Technical SEO checklist

SEO success starts with technical SEO. This article is part of a series on technical SEO, including:

1) How to optimize URLs for search engines and people
2) How to get your pages found and preserve their link power
3) How to optimize your code for search engines
4) Tracking response for SEO with Google Analytics
5) Technical SEO checklist

This technical SEO checklist will help you make sure your site is free from SEO gremlins.

If you are looking for something more basic check out our SEO checklist.

Use the list for new sites and (about once a month) on established sites.

URLs

• Create clear, friendly URLs
• Each page should have one URL
• The home page should have one URL
• Make sure you have paginated URLs

Indexing

• Create an HTML sitemap - for users and search engines
• If necessary, create an XML Sitemap
• Check your use of the meta robots tag
• The Nofollow tag
• Check for broken links (404s)
• Check redirects (302s and 301s)
• Site crawls and indexing
• Robots.txt files - is yours set up correctly?
• Make your own crawl report and check:
  • Google SERPs sitelinks
  • Google geographic setting
  • Google preferred domain
  • Page indexing speed
  • Page title tags
  • Page description tags
  • Instant previews

Code

• Make sure your pages load quickly
• Avoid JavaScript and Flash menus
• How to work with AJAX pages’ URLs
• Minimize ViewState on ASP.net platforms
• Working with frames
• Ensure you comply with W3C validated CSS and HTML
• Rich snippets and microformats

Tracking

• Help with setting up Ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics
• Setting up Goals in Google Analytics
• Tracking external promotions
• Tracking internal promotions
• Tracking outbound links with Event tracking
• Tracking social sharing

Next

Armed with your SEO audit and a little knowledge, it should be possible to free your site from SEO gremlins. Leaving you free to concentrate on the important task of promoting your site.

For more free technical SEO information, see Mark Nunney's four articles in this technical SEO series, about:

• clean urls
• indexing issues
• code and
• tracking response

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