Technical SEO Checklist: Points to Cover

---

When your website is technically sound, increasing organic traffic and ranking at the top of SERP is a piece of cake. Removing duplicate pages, fixing broken links, and ensuring error-free crawling should be on the list to achieve goals. 

Technical SEO isn't a one-day thing. It takes constant effort to keep up with the rankings, credibility, and availability of SERPs. 

Comprehensive List of Technical SEO Checklist

---

Whether it is a small business or big, getting the website technically correct is unavoidable. The below-listed checklist is a holistic SEO strategy that will help in gaining momentum for any website: 

1. Mobile-Friendly

The majority of website visits are from mobile devices. You should focus on maintaining a high-quality user experience. 

Give users the information on the most-active device they use- Mobile. The most scrolled search engine Google officially shifted the focus to mobile-first indexing for all sites. 

Thus, ensure users can easily access a website on mobile by fixing errors and suggestions given on Google search console and other SEO tools. 

Tools to check the mobile-friendliness of the website

• Google's Mobile-Friendly Test Tool: to test the mobile-friendliness of your website

• Pingdom: Get real-time mobile insights and actionable measures. 

• Mobiready: Free tool to test website performance on mobile 

2. No Broken Links

Fix the website's broken internal and external links. A user going back from the website without a handful of information will hurt the SERP's crawlers. Identify these broken links in Site Audit Report and fix them by removing the link or updating the URL. 

These can be easily found via backlink analysis using any SEO tool, as shown in the below screenshot. 

Tools to check broken links

• SEMrush broken links checker: A tool to analyze backlinks and fix the issues properly

• Dead link checker: Free broken link online checker 

• Ahrefs broken link checker: Get the list of broken links, filter, and prioritize fixes.

3. Secured Website

When you visit a website, you expect it to be secure. HTTPS is a way to encrypt data as it travels between your computer and the website's servers. This way, nobody can eavesdrop on the conversation. The result is a better, more secure experience for the user. 

One of the best ways to protect your website from hackers is to use HTTPS instead of HTTP. 

HTTP transmits data as clear text, decoded and used by hackers to steal information. 

On the other hand, HTTPS encrypts data so that it is unreadable to hackers without a decryption key. Because of this, HTTPS is the preferred protocol for transmitting data on the internet.

Tools to make a secured website

• Sitelock SMART: To keep hackers away from your website, it blocks hackers from penetrating through its firewall, as depicted below. 

• TrueCode Static Application Security Testing: Identify critical vulnerabilities and get a secure website

• DDoS Protection: Secure website and mobile apps to ensure your traffic is healthy and uncompromised

Read: Importance of SSL/HTTPS for an Ecommerce Website & Its effects on SEO

4. Plagiarism-Free Content

A website's content varying from its main pages to the internal pages, should be plagiarism-free. 

Duplicate content on the website pushes away the crawlers leaving your website rank nowhere. 

Ensure to index only one page with similar content or add canonical tags to the pages. Add redirections or internal links to establish a relationship between a website and user for a longer time. 

Also, ensure the content isn’t published anywhere else on the web before. You can find it by checking the plagiarism of the content using the free Quetext tool. 

Tools to detect plagiarized content

• Grammarly Plagiarism Checker: Check if your content is plagiarized and grammar is correct or not

• Plagiarism Detector: Detect plagiarism in an instant with this tool

• SmallSEO Plagiarism Tool: Copy and paste your content in this tool to identify plagiarism

5. Website's speed

The faster, the better, ensure that the website speed is quicker and gives a remarkable experience. Google confirmed in 2021 that the website's speed would be a significant factor while boosting any website's ranking.

Tools to check website speed

• Google Pagespeed Insights: A free tool by Google to analyze page speed and provide valuable insights

• GTmetrix: Check site performance and improvement opportunities with this tool

• Pingdom website speed test: Check page load time presented as shown in the screenshot, analyze, and look for bottlenecks.

6. Crawl Errors

Site errors and URL errors are the crawling errors a website needs to keep up with the Technical SEO. Google search console provides a significant report for these errors in the dashboard. It also gives suggestions to fix particular parts of the website. 

Site errors can harm the website's performance and damage online visibility. At the same time, URL errors are the errors on individual pages that may require less attention when compared with site errors. 

Check your search console's dashboard every day. Find and fix such crawl errors to maintain visibility and ranking on the SERP. 

Tools to check site crawl errors

• Google Crawl Stats Report: Check the crawling history on your website with this free tool from Google. The below screenshot shows how it reports the crawl stats of a website. 

• Site checker website crawler: Check crawl errors and top priorities to fix issues in one place

• Screaming frog SEO spider: Improve on-site SEO and get data from crawl reports

7. Update the Redirections

Avoid frequent redirections while developing a website. A website with many redirections loses users' interest and confuses the spiders to crawl your pages. Fix redirection chains and ensure that users land on the desired pages directly.

Tools to check and fix redirected URLs

• Screaming Frog: Check website redirects, crawl errors, and more right here, as shown in the image. 

• Redirect checker: A free tool by SmallSEO tools to check redirects on a website

• Wheregoes: Check where does your link go right here

Technical SEO Checklist - FAQs

---

Q1: What Is Technical SEO? Will It Help In Getting A Higher Ranking On SERP?

A: Technical SEO is the art and science of making your website appear higher up in Google's search results. It helps in increasing the amount of traffic it receives. It encompasses several strategies and techniques which you can use to improve your website's rank in Google's search results.

Q2: What Is A Canonical Tag In Technical SEO?

A: The most reliable way to ensure your content appears in search results is to use the "canonical" tag. This tag specifies which page of your content is the "official" version and should be the main URL for your content.

You should have one canonical tag that points to your homepage's "homepage" page. For subpages, you should have one canonical tag for each page. 

Q3: Is On-Page SEO And Technical SEO The Same?

A: On-page SEO is performed on the website content based on the per-page requirement. Technical SEO is a strategy that helps index and crawls the website to aid ranking in the SERP. 

Key Takeaways

---

• Check and increase the mobile-friendliness of your website

• Ensure there are no broken links on your pages

• See that your website is secure and not prone to hacking

• Eliminate any or all plagiarized content from your website

• Keep a tab on your website speed and performance for the best results

• Check crawl error reports regularly to ensure the website works smoothly

• Take the right actions to deal with redirected URLs on your website