SEO
Technical SEO checklist for small business websites
A practical technical SEO checklist covering crawling, indexing, speed, mobile, structured data, redirects and more.
Crawling and indexing
- XML sitemap submitted in Search Console
- robots.txt not blocking important pages
- No important pages marked noindex by mistake
- Search Console coverage report free of major errors
One version of every page
- HTTPS everywhere
- www and non-www resolve to one version with a 301 redirect
- Trailing slashes handled consistently
- Canonical tags pointing to the right URL
- Query-string duplicates (like ?ref=) canonicalised
Speed and mobile
- Core Web Vitals in the ‘good’ range on mobile
- Images sized and compressed
- No zoom blocking in the viewport tag
Structure
- Logical URL structure (for example /services/seo)
- One H1 per page and a sensible heading outline
- Internal links to your most important pages
- Breadcrumbs on deeper pages
Structured data
- Organization or LocalBusiness on the site
- Service, FAQ, Article and Breadcrumb markup where relevant
- Validated with Google’s Rich Results Test
Housekeeping
- No broken internal links
- No redirect chains or loops
- Custom 404 page that helps people find their way
Frequently asked questions
What is technical SEO?
Making sure search engines can access, crawl, render and understand your website efficiently.
Should my site be www or non-www?
Either is fine. What matters is choosing one and redirecting the other to it.
How often should I do a technical SEO audit?
A full audit once or twice a year, with monitoring in Search Console in between.
