A manageable technical SEO checklist for businesses and teams
Published August 20, 2025
We’re all going feral for AEO and GEO these days, I know. But the bottom line is that you still need to follow basic SEO best practices if you want to show up in AI results, and that means you need a technical SEO checklist for your website.
Branded content, content quality, and formatting are all pieces of the puzzle. But technical SEO ensures that AI and search engine crawlers can actually see and index your site. Without the technical side, you are unfortunately writing into the void.
Technical SEO can sound scary for a lot of people. Maybe you’re a one-person content marketing team, and you’re more focused on the editorial side of things. Or you’re a lean marketing team that’s missing that expertise. No matter what, I promise that anyone can do it, and you don’t necessarily need a developer on hand.
Here’s my simple technical SEO checklist to get you started.
Jump to:
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO includes all of the variables that ensure your site is indexable, crawlable, and easy to use. There are factors at play that search and AI engines need to understand your site and surface it for the right queries. Plus, they need to know that they’re offering the best possible result for users. That means they aren’t going to rank sites that load slowly, are difficult to navigate, have broken elements, or are just plain confusing.
Monitor and improve your site speed
The first step you can take to improve your technical SEO is to monitor your site speed. This is an important factor because low page speed leads to higher bounce rates.
Just think about it–if you’re doing research and you land on a page that doesn’t load in a second or two, you’re not waiting around. You’re going to head back to the results page and click on another option.
Google knows this and prioritizes pages that load fast, since they offer a better experience.
Here are some easy ways to make your website faster:
Compress your images and files
Less is more when it comes to plugins
Choose the right server for your needs
2. Optimize your code
Speaking of page speed, bloated code is a huge reason for slow pages. A little cleanup goes a long way, and you don’t even need to understand code to make it happen. Here are some easy wins to implement:
Remove unused CSS and JavaScript: If you’re running a theme or template, it’s likely pulling in way more files than you actually use.
Minify your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript: This basically means optimizing your CSS files and getting rid of unnecessary space and characters. And no, you don’t need to start combing through all your code on your own–tools like Minify or other plugins can take care of this.
Defer non-critical scripts so your important content loads first
Use a lightweight theme or framework: Sometimes a “cleaner” foundation is the fastest fix.
Think of it like decluttering your house: you don’t need to rebuild the walls, but removing the junk in the closets makes everything run smoother.
3. Make sure your site is crawlable and indexable
This is the heart of technical SEO—if search engines can’t access your site, nothing else matters. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for crawlers to understand and store your content.
Crawlability: Make sure important pages aren’t buried too deep within your site. A good rule of thumb is that a page should be reachable within three clicks from the homepage.
Indexing: Use the noindex tag for any pages you don’t want showing up in search (like duplicate thank-you pages or internal dashboards). Otherwise, make sure the pages you do want ranked don’t have indexing blocked.
Robots.txt: This file tells search engines what they should and shouldn’t crawl. It’s powerful, but also easy to misuse. Don’t accidentally block your whole site (yes, it happens more often than you think).
Sitemap: Create and submit an XML sitemap so search engines have a clear map of your site. Tools like Yoast, Rank Math, or Screaming Frog can generate one for you.
4. Pay attention to your site architecture and URLs
Especially if you’ve inherited an old site or have had your site for years, time tends to breed chaos. Confusing redirects, thousands of pages, and URLs longer than the content itself. All of this makes it hard for users and search engines to navigate your site. Here’s what you can do to fix it:
Limit redirect chains and loops: Always maintain an updated record of URLs so you know what’s been redirected. Over time, too many redirects create loops that make your pages harder to rank.
Clean, simple URLs for people and search engines: Don’t use the entire page title in your URL - simplify it to focus on the keyword or topic.
Internal linking: Focus on making your site easier to navigate with clear internal linking and helpful guides, like breadcrumbs.
Pagination: Make sure paginated pages are linked together in a logical sequence so crawlers (and users) can follow along.
5. Design for mobile
Design always goes hand-in-hand with SEO. I remember 10 years ago writing about how important it was for business to focus on mobile design–it felt like we were constantly surfacing the stats showing how the majority of people had shifted to mobile vs. desktop.
Since it’s been 10 years, this isn’t anything new or novel, it’s just table stakes at this point. Your site’s mobile experience should always be your first priority, so take the time ensuring that your navigation is clean, your elements load, and your formatting is mobile-first.
6. Consistently remove broken elements
For this step, I recommend making it an ongoing habit. Otherwise, it can take so much time to comb through your site and fix everything. Over time, it’s inevitable for pages and files to break–things get moved around, and we don’t always think about the consequences.
But any time you change a URL, delete a page, or remove a file, make sure you’re filling that gap with something else. That means redirecting the URLs or changing the links and removing the file embeds, or replacing them.
7. Avoid duplicate content
Duplicate content confuses search engines and splits your ranking power between multiple URLs. It can happen by accident, like when the same product page is reachable through multiple paths, or your site generates print-friendly versions of every page.
To clean this up:
Consolidate pages that cover the same topic into one strong resource.
Use canonical tags to tell search engines which version of a page is the “main” one.
Watch out for URL variations (like http:// vs. https:// or trailing slashes) that accidentally create duplicates.
The goal isn’t just to avoid penalties—it’s to make sure all of your SEO effort is pointing to one authoritative page.
8. Use structured data (schema markup)
Structured data is like giving search engines a cheat sheet for your content. Schema markup tells them exactly what a page is about, whether it’s an article, a product, a recipe, or an FAQ.
Why bother? Because schema can earn you rich results in search: think star ratings, event dates, or FAQ dropdowns right in the SERP. That means more visibility and higher click-through rates.
You don’t have to code it all manually—there are plugins and generators (like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper) that can handle the basics. Start with the schemas most relevant to your site, like articles and blog posts, local business info, products and services, or FAQs.
Think of schema as adding labels to the aisles of your website’s “grocery store.” Without them, Google is wandering around trying to guess what’s where.
9. Make your site easy to navigate
I touched on this a bit when talking about your site architecture and URLs, but for this last step, I want to focus more on your overall site navigation.
Sure, you can always rank for a post or page here and there, but if you want true organic reach, it needs to be clear who your site is for. That means clear navigation, page hierarchy, and CTAs that make sense.
Great navigation also includes accessibility. That means it’s crucial to pay attention to things like your image alt text (and actually use it for accessibility, not keyword stuffing!) and your color contrast. Good navigation also means that someone who doesn’t use a mouse can still easily access your entire site with a keyboard.
Make your technical SEO checklist part of your routine
I know I’m framing this list as a checklist, but these steps should really be routine to any work you do on your website. If you feel like your site is a complete mess, no worries–I offer helpful content strategies that include technical SEO, so you can clean up your content and make sure it’s found online.
But if your site is already pretty healthy, I recommend taking a little bit of time to make these steps more of a habit. Whenever you add a page, consider how it sits within your navigation, how accessible it is, and how it looks on mobile. Consider the URL, internal linking, and indexing. Over time, these habits will become second nature, and you’ll have a thriving, well-trafficked website.
