The Technical SEO Checklist We Run Before Every Launch

Content isn't the bottleneck most sites think it is

We get a lot of clients who come to us convinced they need "more SEO content." Often, the real problem is that Google can't properly crawl, render, or understand the site they already have. No amount of blog posts fixes that.

Before we touch content strategy, every site we launch goes through the same technical pass. Here's what's on it.

## Crawlability & indexing

- **robots.txt isn't accidentally blocking the site.** This sounds obvious, but staging-to-production migrations break this constantly.

- **XML sitemap exists, is submitted, and only lists indexable pages.** A sitemap full of 404s or noindex pages actively hurts you.

- **Canonical tags point to the right URL** on every page — especially with/without trailing slashes and www/non-www variants.

- **No orphan pages.** Every important page should be reachable through internal links, not just the sitemap.

## Performance

- **Core Web Vitals pass on mobile,** not just desktop. Google's index is mobile-first — a fast desktop site with a sluggish mobile version still underperforms.

- **Images are served in modern formats** (WebP/AVIF) and sized appropriately, not scaled down in the browser from a 4000px original.

- **Render-blocking scripts are deferred** so the page becomes interactive quickly, not just visually complete.

## On-page fundamentals

- **Unique title tags and meta descriptions** on every page — not a templated pattern that produces near-duplicates.

- **One clear H1 per page** that matches search intent, with a logical heading hierarchy beneath it.

- **Structured data (schema markup)** for the content type that matters — Product, Article, LocalBusiness, FAQ — so search engines can generate rich results.

## Site architecture

- **URL structure is flat and readable.** `/services/web-development/` beats `/page?id=42` every time, both for users and crawlers.

- **Internal linking supports your priority pages.** If your most important service page only gets linked from the footer, that's a signal problem.

- **HTTPS everywhere, no mixed content warnings.**

## What we don't do

We don't chase every item on generic 200-point SEO checklists floating around the internet. Most of those items have negligible or zero ranking impact and just pad out an audit report. The list above is the stuff that actually correlates with visibility — everything else is secondary.

Get the technical foundation right first. Content strategy built on top of a broken foundation is just expensive noise.