A technical SEO checklist is a list of concrete, verifiable points that ensures search engines and AI systems can find, read and evaluate every page of your website. It covers six areas: crawling, indexing, speed, mobile use, structured data and hreflang. If your site fails these basic conditions, good texts often never get the chance to work.
Below are 20 points you can check yourself with free Google tools.
What is technical SEO and how does it work?
Search engines work in three steps: a crawler (Googlebot) finds your pages via links and your sitemap, Google decides which pages to index, and then evaluates each page for content, structure, speed, mobile usability and markup.
Technical SEO keeps those three steps free of errors. It is the foundation for everything else: on-page SEO, links and AI visibility all assume the crawler can reach the page. That is why optimisation starts with the technical foundation.
What should a technical SEO checklist contain?
The 20 points are ordered by area. Each is a common cause of lost visibility.
| Area | What is checked |
|---|---|
| Crawling | How bots reach your pages |
| Indexing | Whether Google stores and uses the pages |
| Speed | Loading time and Core Web Vitals |
| Mobile use | Usability on phones |
| Structured data | Machine-readable metadata |
| hreflang | Language and region signals |
Crawling
- 1. XML sitemap exists, contains only useful pages, and is submitted in Search Console.
- 2. robots.txt does not accidentally block important pages or stylesheets.
- 3. Internal links lead from the homepage to every important page in just a few clicks.
- 4. Redirects are clean: no chains (A to B to C) and no loops.
- 5. HTTPS is active site-wide, with all HTTP addresses redirected.
- 6. Server response time (TTFB) is short, so the page starts loading quickly.
Indexing
- 7. Page indexing in Search Console shows no unexpected pages with the status "Crawled, currently not indexed".
- 8. Canonical tags point to the right version of each page and do not contradict each other.
- 9. 404 and 5xx errors are checked in the page indexing report and fixed or redirected.
- 10. Important pages are not accidentally noindexed (a common mistake after moving from a test environment).
Speed and mobile use
- 11. LCP is good: the main content loads fast, especially on mobile.
- 12. INP is good: the page reacts quickly to taps and clicks.
- 13. CLS is low: nothing jumps around while loading.
- 14. Images are compressed, in modern formats (WebP/AVIF), with fixed dimensions.
- 15. Mobile usability holds up: readable text, easily tappable buttons, no horizontal scrolling.
Structured data and hreflang
- 16. Structured data (Schema.org) is present where it makes sense (Organisation, LocalBusiness, Service) and passes the Rich Results Test without errors.
- 17. hreflang tags are set and return-linked where your site exists in multiple languages.
- 18. Language and region signals are consistent: the HTML lang attribute, URL structure and hreflang fit together.
- 19. Meta title and description are unique per page and not cut off in search results.
- 20. Search Console is set up and checked regularly, not just created once.
Point 16 is closely tied to AI visibility: systems that cannot tell what a page is about have to guess. How structured data works is explained in Structured data (Schema.org) explained.
How do I check the 20 points in practice?
Work through the areas with the free tools: Google Search Console for crawling and indexing (page indexing, robots.txt report, sitemap status), PageSpeed Insights for speed, and the Rich Results Test for structured data. A sensible order: the page indexing report first (points 7 to 10), then speed on your five most important pages (11 to 13), then the rest. Most company websites have two to five clear weaknesses, not twenty.
Does technical SEO also affect AI visibility?
Indirectly, yes. Google's AI features require a page to be indexed and eligible for search results. Structured data helps machines recognise what a page describes. And clearly built, reachable pages are easier to summarise and cite. There are no guarantees. More in What is AI visibility (GEO)?.
Conclusion: check the foundation first, then the content
Technical SEO sounds dry, but it decides whether everything else can work. The 20 points are a good yardstick for your website and for any provider who looks after it. If you want a neutral look at your site's current state, talk to us or read more under SEO and AI visibility.
