Technical SEO from Scratch: The 2026 Playbook

1. Crawlability — can bots reach your pages?

Start with robots.txt. A single bad Disallow line can hide your entire site. Verify with the Robots.txt Tester. Then check your XML sitemap is referenced from robots.txt, returns 200, and contains only canonical, indexable URLs (no redirects, no noindex pages, no 404s).

2. Indexability — should each page actually be indexed?

Use the Indexability Audit Tool to flag pages with conflicting signals: indexed in GSC but marked noindex, canonical pointing elsewhere, or blocked in robots.txt but linked internally. Each conflict wastes crawl budget.

3. Redirect hygiene

Redirect chains kill PageRank flow and slow first paint. Aim for zero chains over 2 hops. The Redirect Chain Checker visualizes hop-by-hop status codes and final destinations.

4. HTTPS, SSL and mixed content

Run the SSL Certificate Checker monthly. An expired cert is a same-day emergency. Mixed content (HTTP assets on HTTPS pages) silently breaks features and triggers browser warnings.

5. Core Web Vitals

LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1. Use the Core Web Vitals Checklist Tool to walk through the common culprits: oversized hero images, render-blocking JS, layout shifts from late-loading ads or fonts.

6. Mobile-first

Google indexes the mobile version. If your mobile rendering hides content (collapsed accordions counted, but lazy-rendered tabs may not), you have a problem. Test with the Mobile-Friendly Analyzer.

7. Structured data

Add Article, Breadcrumb, FAQ and Organization schema everywhere they apply. Validate with the Schema Markup Validator. Don't lie in your schema — Google will demote pages that mark up content that isn't visible to users.

8. Internal linking

The Internal Link Analyzer surfaces orphan pages (zero internal links) and over-linked footer noise. A balanced internal link graph distributes authority to the pages that actually need to rank.

Frequently Asked Questions