Technical SEO Checklist: 25 Points for Corporate Websites

Technical SEO is the infrastructure work that lets search engines crawl your website without problems, understand it correctly and add it to their index. However good your content is, if Google can't reach the page, treats the wrong address as the main version or the page breaks on mobile, that content won't get the place it deserves in search results. In this post, you'll find a practical 25-point technical SEO checklist for corporate websites.

We covered the big picture of SEO and its technical, content and authority pillars in our post What is SEO? This technical SEO checklist, in turn, covers the technical pillar in detail.

Crawling and indexing

1. Verify Search Console and submit the sitemap

Google Search Console is a free tool that shows how your site is doing in Google. Verify the property, submit your XML sitemap and review the "Pages" (indexing) report regularly. As a result, this is where you'll spot most technical problems first.

2. The XML sitemap only includes pages you want indexed

Leave out addresses that are noindex, that redirect or that return errors. A single sitemap file can hold at most 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed. For this reason, larger sites use a sitemap index. Also, Google ignores the priority and changefreq values in a sitemap, so instead of fiddling with them, make sure the lastmod date is accurate.

3. robots.txt doesn't block important sections

robots.txt determines which addresses crawlers may visit. However, one wrong line can block the site's CSS and JavaScript files or an entire section. Google needs access to these files to render the page correctly.

4. Hide pages with noindex, not robots.txt

According to Google, robots.txt is not a way to keep a page out of Google. For that, you use a noindex tag or password protection. Note: for Google to see the noindex tag, robots.txt must not block the page. Otherwise, Google never sees the tag, and the page can still appear in results thanks to links from other sites.

5. Keep thin and utility pages out of the index

Pages that offer users no value as a search result, such as on-site search results, "thank you" pages, empty tag archives, and cart and account pages, should be noindex. In addition, you should decide deliberately which archives to index, based on the site's structure.

6. Turn off "Discourage search engines" on the live site

In WordPress, developers often check the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" option on the Settings → Reading screen during development and then forget it at launch. For this reason, it is one of the first things to check after going live. The reverse also applies: don't leave a test (staging) copy open to indexing.

Site structure and URLs

7. Choose a single preferred domain version

The four versions of the site, http and https, with and without www, should all point to a single version with a permanent (301) redirect. Otherwise, the same content shows up at four different addresses. We explained why HTTPS is essential in our post on the difference between HTTP and HTTPS.

8. Canonical tags point to the right address

The canonical tag (rel="canonical") tells Google which of several very similar pages is the main version. According to Google, redirects are the strongest signal for this, and the canonical tag is also a strong signal. In general, each page should point to itself as canonical. Addresses with filter or tracking parameters should point to the main page.

9. URLs are readable and permanent

Descriptive addresses such as /services/concrete-cutting/ tell both users and search engines what the page is about. Once you set the URL structure, don't change it without good reason. If it has to change, redirect the old address to the new one.

10. Set up permanent redirects correctly, with no chains

Redirect pages that have moved or merged to the new address with a 301. According to Google, 301s and other permanent redirects don't cause a loss of ranking value (PageRank). Also, reduce redirect chains such as A → B → C to a single step (A → C).

11. Error pages return a real 404

If a deleted page shows a "not found" message while the server returns a 200 (success) code, Search Console reports it as a "soft 404." Instead, removed pages should return a 404 or 410, and if a page replaces them, they should redirect there.

12. Every page has a unique title and description

The page title and meta description are the first text users see in search results. For this reason, dozens of pages with the same title confuse both users and Google. We explained what meta tags do in our post on metadata.

13. The heading hierarchy makes sense

Each page should have one main heading (H1) that states its topic, followed by subheadings in order (H2, H3). On sites designed with page builders, however, a common mistake is making every piece of text an H1 or H2 so it looks big.

14. Make important pages reachable through internal links

"Orphan" pages that get no links from any other page stay weak, even if they are in the sitemap. So service pages should get links from the menu, related posts and the home page. Likewise, link text should describe the topic of the page it leads to.

15. There is a breadcrumb trail

A breadcrumb is a path line such as "Home › Services › Web Design" that shows visitors where they are on the site. It helps users find their way and also tells Google about the site's hierarchy. You can support it with structured data (BreadcrumbList).

