The SEO Checklist I Use on Every Client Website

After auditing and building 30+ websites across travel, hospitality, e-commerce, construction, and professional services — the same issues show up over and over. Missed title tags. No schema markup. Pages Google can't properly index. Core Web Vitals in the red.

This is the checklist I work through on every new client site. Not a theoretical list — the things that actually move rankings when you fix them.

I've split it into five sections: Technical, On-Page, Schema Markup, Core Web Vitals, and Link Building. Work through them in order — technical issues block everything else.

Section 1: Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the foundation. If Google can't crawl and index your pages correctly, nothing else matters. Fix these first.

Crawlability and Indexing

• Verify Google Search Console is set up and your site is verified. This is where Google tells you about indexing problems — you need it connected.
• Submit your sitemap in Search Console (Settings → Sitemaps). Your sitemap.xml should list every page you want indexed, and nothing you don't.
• Check your robots.txt at yourdomain.com/robots.txt. It should not be blocking important pages or sections. A misconfigured robots.txt is the single most common cause of pages disappearing from Google.
• Run a Screaming Frog crawl. Filter for 4xx errors (broken pages) and 3xx redirects (redirect chains). Both hurt crawl efficiency and user experience.
• Check for noindex tags on pages that should be indexed. Developers sometimes leave noindex on from staging and forget to remove it before launch.
• Confirm canonical tags are set correctly on every page. Duplicate content (www vs non-www, HTTP vs HTTPS, trailing slash vs none) is a silent ranking killer.

Site Structure

• Every page should be reachable within 3 clicks from the homepage. Deep pages (4+ clicks away) are crawled less frequently and rank less well.
• Internal links use descriptive anchor text. "Click here" and "learn more" tell Google nothing. "SEO services for small businesses" tells Google what the linked page is about.
• No orphan pages — pages with zero internal links pointing to them. Google may not find them at all.

HTTPS and Security

• Site is fully on HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate.
• All HTTP pages redirect to HTTPS (301, not 302).
• No mixed content warnings (HTTP resources loaded on HTTPS pages).

Section 2: On-Page SEO

On-page is where most sites have the most room to improve. These are the signals Google reads on every single page.

Title Tags

• Every page has a unique title tag. Duplicate titles across multiple pages tell Google those pages cover the same topic — even when they don't.
• Title tags are 50–60 characters. Longer gets truncated in search results. Shorter misses keyword opportunities.
• Primary keyword appears near the start of the title tag, not buried at the end.
• Titles are written for humans, not just bots. They should make someone want to click — not just string keywords together.

Need help writing title tags? Use the free Meta Title & Description Generator to get 3 SEO-optimised variants for any page type, with live character counts.

Meta Descriptions

• Every page has a unique meta description of 140–160 characters.
• Descriptions include a value proposition or call to action — they're free ad copy in Google results.
• Note: Google rewrites meta descriptions for about 60% of queries. But a good description still influences click-through rate when Google does use it.

For social sharing, also add Open Graph tags — they control how your page appears when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Use the free Open Graph Tag Generator to create them.

Headings

• One H1 per page — it should contain your primary keyword and clearly state what the page is about.
• H2s and H3s structure the content logically. They're also extracted by AI search engines when answering queries — write them as clear, descriptive phrases.
• No heading is used purely for styling (e.g., using H2 because it looks big). Use CSS for visual sizing; use headings for structure.

Content Quality

• Each page targets one primary keyword and covers the topic comprehensively enough to satisfy the search intent behind that keyword.
• Content answers the query directly and early — don't make readers (or AI systems) scroll to find the answer.
• Images have descriptive alt text — both for accessibility and for Google Image Search.
• URLs are short, descriptive, and include the primary keyword: /seo-services-vienna/ beats /page?id=493.

Section 3: Schema Markup

Schema is the most under-implemented part of SEO on most sites — and one of the highest-leverage fixes. It tells search engines exactly what your content represents, in a language they can process without ambiguity.

