Technical SEO Checklist for Business Websites
Great copy can’t rank if crawlers can’t fetch it. Crawl, index, Core Web Vitals, structured data - a checklist before you ship.
Part of the AI Search Visibility series. Start here: SEO vs GEO vs AEO guide.
You can write the best service page in your market and still go nowhere if crawlers hit a soft 404, a blocked script, or a canonical pointing at the wrong host. Run this list before a launch or a redesign.
Crawl and indexation
- HTTPS everywhere. No mixed-content blockers on key templates.
- Canonicals match the preferred URL - including your trailing-slash rule.
- XML sitemap lists indexable URLs only; submit it in Search Console.
robots.txtisn’t blocking CSS/JS the renderer needs, or whole sections you care about.
Page experience
- Watch LCP, INP, and CLS on mobile - that’s where most traffic lives for a lot of businesses.
- Images: sensible formats, real dimensions, lazy-load below the fold.
- Fonts and ads that pop in late are classic CLS sources. Load them deliberately.
Structured data
Add Article, FAQ, Breadcrumb, or SoftwareApplication markup only when it’s true. Validate the JSON locally with JSON Formatter before deploy - broken schema helps nobody.
If you’re redesigning
Map old → new with 301s, keep high-traffic paths when you can, and watch Search Console for soft-404 spikes. Pair this with the website redesign SEO checklist.
FAQ
Do JavaScript SPAs hurt SEO?
They can, if the HTML is empty without JS or routes aren’t prerendered. Marketing and tool landing pages do better as crawlable HTML.