages. Add BreadcrumbList schema to all inner pages. Use Review/AggregateRating schema if you have genuine customer reviews. Validate all schema with Google's Rich Results Test.

4. Site Architecture & URLs (6 checks)

Ensure URL structure is logical, hierarchical, and keyword-informed. Confirm HTTPS sitewide with no mixed content warnings. Check for www vs non-www redirect consistency. Review pagination URLs for duplicate content risk. Confirm hreflang is correctly implemented for multi-language sites. Audit parameter handling in GSC — ensure tracking parameters are not creating duplicate pages.

5. Page Speed & Performance (8 checks)

Run Lighthouse in incognito mode — target 90+ on Performance for desktop. Compress all images below 150KB where possible. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Enable browser caching with long cache TTLs. Implement lazy loading for below-the-fold images. Remove render-blocking resources. Enable Gzip or Brotli compression on your server. Evaluate your hosting — shared hosting is often the single biggest bottleneck.