You can have the best content in the world, but if your site is slow, Google can’t crawl it properly, or it can’t tell what the site is about, you’ll have a hard time reaching the top results. That’s what technical SEO is: the foundation that lets your content rank. This is the checklist we run through on every site we build.
1. Speed and Core Web Vitals
Google measures real user experience with three metrics called Core Web Vitals:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how long it takes for the main content to appear. Target: under 2.5 seconds.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): how quickly the page responds when you click or type. Target: under 200 ms.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): how much the content “jumps around” while loading. Target: under 0.1.
How to improve them: use modern image formats (AVIF/WebP) at the right size, keep JavaScript to a minimum, optimize your fonts and choose fast hosting. You can test your site for free with PageSpeed Insights.
2. Make sure Google can crawl and index your site
- A robots.txt file that doesn’t block important pages.
- An up-to-date XML sitemap submitted to Google Search Console.
- Pages that return a 200 status code, with no broken links or redirect chains.
- Content that’s visible in the HTML, not only rendered by JavaScript in the browser.
3. One clear URL per topic
Every important service or product should have its own page and its own URL, for example /services/web-development/. A single page with everything mixed together competes worse than several well-focused pages. Also use:
- Short, descriptive URLs, without odd parameters.
- The canonical tag to indicate the official version of each page.
4. Titles, descriptions and headings
- A unique title on every page, 50 to 60 characters long, with the main keyword near the beginning.
- A meta description of 120 to 160 characters that invites the click.
- A single H1 per page and a logical hierarchy of H2s and H3s.
5. Structured data (Schema.org)
Structured data tells Google what each thing is: your business, your services, your FAQs, your articles. It’s written in JSON-LD format and can unlock rich results. The most useful types for a business are Organization or LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList and BlogPosting.
6. Multilingual sites: hreflang
If your site has versions in other languages, each one needs its own URL (for example /es/ or /it/) and hreflang tags that link the translations together. That way Google shows each user the version in their language. Avoid handling translations with a parameter like ?lang=es or with a switcher that changes the text without changing the URL.
7. Mobile first
Google primarily evaluates the mobile version of your site. Make sure there’s no horizontal scrolling, buttons are easy to tap, and text is readable without zooming.
8. Optimized images
- Descriptive alt text on every image.
- Defined width and height to prevent layout shifts.
- Lazy loading for images that aren’t visible on first load.
9. Security and trust
- HTTPS across the entire site.
- Contact details that are visible and consistent everywhere: the same name, phone number and email on your website, Google Business Profile and social media.
- An easy-to-find privacy policy.
10. Social sharing images
Open Graph tags control how your link looks when it’s shared on WhatsApp, LinkedIn or Facebook: title, description and image. They don’t directly affect rankings, but they do increase clicks.
After launch
Technical SEO is the foundation, but the work doesn’t end the day you publish:
- Verify your site in Google Search Console and submit your sitemap.
- Create or update your Google Business Profile if you serve local customers.
- Publish useful content regularly, like this blog.
- Earn links from relevant sites: clients, partners and industry directories.
That’s how we handled local SEO for CMR Sur, a physical therapy clinic in southern Quito, with dedicated pages for each therapy and business structured data.
Conclusion
A site that’s fast, crawlable, well organized and backed by structured data has a much better chance of ranking. If your current website falls short on several points in this list, you’re probably leaving visitors and customers on the table.
Want us to review your site? Get in touch and we’ll tell you what to improve. Learn more about our web development with technical SEO service.