Hey, are you looking for the complete Technical SEO checklist? If yes. Then read this post till the end.
If you want to rank high on Search engines like Google and Bing then you need to fix the technical issues of your website. In this article, I have listed the complete technical SEO checklist that everyone can follow.
So, without wasting more time let’s start.
Elements of Technical SEO Checklist
- Identify and Fix crawl errors for better rankings.
- Plan your website structure.
- Make your website Mobile friendly.
- Use SSL.
- Improve your website loading speed.
- Fix Broken links.
- Find and Fix Duplicate content issues.
- Use 301 redirect to send all traffic to one domain.
- Set up Structure data.
- Check your XML Sitemap.
- Fix 404 pages on your website
1. Identify and Fix crawl errors for better rankings
Crawling errors are the problem that search engines face to view your web page. If you want to rank high on SERP then you need to find and solve these errors so that search engines can crawl your web pages.
To find crawl errors go to Google search console then select your property then go to coverage reports. Here you can see all the crawl errors that your website has.
2. Plan your website structure
If you have a new website then it is super important to plan your website structure. With the help of a proper website structure search engines like Bing and Google can easily navigate and crawl your website. To do that use proper internal linking within web pages so that website visitors and crawlers can easily navigate between web pages and posts.
3. Make your website Mobile friendly
If you want more traffic, leads, and conversions then you should make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. According to the “Mobile First index” if your website is not mobile friendly then it won’t rank high on SERPs.
To check the mobile-friendliness of your website you can use the mobile-friendliness test. To do that simply put the URL of your website and check.
Simple.
4. Use SSL
According to John Muller HTTPS is a lightweight ranking factor. Having an HTTPS is great for users. So if you are not using an SSL certificate then it’s time to make the change.
Having an SSL certificate is very important because it protects your user’s data. If you have a lead generation website or website where you are selling something and your website asks for payment details or passwords then it is very important to have an SSL Certificate.
5. Improve your website loading speed
Page speed is one of the most important ranking factors which means if your website doesn’t load fast then it won’t rank high on SERPs. If you want to check your website speed then you can use the Google Page Speed Insights tool.
This tool will give you information about how fast your website loads on Desktop and Mobile. It will also offer suggestions that you can implement to improve your website speed. You can also use tools like Pingdom and GTmatrix. These tools only offer stats for one page at a time.
6. Fix Broken links
If you have broken links on your website then you need to fix them as soon as possible because broken links can hurt your SEO.
To find broken links on your website you can use tools like Ahrefs Webmaster and DrLinkCheck.com these tools are free to use. Now to find broken links scan your website from these tools, after scanning these tools will provide you the links of broken links.
7. Find and Fix Duplicate content issues
If you have an e-commerce website then you might face this issue a lot. If your website has duplicate content on multiple pages then you won’t be able to rank high on SERPs.
To find duplicate content on your website you can use tools like the Ahrefs Webmaster tool. To use this tool scan your website then click on the duplicate content tab and then click on the issue tab here you will get the details about the pages on your website that have duplicate content.
To solve this problem you can use canonical tags.
8. Use 301 redirect to send all traffic to one domain
If multiple versions of your domain such as
- http://yourwebsite.com/
- http://www.yourwebsite.com/
- https://yourwebsite.com/
- https://www.yourwebsite.com/
Are not redirecting on the fourth version then it can lead to crawling, Indexing, and security issues. To fix this issue you need to use 301 redirects. After that first three URLs will redirect to the fourth version. Now to check if everything is working properly or not you can use tools like httpstatus.io.
Note: If you are using an SSL Certificate then the accessible version of your website should be the HTTPS version.
9. Set up Structure data
With the help of schema data, your web pages can show in the form of rich results, and because of rich results, your organic click-through rate can improve dramatically.
To create structured data you can use a good Schema markup generator tool. To do that open the tool next select the type of schema you want to generate then add the necessary information after that you will get the structure data code that you can put on the web page of your website.
10. Check your XML Sitemap
If you have a big website then sometimes it might become very hard for you to keep the track of all your web pages.
Lots of website owners have pages with 301 and 404 status codes. Always add only live pages on your sitemap so that search engines can crawl your web pages properly.
To create an XML sitemap for your website you can use tools like XML sitemap generator. Or if you are using WordPress CMS then you can also use Yoast SEO Plug-in. It will automatically generate the XML sitemap for your website.
11. Fix 404 pages on your website
If your website has lots of broken links then it is very bad for the user experience. Broken links make crawling harder for search engine crawlers. That’s why it is always recommended that you should perform a broken links audit of your website after every three months.
So, that’s it from this blog. I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked this article on the complete Technical SEO checklist then please share it with your friends and social media followers. Now if you have any confusion related to this article then please let me know in the comments section down below.
Also Read – On-Page SEO Checklist