The Technical SEO Audit Checklist

• robots.txt is present, valid, and doesn't accidentally block /, /blog or static assets.
• An XML sitemap exists at /sitemap.xml and is referenced in Google Search Console.
• Every important page is reachable within 3 clicks from the homepage.
• No orphan pages — every URL has at least one internal link pointing to it.
• Soft 404s and 5xx errors are below 1% in Search Console's Pages report.

• One canonical version per page. No mixed www/non-www or http/https.
• Canonical tags self-reference on every indexable page.
• Noindex is removed from anything you actually want ranked (we see this weekly).
• Faceted URLs, search results and tag archives are noindexed or canonicalised properly.

• LCP under 2.5s on mobile for top landing pages.
• INP under 200ms — heavy JS bundles are the usual culprit.
• CLS under 0.1 — set explicit width/height on images and reserve ad slots.
• Images served as AVIF or WebP, lazy-loaded below the fold.
• Fonts loaded with font-display: swap; no more than two families.

• One H1 per page, matching primary intent.
• Titles 50–60 chars, meta descriptions 140–160 chars, unique per URL.
• Headings form a logical outline (H1 → H2 → H3).
• Internal links use descriptive anchor text — never "click here".

• Organization or LocalBusiness schema on the homepage.
• Article schema on every blog post (headline, datePublished, author).
• FAQPage schema where you have genuine Q&A content.
• BreadcrumbList schema on deep routes.
• Validate everything in Google's Rich Results Test before shipping.

• HTTPS everywhere, no mixed content warnings.
• Mobile-first responsive — pass Google's Mobile-Friendly Test.
• 404 page returns a real 404 status (not 200).
• hreflang only if you serve multiple regions/languages — otherwise leave it off.

Disavow files, keyword density tools, "TF-IDF optimisation", and reordering H2s for the 47th time. None of these move the needle until the basics above are clean.