💡 How to use this checklist: Work through each section systematically. Items marked HIGH PRIORITY have the greatest ranking impact and should be fixed first.

1. Crawlability & Indexation

🕷️ Crawl Health

  • HIGH — XML sitemap exists, is submitted to Google Search Console, and contains only indexable URLs
  • HIGH — robots.txt is correctly configured and not blocking critical pages
  • HIGH — No important pages returning 4xx or 5xx status codes
  • MED — All redirect chains resolved to single hops (301s)
  • MED — No redirect loops present in crawl
  • Crawl budget optimised — paginated pages, faceted navigation, and duplicate content managed correctly
  • URL parameters handled via GSC or canonical tags

🔗 Canonical & Duplicate Content

  • HIGH — Every page has a self-referencing canonical tag
  • HIGH — www vs non-www resolved with 301 redirect to preferred version
  • HIGH — HTTP redirects to HTTPS sitewide
  • MED — Trailing slash consistency enforced across all URLs
  • Paginated pages use rel=next/prev or canonical to first page
  • Thin content pages (under 300 words with no clear purpose) consolidated or noindexed

2. Core Web Vitals & Page Speed

⚡ Performance

  • HIGH — LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) under 2.5 seconds on mobile
  • HIGH — CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) score below 0.1
  • HIGH — INP (Interaction to Next Paint) under 200ms
  • MED — Images served in WebP/AVIF format with lazy loading applied below fold
  • MED — Critical CSS inlined; render-blocking resources deferred
  • Third-party scripts audited and non-essential ones removed or deferred
  • Server response time (TTFB) under 600ms
  • CDN in use for static assets

3. On-Page SEO Fundamentals

📝 Meta & Headings

  • HIGH — Every page has a unique title tag under 60 characters containing the primary keyword
  • HIGH — Every page has a unique meta description under 160 characters with a clear value proposition
  • HIGH — One H1 per page containing the primary keyword naturally
  • MED — Heading hierarchy logical (H1 → H2 → H3, no skipped levels)
  • Open Graph tags present (og:title, og:description, og:image) on all indexable pages
  • Twitter card meta tags present

🔍 Content & Keywords

  • HIGH — Primary keyword appears in title, H1, first 100 words, and URL
  • MED — Semantic keyword variants and LSI terms used naturally throughout content
  • MED — Internal links from topically related pages pointing to target pages
  • Images have descriptive alt text containing relevant keywords where natural
  • URL slugs are short, descriptive, and contain primary keyword (no dates, no stop words)

4. Structured Data & Schema

🗂️ Schema Markup

  • HIGH — Organization schema on homepage with name, logo, contactPoint, sameAs (social profiles)
  • MED — BlogPosting or Article schema on all blog posts with author, datePublished, dateModified
  • MED — BreadcrumbList schema on all inner pages
  • FAQPage schema on FAQ sections (significant CTR improvement)
  • Product schema on e-commerce product pages with price, availability, reviews
  • LocalBusiness schema for businesses with physical locations
  • All schema validated through Google's Rich Results Test tool

5. Mobile & Accessibility

📱 Mobile Optimisation

  • HIGH — Site passes Google's Mobile-Friendly Test
  • HIGH — Viewport meta tag set correctly on all pages
  • MED — Tap targets minimum 48px × 48px with adequate spacing
  • MED — No horizontal scrolling on mobile at 375px viewport width
  • Font size minimum 14px on mobile
  • Intrusive interstitials absent on mobile (Google penalises these)

Running This Audit Systematically

Work through each section using Screaming Frog (crawl issues), Google Search Console (indexation, Core Web Vitals), Ahrefs (backlinks, broken links), and Google PageSpeed Insights (performance). Prioritise HIGH items first — they'll move rankings fastest.

If you'd rather have our team run a full 87-point audit on your site and deliver a prioritised fix list, our SEO service includes this as standard for every new client.