Performance and mobile

16. All resources load over HTTPS

Even if the page opens over HTTPS, if an image, font or script inside it loads over http://, the browser shows a "mixed content" warning or blocks the resource. For example, old http:// addresses left in the database after a site move are a common cause.

17. The mobile version carries the same content as desktop

In October 2023, Google announced that the move to mobile-first indexing was complete. In other words, Google crawls your site primarily as a smartphone would. As a result, content, links or structured data you hide on mobile may also be missing from the index.

18. Monitor Core Web Vitals

Track LCP (loading), INP (interactivity) and CLS (visual stability) in the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console and in PageSpeed Insights. We explained the thresholds and ways to improve them in our post on Core Web Vitals.

19. Optimize images

Serve images at the size they appear on screen, in modern formats such as WebP or AVIF, with width and height values and descriptive alternative (alt) text. However, don't leave the main image at the top of the screen to lazy loading. We covered choosing formats in our post on lossy and lossless compression.

20. Content built with JavaScript is visible to Google

If your site builds menus, tabs or product lists with JavaScript, make sure Google can see that content. You can check by looking at the page's "rendered HTML" in Search Console's URL Inspection tool or in the Rich Results Test. After all, Google can't index content that doesn't appear in the rendered HTML.

Structured data and language

21. Define Organization and site schema

The Organization and WebSite schemas describe the organization's name, the logo and the site itself to search engines in a machine-readable way. We explained what structured data is and which types exist in our post on structured data (schema).

22. Use schema suited to the content type

For example, you can use Article for blog posts, BreadcrumbList for breadcrumbs and LocalBusiness for local businesses. We covered the local business side in our post on local SEO. One caveat: not every schema type earns a rich result in search. Since August 2023, for instance, Google has shown FAQ (FAQPage) rich results only for well-known government and health websites. In June 2025, Google also announced that it would drop search result support for some less-used structured data types. Use schema to describe the page correctly, not to "win stars or boxes."

23. Structured data is error-free

Check the schema's syntax and required fields with Google's Rich Results Test and the enhancement reports in Search Console. In addition, the information in the schema must match the content visible on the page.

24. Set up hreflang correctly on multilingual sites

On sites with more than one language version, such as Turkish and English, hreflang tags point to each page's equivalent in the other language. According to Google, these links must be reciprocal: if two pages don't point to each other, Google ignores the tags. Each language version should have its own address and carry content in its own language.

Monitoring

25. Run a technical check after every update

A theme, plugin or server change can unexpectedly alter redirects, canonical tags, robots.txt or the sitemap. Therefore, after major changes, check the indexing report and sitemap in Search Console, plus the URL Inspection results for a few important pages. The healthiest approach is to make this check part of a regular website maintenance plan.

Technical SEO checklist summary

Our experience

Our own site, artsution.com.tr, runs on WordPress, and we manage a large part of its technical SEO with Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO generates the Organization, WebSite and WebPage pieces as a single connected schema graph (@graph) and adds pieces such as Article for blog posts and BreadcrumbList for breadcrumbs to that graph. We also generate the XML sitemaps with Yoast and submit the index file to Search Console. Finally, we write page titles and meta descriptions individually for each page and project.

The site is bilingual (Turkish and English), and we built this structure with Polylang. Polylang adds the hreflang tags between language versions itself. Our job, then, is to check that each page really links to its equivalent in the other language.

We move sites from the local environment to the live server with All-in-One WP Migration. Our go-live checklist always includes checking permalinks, the switch to https addresses and Yoast's reindexing. On the performance side, we use LiteSpeed Cache. We improved our mobile results with CSS combining, locally hosted fonts and small font subsets for Turkish characters. We keep the "Guest Optimization" feature, which delays JavaScript until the first interaction, turned off because it can break menus and forms.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

Technical SEO removes the obstacles in front of your content: Google can reach your page, picks the right version, sees it fully on mobile and understands what you are saying. In short, this 25-point technical SEO checklist is not a list to check once and forget, but a guide to come back to after every significant change.

If you'd like a technical SEO review of your site, or want your new site built to meet these points from the start, take a look at our web design and WordPress development services, or contact us.

Update on FAQ rich results