{"id":17963,"date":"2019-02-20T11:27:47","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T09:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=17963"},"modified":"2026-06-09T15:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T12:51:15","slug":"technical-seo-checklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/17963\/technical-seo-checklist\/","title":{"rendered":"Technical SEO Checklist – The Roadmap to a Complete Technical SEO Audit"},"content":{"rendered":"

While technical SEO is a topic that only some of us make use of rigorously, it is a part of everybody\u2019s life. Well, which part of SEO is not technical if we were to look at it thoroughly?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SEO issues, mistakes, tips and recommendations are all included in today’s technical checklist. We wanted to cover, in the most effective way possible, all the elements that are important for making your website user-friendly, efficient, visible in SERP, functional and easy to understand. Therefore, gather all the information you have on your site and let’s get better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Technical<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I. Website Loading Speed Time<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Improve Server Response Time<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Optimize & Reduce Image Size Without Affecting the Visual Appearance<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Minimize the Render-Blocking Javascript and CSS<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Limit the Number of Resources & HTTP Requests<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Set a Browser Cache Policy<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  6. Reduce the Number of Redirects & Eliminate Redirect Loop<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  7. Avoid Loading Your Site With Too Much Stuff<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    II. Website Functionality & Usability<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Friendly<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    2. Build Search Engine Friendly URLs<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    3. Use the Secure Protocol \u2013 HTTPs<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    4. Set Preferred Version<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    5. Set up Correctly the 301 Redirects After Site Migration<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    6. Make Sure Your Resources Are Crawlable<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    7. Test Your Robots.Txt File to Show Google the Right Content<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    8. Verify the Indexed Content<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    9. Review Your Sitemap to Avoid Being Outdated<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    10. Review Blocked Resources (Hashbang URLs) with Fetch as Google<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    11. Optimize Your Crawl Budget<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    12. Avoid Meta Refresh for Moving a Site<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    13. Use Redirect for Flash Site to the HTML Version<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    14. Use Hreflang for Language and Regional URLs<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
    15. Make Sure Your Tracking Is Working Properly<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

      III. Content Optimization<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Redirect\/Replace Broken Links & Resources<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
      2. Audit Internal Links to Improve Your Chances to Rank Higher<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
      3. Get Rid of Duplicate Content<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
      4. Use Structured Data to Highlight Your Content<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
      5. Keep a Reasonable Number of Links On-Page<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
      6. Avoid Canonicalizing Blog Pages to the Root of the Blog<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

         <\/p>\n

        IV. User-Friendlier Website<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Set up Your AMP the Right Way – Mobile Friendlier<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
        2. Add Breadcrumbs for a Better Navigation<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
        3. Test On as Many Platforms and Devices as Possible<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          V. Auditing Your Brand Signals for AI Visibility<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

           <\/div>\n

          I. Website Loading Speed Time<\/strong><\/h2>\n

           <\/p>\n

          On the web, time is of the essence. Websites all around the world load pretty slow, with an average of 19 seconds<\/a><\/strong> to load on a 3G mobile network. Testing has confirmed that around 50% of users abandon a website if it doesn’t load faster than 3 seconds, on average.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          \n

          If your website loads slowly, you can lose a lot of visitors.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

           <\/p>\n

          Disclaimer & Warning:<\/strong><\/span> Playing with PHP, servers, databases, compression, minification and other similar things can really mess up your website if you don’t know what you’re doing. Make sure you have a proper backup of the files and the database before you start playing with these options.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          When we talk about speed, there are a few things we need to consider for making your site efficient and easy to access for your users. A faster loading speed time means higher conversion and lower bounce rates. For that, we\u2019ve selected some mandatory speed optimization suggestions. Using Google\u2019s Speed Test<\/strong><\/a>, you can perform easy and short analyses of your website\u2019s loading speed time.<\/p>\n

          \"Audit<\/a><\/p>\n

          The tool has improved over the years and now you can see helpful charts for large websites to understand how each website is performing. One example is the Page Load Distributions.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          \"Page<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          The Page Load Distribution\u00a0uses two user-centric performance metrics: first, contentful paint (FCP) and DOMContentLoaded (DCL). The contentful paint marks the first bit of content there is on the screen when the browser starts to render pixels. The DOMContentLoaded marks the moment when the DOM is ready and there are no stylesheets that are blocking JavaScript execution. These two metrics show exactly which percentage of the content loads faster and the one that needs improvement by looking at those pages with average and slow speed (if you follow the chart).<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          Another example includes the speed and optimization indicators which show where each website is situated. In the picture showed below, we can see the FCP and DCP score.\u00a0These two metrics use the data from the Chrome User Experience. It indicates the page’s median FCP (1.8s) and DCL (1.6s) ranks it in the middle third of all pages. That means this page has a low level of optimization because most of its resources are render-blocking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          \"Speed<\/p>\n

           <\/div>\n

          1. Improve Server Response Time<\/strong><\/h3>\n

           <\/p>\n

          Server response time refers to the period of time it takes to load the HTML code to begin rendering the page from your server. Basicaly, when a you access a page, it sends a message to the server and the time it take to show you that information is considered to be the server response time.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          There are lots of reasons why a website has a slow response time. Google announces<\/a> <\/strong>just some of them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
          There are dozens of potential factors which may slow down the response of your server: slow application logic, slow database queries, slow routing, frameworks, libraries, resource CPU starvation, or memory starvation.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
          \"Google<\/td>\nGoogle Developers<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
           <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

          The server response time depends on how much time the Googlebot needs to access the data. Be it 1, 2 ,3 seconds or more, it will convert your visitor or not. Google says that you should keep the server response time under 200ms.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          There are 3 steps you need to follow to test and improve the server response time:<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Firstly, you need to collect<\/strong> the data and inspect<\/strong> why the server response time is high.<\/li>\n
          2. Secondly, measure your server response time to identify<\/strong> and fix<\/strong> any future performance bottlenecks.<\/li>\n
          3. Lastly, monitor<\/strong> any regression.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

             <\/p>\n

            Many times, the reason why a website loads slow is the server itself. It’s very important to choose a high quality server from the beginning. Moving a site from a server to another might sound easy in theory, but it can be accompanied by a series of possible problems such as file size limits, wrong PHP versions and so on.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            Choosing the right server can be difficult because of pricing. If you’re a multinational corporation, you probably need dedicated servers, which are expensive. If you’re just starting out with a blog, shared hosting services will probably be enough, which are usually cheap.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            However, there are good shared hosting servers and bad dedicated ones and vice versa. Just don’t go after the cheapest or the most renowned. For example, Hostgator has excellent shared hosting services for the US, but not so excellent VPS ones.<\/p>\n

             <\/div>\n

            2. Optimize & Reduce Image Size Without Affecting the Visual Appearance<\/strong><\/h3>\n

             <\/p>\n

            If a website is loading really slow, one of the first things that come in mind are images. Why? Because they’re big. And we’re not talking in size on screen but in size on disk.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            Besides all the information an image has, as mentioned before, it also downloads lots of bytes on a page, making the server take more time than it should to load all the information. Instead, if we optimize the page, the server will perform faster because we removed the additional bytes and irrelevant data. The fewer the downloaded bytes by the browser, the faster a browser can download and render content on the screen.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            Since GIF, PNG, and JPEG are the most used types of extension for a picture, there are lots of solutions for compressing images.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            \"image-compressor\"

            Source: www.cssscript.com<\/p><\/div>\n

            Here are a few tips and recommendations to optimize your images:<\/p>\n