Technical SEO can make or break your rankings. Fortunately, fixing technical SEO problems isn’t that hard… especially if you follow the items on this checklist.
1. Identify Crawl Errors
A “Crawl Error” means that Google has trouble viewing a page on your site.
And if they can’t view your page, it’s not going to rank for anything.
You can easily find Crawl Errors in the Google Search Console in the “Coverage” report:
If you notice Google is having trouble accessing one of your important web pages (for example, robots.txt is blocking search engine spiders), you’ll want to get that fixed ASAP.
2. Find Out How Google Views Your Page
Sometimes users can see everything on your page…
…but Google can’t.
Again:
If Google can’t fully access your page, it won’t rank.
That’s why I recommend using the Google Search Console’s “Fetch and Render” feature.
Just head over to “Crawl” –> “Fetch as Google”.
And enter a page from your site.
When you do, you’ll see your page from Google’s point of view:
Very helpful.
3. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly
Google recently launched a new “Mobile-First Index“.
Which means:
If your site isn’t mobile optimized, it’s not going to rank very well.
Fortunately, you can easily see your site’s mobile friendliness with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Just pop in a page from your site… and get a clear “yes or no” answer.
Pretty cool.
4. Fix Broken Links
Broken links can REALLY hurt your SEO.
So you definitely want to find broken links… and fix them.
The easiest way to do that? DrLinkCheck.com.
It’s a free tool that scans your site for broken links:
5. Secure Your Site With HTTPS
HTTPS is a confirmed Google ranking signal.
So, if you haven’t already, it’s time to move your site to HTTPS.
(Or if you just launched a new site, set it up with HTTPS on day 1)
Here’s a guide to help you migrate your site to HTTPS… without hurting your SEO.
6. ID and Fix Duplicate Meta Tags
Google HATES duplicate meta tags.
To find them, login to the Google Search Console.
Go to “Search Appearance” –> “HTML Improvements”.
And you’ll see whether or not your site has duplicate title tags and meta descriptions:
(This report also lets you know if your meta titles and descriptions are too short, too long, or not descriptive enough).
