Technical SEO is everything that helps search engines find, load and understand your website. If it's broken, great content won't rank. Here are the seven areas we check first on every new site.
1. Can Google find your pages?
Your important pages should be in Google's index. Search 'site:yourdomain.com' to see roughly what Google has, and check Google Search Console for pages it found but chose not to index.
2. Is anything blocking crawlers?
A stray 'noindex' tag or a robots.txt rule left over from development can hide an entire website. It happens more often than you'd think, especially after a redesign.
3. Do you have a sitemap?
An XML sitemap lists your pages for search engines. Most platforms can create one automatically; make sure it exists and is submitted in Search Console.
4. How fast does it load on a phone?
Most local searches happen on mobile. Large images, heavy themes and too many plugins slow pages down. Google's PageSpeed Insights will show you where the time goes.
5. Does it work on mobile?
Buttons should be easy to tap, text readable without zooming, and nothing should spill off the side of the screen.
6. Are there broken links and redirect chains?
Broken links waste visitors' time and crawlers' attention. After a redesign, old URLs should redirect to the matching new page, not to the home page.
7. Is it secure and consistent?
Your site should load on HTTPS, and only one version of it should be live. 'www' and non-'www', and HTTP and HTTPS, should all redirect to the same place.
Fixing these doesn't guarantee rankings, but leaving them broken almost guarantees you won't get them.
