Home / Resources / Technical SEO checklist
SEO · TechnicalTechnical SEO checklist: what to fix first
Most technical SEO audits return forty items with no sense of priority — so nothing gets fixed. Here's the checklist in the order that actually moves rankings, from whether Google can even find the page down to polish.
Tier 1: crawlability and indexing (fix these first)
| Check | Why it blocks everything else |
|---|---|
| robots.txt not blocking key pages | A blocked page can't rank, no matter how good the content is |
| XML sitemap submitted and current | Helps crawlers discover pages faster, especially on newer sites |
| No orphan pages | Pages with zero internal links are hard for crawlers to find at all |
| Canonical tags correct | Wrong canonicals can make Google index the wrong version, or none |
Tier 2: Core Web Vitals and mobile
Once Google can find and index your pages, page experience becomes a ranking factor. Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift and Interaction to Next Paint all matter, and mobile performance matters more than desktop for most Indian traffic — see our deeper dive on website speed and conversion in India.
Tier 3: structured data
Schema markup doesn't directly boost rankings, but it helps search engines (and increasingly AI engines) understand your content correctly — Organization, Product, FAQ and LocalBusiness schema are the highest-leverage starting points. See our entity SEO guide for how this feeds AI visibility too.
Tier 4: on-page polish
- Title tags and meta descriptions unique per page, not templated
- Heading hierarchy logical (one H1, nested H2/H3)
- Image alt text descriptive, not keyword-stuffed
- Internal linking connecting related pages — see our internal linking guide
The 80/20 of technical SEO: Tier 1 issues alone can be the difference between a page ranking at all and never appearing. Fix crawlability before spending a rupee on content.
The full build
See our SEO practice — technical SEO audits, fixes and Search Console hygiene as a standalone service or bundled into a retainer.
Want the number for your business?
A free audit tells you where your funnel leaks and which fix pays back fastest — a number, not a pitch.
Get my free audit →