Technical SEO Checklist (Plain English): Speed, Indexing & Site Health
Technical SEO is the stuff that decides whether your site can load fast, get crawled, and actually show up in search—before your content and backlinks even get a fair shot.
The good news: you don’t need to be a developer to manage it. You just need a simple checklist, a few tools, and the confidence to spot the “this is blocking growth” problems quickly.
The 10-minute triage: what to check first
If you’re time-poor, do these in order:
- Can Google access your site and key pages? (robots/noindex)
- Are your important pages indexed? (Search Console)
- Are your pages slow or unstable? (Core Web Vitals)
- Any major site errors? (404s, redirects, canonicals, HTTPS)
Most “SEO isn’t working” situations are one of those.
Part 1 — Speed checklist (what Google actually wants in 2026)
Google’s Core Web Vitals targets are still the clearest performance benchmarks:
- LCP (load): aim for ≤ 2.5s
- INP (interactivity): aim for < 200ms
- CLS (visual stability): aim for < 0.1
✅ Speed checklist
1) Check Core Web Vitals in Search Console
Real user data beats guessing.
Part 2 — Indexing checklist (the reason pages don’t show up)
Indexing problems are usually self-inflicted:
- robots.txt blocking important areas
- accidental noindex
- missing/weak internal links
- messy canonical tags
- broken redirects
Part 3 — Site health checklist (the stuff that quietly kills performance)
This is less glamorous, but it’s where a lot of “why are we stuck?” issues live.
FAQ: Technical SEO checklist
What is a technical SEO checklist?
A technical SEO checklist is a set of checks that ensure your site can be crawled, indexed, and served fast.
I can run this for you
If you’d rather not touch any of this (fair), I can run this technical SEO checklist for you—find the blockers, prioritise fixes, and give you a clean action plan.