Technical SEO Audit Checklist for Web Developers

Crawlability

• [ ] Robots.txt allows crawling of important pages
• [ ] XML sitemap exists, is valid, and references only indexable URLs
• [ ] No excessive crawl depth (important pages within 3 clicks)
• [ ] No orphan pages (every page has at least one internal link)
• [ ] Server responds within 200ms (TTFB)

Indexability

• [ ] No accidental noindex tags on important pages
• [ ] Canonical tags present and correct on all pages
• [ ] No duplicate titles or descriptions
• [ ] Pagination uses self-referencing canonicals
• [ ] Faceted navigation does not create combinatorial URL explosion

On-Page SEO

• [ ] Unique title tag per page (50-60 chars)
• [ ] Meta description per page (150-160 chars)
• [ ] Single H1 per page containing primary keyword
• [ ] Logical heading hierarchy (H1 > H2 > H3)
• [ ] Image alt text on all meaningful images
• [ ] Internal links with descriptive anchor text

Technical Infrastructure

• [ ] HTTPS everywhere (no mixed content)
• [ ] Proper 301 redirects (no chains or loops)
• [ ] Custom 404 page with navigation
• [ ] Hreflang tags for multilingual content
• [ ] Structured data validates without errors

Performance

• [ ] Core Web Vitals pass (LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1)
• [ ] Gzip or Brotli compression enabled
• [ ] Static assets cached with long max-age
• [ ] Images optimized and served in next-gen formats

Tools for Auditing