Technical SEO is the plumbing of search. When it works, nobody notices. When it breaks, great content and strong links stop paying off. For a typical business website (a few dozen to a few hundred pages), the list of things that genuinely matter is shorter than most audits suggest.

1. Can Google find and index your pages?

Start here, because nothing else matters if your pages are not in the index.

  • Verify your domain in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and submit an XML sitemap.
  • Open the Pages (indexing) report. Look for important pages listed as "Crawled, currently not indexed", "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" or "Blocked by robots.txt".
  • Check robots.txt does not block important sections, CSS or JavaScript.
  • Make sure every important page has a self-referencing canonical tag and returns a 200 status.
  • Pick one version of your domain (https and either www or non-www) and 301-redirect the others to it.

2. Is your site fast for real users?

Google's Core Web Vitals measure loading, responsiveness and visual stability using data from real Chrome users. The "good" thresholds are:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5 seconds.
  • Interaction to Next Paint (INP) under 200 milliseconds.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) under 0.1.

The usual fixes, in order of impact: serve images in modern formats (WebP or AVIF) at the right size; preload the main hero image; remove or delay unused scripts, chat widgets and tracking tags; use a good host with a CDN; reserve space for images and embeds so the layout does not jump. Check the field data in Search Console, not just a lab score.

3. Is your site architecture clear?

  • Every important page should be reachable within three clicks of the homepage.
  • Give each service and each location its own page, rather than one page that lists everything.
  • Use descriptive internal links ("our Miami web design service") instead of "click here".
  • Keep URLs short, readable and stable. Changing them without redirects throws away history.

4. Do your pages say clearly what they are?

  • One unique title tag per page, ideally under 60 characters, with the main topic first.
  • A unique meta description under about 160 characters that reads like an advert.
  • One H1 per page that matches the page's purpose.
  • Descriptive alt text on meaningful images.

5. Structured data

Structured data (schema.org markup in JSON-LD) tells search engines and AI tools exactly what a page describes. For most businesses the useful types are:

  • Organization / LocalBusiness on the homepage, with name, logo, contact details, founder and official profiles.
  • Service on service pages.
  • FAQPage where you have genuine questions and answers.
  • Article with an author on blog posts.
  • BreadcrumbList for multi-level sites.

Validate it with Google's Rich Results Test. Only mark up what is actually visible on the page.

6. Mobile and accessibility basics

Google indexes the mobile version of your site. Check that text is readable without zooming, buttons are easy to tap, nothing scrolls sideways, and forms work on a phone. Accessibility improvements such as proper headings, labels and contrast also tend to help SEO.

7. Security and hygiene

  • HTTPS everywhere, with no mixed-content warnings.
  • No leftover staging sites, test pages or old login scripts publicly reachable.
  • A custom 404 page that helps people find what they wanted.
  • Monitor for hacked spam pages; they are more common on unmaintained WordPress sites than most owners think.

The order to work in: a 30-minute audit

You do not need an enterprise crawler to find the problems that cost you traffic. Work in this order, because each step depends on the one before it:

  1. Google Search Console, Pages report. Look at "Not indexed" and read the reasons. "Crawled, currently not indexed" on important pages usually means thin or duplicate content. "Blocked by robots.txt" or "Excluded by noindex" on a page you want ranked is a configuration mistake and the cheapest win you will find.
  2. URL Inspection on your top five pages. Confirm Google can fetch them, which canonical it chose, and that the rendered page shows your real content and not an empty shell.
  3. PageSpeed Insights. Read the real-user (Chrome UX Report) data first and the lab score second. A perfect lab score on a page real visitors find slow is not a pass.
  4. A site crawl. Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) will list broken links, redirect chains, missing titles, duplicate titles and orphan pages in minutes.
  5. Rich Results Test. Paste your homepage and a service page and confirm your structured data parses without errors.

Technical fixes that move revenue, not just scores

Technical SEO is only worth the time when it changes who can find you or how fast they can act. For a local or service business that usually means three things:

  • One page per service and location you want to win. If your plumbing, drain and water-heater work all sit on one page, Google has to guess which query it answers. Separate, specific pages with a clear title and H1 rank better and convert better. See how we structure this in our SEO and local SEO work.
  • Fast, stable mobile pages. Most local searches happen on a phone. A page that jumps around while it loads (high CLS) or ignores the first tap (high INP) loses the call or the booking.
  • Clean tracking. If your form submissions and calls are not recorded as conversions, you cannot tell which fix helped. Pair this checklist with our guide to connecting ad platforms to real revenue.

Common mistakes we find on business websites

  • A site left on "discourage search engines" or a staging noindex after launch.
  • Redirect chains after a redesign: old URL to another old URL to the new one. Each hop wastes crawl effort and dilutes link signals. Point every old URL straight at its final destination.
  • Duplicate versions of the site (http and https, with and without www, with and without a trailing slash) that all return a 200 instead of redirecting to one canonical version.
  • Important content that only loads after a click or script, so crawlers see a nearly empty page.
  • Images that are uploaded at camera size. A 4 MB hero image is the most common reason a good page fails Largest Contentful Paint.

AI assistants rely on the same crawlable, well-structured pages, so this groundwork also feeds getting cited in AI search.

What you can safely ignore

  • Keyword density targets and "SEO scores" from plugins.
  • The meta keywords tag. Google has ignored it for well over a decade.
  • Chasing a perfect 100 in a lab speed test at the expense of real user experience.
  • Mass-producing near-identical location pages with only the city name changed.

How often to check

Run a light check monthly (Search Console errors, Core Web Vitals, new 404s) and a full audit once or twice a year, or before and after any redesign or migration. Migrations are where most sites lose rankings, so plan redirects before launch, not after.

Frequently asked questions

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the work that lets search engines find, crawl, render and index your pages, and lets real visitors load them quickly on any device. It covers indexing, site speed, site architecture, structured data, mobile usability and security. It does not cover writing content or earning links, although both depend on it.

What are the Core Web Vitals thresholds?

Google's "good" thresholds, measured on real users at the 75th percentile, are Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. INP replaced First Input Delay as the responsiveness metric in March 2024.

How often should I run a technical SEO audit?

Check Search Console monthly for new indexing errors, Core Web Vitals regressions and 404s. Run a full audit once or twice a year, and always before and after a redesign or migration, because migrations are where most sites lose rankings.

Do I need a technical SEO audit if my site is small?

Yes, but it is quick. A site under 50 pages rarely has crawl-budget problems, so the audit focuses on indexing, speed, clear page titles and structured data. Small sites often have the most to gain because a single stray noindex tag can hide the whole site.