Technical SEO Audit Checklist for New Websites
Before focusing on content and links, ensure your website's technical foundation is solid. This checklist covers crawlability, indexability, speed, and structured data.
Key Takeaways
- Search engines must be able to discover and access your pages.
- Verify that internal linking creates paths from the homepage to every important page within 3-4 clicks.
- ## Crawlability Search engines must be able to discover and access your pages.
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Crawlability
Search engines must be able to discover and access your pages. Check robots.txt to ensure important pages aren't blocked. Submit an XML sitemap through Google Search Console. Verify that internal linking creates paths from the homepage to every important page within 3-4 clicks.
Indexability
Not every page should be indexed. Use noindex for pagination pages, filtered views, and internal search results. Implement canonical tags to consolidate duplicate or near-duplicate pages. Check for soft 404s (pages that return 200 OK but display "not found" content). Ensure only one version of each URL is accessible (choose www or non-www, http or https, trailing slash or not).
Site Speed
Core Web Vitals are ranking factors. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) should be under 2.5 seconds. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) should be under 0.1. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) should be under 200ms. Compress images, minify CSS/JS, enable HTTP/2, and use a CDN.
Mobile Usability
Google uses mobile-first indexing — your mobile site is the primary version for ranking. Test with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. Check that text is readable without zooming, buttons are large enough to tap, and content doesn't extend beyond the viewport.
Structured Data
Implement relevant Schema.org markup for your content type. At minimum, add Organization (homepage), BreadcrumbList (all pages), and Article or Product schemas where appropriate. Validate with Google's Rich Results Test. Structured data doesn't directly affect rankings but improves click-through rates through rich snippets.
HTTPS and Security
Serve everything over HTTPS. Mixed content (HTTP resources on HTTPS pages) triggers browser warnings. Set HTTP security headers: Strict-Transport-Security, X-Content-Type-Options, and X-Frame-Options. Register your site in Google Search Console for both HTTP and HTTPS versions.
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