Introduction
Technical SEO is the foundation that makes all other SEO efforts possible. Without it, great content remains invisible to search engines. It ensures search engines can discover, crawl, render, and index your pages correctly.
Unlike content SEO which evolves constantly, technical SEO follows a well-defined checklist. Get these fundamentals right once, automate the checks, and you have a solid foundation.
This guide provides a complete technical SEO checklist organized by priority, with implementation details.
Key Concepts
Crawlability & Indexability
html
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page">
# robots.txt
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Essential Head Elements
html
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Page Title — Brand (50-60 chars)</title>
<meta name="description" content="Under 160 characters.">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page">
<meta property="og:title" content="Page Title">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/og.jpg">
</head>
Practical Examples
1. Next.js SEO Configuration
typescript
export const metadata: Metadata = {
metadataBase: new URL('https://example.com'),
title: { default: 'My Site', template: '%s | My Site' },
robots: { index: true, follow: true },
};
2. Automated SEO Tests
typescript
test('homepage SEO', async ({ page }) => {
await page.goto('/');
const title = await page.title();
expect(title.length).toBeLessThan(65);
const h1s = await page.$$('h1');
expect(h1s.length).toBe(1);
const noAlt = await page.$$('img:not([alt])');
expect(noAlt.length).toBe(0);
});
3. Redirect Management
javascript
module.exports = {
async redirects() {
return [
{ source: '/old-page', destination: '/new-page', permanent: true },
];
},
};
Best Practices
- ✅ Set canonical URLs on every page
- ✅ Ensure all pages reachable within 3 clicks from homepage
- ✅ Use HTTPS everywhere
- ✅ Implement proper 301 redirects for URL changes
- ✅ Add structured data to key page types
- ✅ Automate SEO checks in CI
- ❌ Don't block CSS/JS in robots.txt
Common Pitfalls
- 🚫 Duplicate content without canonicals
- 🚫 Redirect chains — redirect directly to final URL
- 🚫 Missing mobile viewport meta tag
- 🚫 Forgetting to noindex staging environments