Technical SEO is a moving target. The 2026 version differs meaningfully from what worked in 2020. Here's the current ranked checklist — highest impact first, so you can start from the top and stop whenever you run out of time.
Tier 1: Non-negotiable
1. HTTPS everywhere. Any HTTP page is a demotion signal. Redirect all HTTP to HTTPS via 301.
2. Mobile-first, mobile-fast. Google indexes the mobile version. If your mobile experience is worse than desktop, you rank lower. Test on real mid-tier phones, not desktop browser windows sized like phones.
3. Core Web Vitals passing. LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1. Anything failing costs you rankings. See our <a href="/blog/core-web-vitals-2026/">Core Web Vitals guide</a>.
4. Canonical URLs on every page. Every indexable page needs <link rel="canonical" href="..."> pointing to itself. Missing canonicals cause duplicate-content confusion.
5. XML sitemap submitted to Search Console. Auto-generated, includes lastmod, listed in robots.txt, submitted in Search Console.
Tier 2: High impact
6. Structured data (JSON-LD). At minimum: Organization on home, Article on blog posts, BreadcrumbList on inner pages, FAQPage on FAQ pages. Enables rich results, materially lifts CTR.
7. Semantic HTML. Use <article>, <nav>, <header>, <main>, <footer> correctly. Google reads document structure through HTML semantics.
8. One H1 per page, correct heading hierarchy. Exactly one <h1> per page. Skip no levels (h1 → h2 → h3, not h1 → h3). Search engines and screen readers both care.
9. Meta title + description on every page. Unique per page. Title under 60 chars. Description 130–160 chars. Include focus keyword in title. Duplicates are the #1 preventable SEO issue we find in audits.
10. Alt text on every image. Descriptive, not spammy. alt="" for purely decorative images. Missing alt text hurts both accessibility and image search rankings.
11. Internal linking. Every content page should link to at least 2 others. Distribute PageRank across your site. Anchor text carries context.
Tier 3: Real impact
12. Fast TTFB. Server response time under 500ms. If yours is slower, no front-end optimisation can save you. Upgrade hosting.
13. Image optimisation. WebP or AVIF format. Explicit width + height attributes (prevents CLS). Lazy loading on non-hero images. fetchpriority="high" on the hero image.
14. Preconnect + preload critical resources. <link rel="preconnect"> for Google Fonts, analytics, any third-party dependencies. <link rel="preload"> for critical fonts and hero image.
15. robots.txt and Search Console. Both properly configured. Sitemap listed. Search Console verified and monitored weekly.
16. IndexNow. Instant Bing/Yandex/Copilot indexing on new or updated pages. 30 minutes to set up. See our earlier <a href="/glossary/indexnow/">IndexNow work</a>.
17. HTTP status codes correct. Real 404s for missing pages (not soft 404s). 301 for permanent redirects, 302 for temporary. 500 errors monitored and alerted.
Tier 4: Compound advantage
18. Fresh, high-quality content published regularly. Google favours sites that publish consistently. Weekly cadence is a defensible minimum. Content quality matters more than frequency, but frequency without quality still beats sporadic publishing.
19. E-E-A-T signals. Author bios on articles, author LinkedIn linked, publish + update dates visible, author's expertise credibly demonstrated. Google's Helpful Content update rewards this.
20. Internal search + related content. Blog posts should surface related articles. Product pages should surface related products. Keeps users on-site longer, distributes PageRank.
21. Sitemap includes lastmod. Sitemap entries with accurate <lastmod> help Google prioritise crawl budget. Update lastmod when content genuinely changes.
22. Breadcrumb navigation. Visible on every inner page. Marked up with BreadcrumbList schema. Appears in Google search results, boosts CTR.
23. Hreflang for multi-language sites. Correct hreflang tags on every localised version. Skip if you're single-language.
Tier 5: Nice-to-have
24. Web manifest for PWA. Doesn't affect SEO directly. Improves mobile experience if you serve app-like features.
25. Skip-to-content link. A11y best practice. Small SEO adjacency benefit via better accessibility signals.
26. Prev/next rel for paginated pages. Google says it no longer uses these directly. Doesn't hurt. Include them.
27. RSS feed for blog. Doesn't help Google directly. Still worth having for feed readers and news aggregators.
What to skip
- Keyword density calculators (irrelevant since 2015)
- "SEO plugins" that promise rankings (all snake oil)
- Manual link building schemes (against guidelines)
- AMP (Google deprecated it)
How to use this checklist
Score your site. Address items in tier order. Anything failing in Tier 1 or 2 is losing you material rankings — fix those first. Anything failing in Tier 3 is a smaller opportunity but still real. Tiers 4-5 are compound advantage that adds up over months.
We run technical SEO audits for clients. Two-day engagement, written report, ranked issue list, our fee is credited toward implementation if you engage us for fixes. Book a consultation.