Imagine building a beautiful new house. You paint the walls your favorite color, put up nice curtains, and buy a comfortable sofa. But if the builder forgot to connect the water pipes under the floor or left a hole in the roof, you cannot live in it safely.
Building a website is exactly the same.
The design of your website is like the paint and furniture. But the Technical SEO is like the pipes and wires hidden inside the walls. If your technical setup is broken, Google’s automated search systems will get confused, and your website will remain invisible to visitors.
Before you click the "Launch" button and show your website to the world, use this simple 20-point checklist to make sure your site is perfectly healthy and ready to rank.
🏗️ Phase 1: Helping Google Find and Read Your Pages
Google uses tiny digital robot helpers called "crawlers" to read your website. If these robots get lost or blocked, your site won't show up in search results.
Check Your Robots.txt File: This is a small instruction note for Google’s robots. Make sure it doesn't accidentally say "Do Not Enter" to Google!
Create an XML Sitemap: Think of this as a complete street map of your website. It lists every page you want Google to find.
Submit Your Map to Google Search Console: This is like hand-delivering your street map straight to Google’s main office so they know you exist.
Turn Off "Discourage Search Engines": If you used WordPress to build your site, make sure the box that hides your site during construction is unticked.
Fix Orphan Pages: Every page on your website needs at least one link pointing to it from another page. If a page has zero links, it is an "orphan" and Google won't find it.
⚡ Phase 2: Speed and User Friendliness
Google loves fast websites because human beings love fast websites. If your site takes too long to load, people will leave before reading your content.
Compress Big Images: Never upload large photos directly from your phone. Use a tool to shrink the file size so they load instantly.
Use WebP Format: Convert your images into modern formats like WebP, which are much lighter and faster than old PNG or JPEG files.
Test Your Mobile View: More than half of the world uses mobile phones to browse the internet. Make sure your text isn't too small and buttons are easy to click with a thumb.
Check Your LCP Score: Make sure the largest image or text block on your screen loads in under 2.5 seconds.
Fix Layout Shifts (CLS): Ensure text and buttons stay completely still while the page loads so users don't misclick by accident.
🔒 Phase 3: Security and Website Trust
Google wants to protect its users. It will not recommend a website that looks unsafe or broken.
Turn On Your SSL Certificate (HTTPS): Look at your browser bar. Does your site have a green padlock icon? If it says "Not Secure," fix it immediately.
Fix Broken Links (404 Errors): Click every single button and link on your site to make sure they actually work and don't lead to an empty page.
Check for WWW vs. Non-WWW: Pick one version of your name (like
[https://auditest.online](https://auditest.online)or[https://www.auditest.online](https://www.auditest.online)) and make sure both paths lead to the exact same place.Use Canonical Tags: This is a special tag that tells Google, "This is the original page," preventing Google from thinking you copied content from yourself.
🏷️ Phase 4: Page Names and Content Settings
Every page needs a clear name tag so both Google and human readers know what it is about before clicking.
Write Unique Title Tags: Every page must have a distinct title (under 60 characters) that acts like a book title.
Add Meta Descriptions: Write a short, friendly summary for each page (under 160 characters) to show in Google's search results.
Use Only One H1 Tag Per Page: The H1 tag is your main newspaper headline. You should only have one main headline per page.
Organize Subheadings (H2 and H3): Use smaller headings to break your text into easy-to-read chapters.
Add Alt Text to Images: Write a short sentence explaining what is inside every picture. This helps visually impaired users and helps Google Images find you.
Keep URLs Short and Clean: Use simple links like
/seo-checklistinstead of messy links like/page-id-77632?abc.
Our Hands-On Lesson (Why We Built This Into Auditest)
When we were preparing to launch Auditest, we manually checked all 20 of these items ourselves. It took hours of staring at code, clicking around buttons, and checking links. We even found two broken menu links that we completely missed during designing!
That tedious experience taught us a big lesson: Humans make mistakes, but tools don't.
We realized that regular website owners shouldn't have to manually memorize and check 20 different technical rules every time they publish a website. That is exactly why we built the automated crawler inside Auditest. Our platform checks for these exact technical issues—like missing title tags, uncompressed images, and broken links—in just one click.
Check out more articles below:
Why Your Website Is Slow and How to Fix It Today
How to Fix Common SEO Issues: A Step-by-Step Recovery GuideThe Ultimate SEO Glossary: 50+ Essential Terms for Website Audits
Conclusion: Don't Rush Your Launch
Launching a website is exciting, but rushing out a broken site can hurt your Google rankings for months. Treat this 20-point checklist like a pre-flight safety routine for an airplane.
Before you share your new project with the world, run a quick scan on Auditest to see which of these 20 boxes are checked and which ones need a quick fix. Spend one afternoon cleaning up the red flags, and you will give your website the perfect, healthy start it deserves on Google!