Technical SEO Checklist for Small Businesses
Technical SEO sounds intimidating, but for most small businesses, it comes down to a manageable list of things that either work or they don't. This checklist covers the essentials, the items we check on every site we audit.
Can Google find your pages?
Before anything else, Google needs to be able to discover and access your pages:
Robots.txt is configured correctly: it should allow Googlebot access to your important pages while blocking admin areas, search results pages, and other low-value URLs
XML sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console and includes all your important pages with correct lastmod dates
No important pages are blocked by robots.txt, password protection, or index,follow tags
Internal links connect all your pages: no orphan pages that exist but aren't linked to from anywhere else on your site
Redirect chains are minimal: pages shouldn't redirect more than once before reaching the final destination
Can Google understand your pages?
Once Google finds your pages, it needs to understand what they're about:
Each page has a unique title tag that describes the page content in under 60 characters
Each page has a meta description (150-160 characters) that would make someone want to click
Each page has exactly one H1 tag that describes the main topic
Heading hierarchy is logical: H2s for main sections, H3s for subsections, no skipping levels
Images have descriptive alt text that explains what the image shows
Schema markup is present for your business type, services, FAQs, and articles
Do your pages load fast enough?
Page speed affects both rankings and user experience. Google measures this through Core Web Vitals:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) should be under 2.5 seconds: this measures how quickly the main content loads
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) should be under 200 milliseconds, this measures responsiveness when someone clicks or taps
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) should be under 0.1: this measures whether content jumps around while loading
Images are properly sized and compressed: WebP or AVIF format, not 5MB JPEGs
JavaScript is minimized: especially render-blocking scripts that delay page display
A CDN is being used if you have visitors from multiple locations
Does your site work well on mobile?
Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily evaluates the mobile version of your site:
All content is accessible on mobile: nothing hidden behind desktop-only interactions
Text is readable without zooming: font sizes are at least 16px for body text
- Buttons and links are tappable: at least 44x44 pixels with adequate spacing
- No horizontal scrolling: content fits the screen width
- Pop-ups don't cover main content on mobile (Google penalizes intrusive interstitials)
Is your site structure clean?
- URL structure is logical: /services/plumbing/ is better than /page123.html
- Canonical tags are set on every page to prevent duplicate content issues
- HTTPS is enabled across the entire site with no mixed content warnings
404 pages are helpful: they include navigation back to useful content, not just "page not found"
www vs non-www is consistent: one version redirects to the other
How to check all of this
You don't need expensive tools for a basic technical audit:
Google Search Console: check the Indexing report for coverage issues, the Core Web Vitals report for speed problems, and the Mobile Usability report for mobile issues
PageSpeed Insights: enter any URL to get detailed speed metrics and specific fix recommendations
Screaming Frog (free for up to 500 URLs): crawl your site to find broken links, missing titles, redirect chains, and other issues
Schema.org validator: test your structured data to make sure it's formatted correctly
If you run through this checklist and fix what's broken, you'll be ahead of most small business websites. The boring stuff really is the foundation everything else sits on.
- References & Further Reading
- Google Search Central
- W3C Web Standards
Google PageSpeed
Need help putting this into practice?
We help small businesses implement exactly this kind of work. Free 30-minute call to look at your specific situation.