Schema Checklist

• Homepage: Person or Organization schema — your name, what you do, your location, your contact details. This is the entity foundation everything else builds on.
• Blog posts: Article schema — headline, description, author (with URL), datePublished, dateModified. Every post, every time.
• Service pages: Service schema — what the service is, who provides it, what area it covers, a description.
• FAQ sections: FAQPage schema — on any page with a Q&A section. The single most impactful schema type for appearing in AI-generated answers.
• Local businesses: LocalBusiness schema — address, phone, hours, geo coordinates. Essential if you have a physical location or serve a specific area.
• Verify with Google's Rich Results Test after adding schema. A passing result means it's being read correctly.

Not sure how to write schema code? Use the free Schema Markup Generator to generate ready-to-paste JSON-LD for any of the types above — no coding required.

Section 4: Core Web Vitals and Page Speed

Core Web Vitals are Google's official page experience metrics. Failing them doesn't tank your rankings directly, but it does affect your position when everything else is equal — and it definitely affects conversions.

Run your key pages through PageSpeed Insights and aim for green (90+) on mobile. Mobile scores matter more than desktop — Google uses mobile-first indexing.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — target: under 2.5 seconds

• The LCP element (usually your hero image or heading) should load within 2.5 seconds. Identify it in PageSpeed — it's usually flagged.
• Optimise your hero image: use WebP format, compress it, and add loading="eager" and fetchpriority="high" to the LCP image tag.
• Use a fast hosting provider. Shared hosting from low-cost providers is one of the most common causes of slow LCP. Cloudways or DigitalOcean managed hosting makes a significant difference.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — target: under 0.1

• Set explicit width and height attributes on all images and video embeds. This reserves space before they load, preventing layout jumps.
• Avoid inserting content above existing content dynamically (e.g., late-loading banners, cookie notices that push content down).
• Use font-display: swap for web fonts to prevent invisible text during font loading.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — target: under 200ms

• Minimise long JavaScript tasks that block the main thread. Defer non-critical JS with defer or async.
• Remove unused plugins and scripts — on WordPress especially, every plugin adds JS that runs on every page.

Section 5: Link Building Basics

Links remain one of the strongest ranking signals in Google's algorithm. A page with zero external links pointing to it will almost never rank for competitive keywords, regardless of how good the content is.

The Minimum Viable Link Profile

• Google Business Profile — if you serve local customers, this is non-negotiable. It's a free, high-trust citation from Google itself.
• Industry directories — one or two relevant, high-quality directories in your niche. A web designer listing in a design directory; a restaurant in TripAdvisor and local guides.
• Supplier or partner sites — if you work with other businesses, ask for a mention or link on their "partners" page.
• Content-based links — publish genuinely useful content (like this checklist) and other sites link to it naturally over time. This is the highest-quality, most sustainable link strategy.

What Not to Do

• Don't buy links. Google's spam detection has improved significantly — low-quality paid links are more likely to hurt than help.
• Don't pursue link quantity over quality. One link from a relevant, trusted site is worth more than a hundred from unrelated directories.
• Don't use exact-match anchor text for all your links — it looks manipulative. Vary the anchor text naturally.

Bonus: AEO Readiness Check

If you've worked through the checklist above, your site is in strong technical shape for traditional SEO. The next layer is AEO — making your content citable by AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

The schema markup section above (especially FAQPage and Article schema) already overlaps with AEO. For the full picture on AI search optimisation, read How to Get Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity & Google AI Overviews — or take the free AEO Readiness Check to see where your site stands right now.

Where to Start If You're Overwhelmed

If the full checklist feels like a lot, here's the priority order. Fix these five things first and you'll have addressed the majority of issues on most sites:

1. Set up Google Search Console and fix any crawl errors it flags
2. Ensure every page has a unique, keyword-rich title tag
3. Add Organization or Person schema to your homepage
4. Run PageSpeed Insights on your homepage and fix the top two issues
5. Add FAQPage schema to your most important service page

Those five changes, done properly, move the needle more than most extensive site overhauls.