Foundations first

Great content on a broken site still loses. Before any keyword work, I run the same boring checklist on every new project — and it always finds wins.

1. Crawlability

• A clean robots.txt that doesn't accidentally block important sections.
• An XML sitemap submitted to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• A logical URL structure: short, lowercase, hyphen-separated, no random IDs.

2. Indexing

• No accidental noindex on production pages (this happens more than you'd think).
• Canonical tags pointing to the right URL — especially on paginated and filtered pages.
• Consistent trailing-slash behavior across the whole site.

3. Core Web Vitals

Google measures real users, not your laptop. Targets:

• LCP under 2.5s on mobile.
• INP under 200ms.
• CLS under 0.1.

The biggest wins usually come from compressing hero images, lazy-loading below-the-fold media, and removing one bloated third-party script.

4. Structure & semantics

• One

  per page.

• Descriptive

  s — they're a hidden ranking factor through topical clarity.

• Real ,
• Alt text on every meaningful image.

5. Schema markup

Add structured data where it actually fits:

• Article for blog posts.
• Product for e-commerce.
• FAQ for pages with a real Q&A section.
• LocalBusiness for service-area brands.

Don't stuff schema where it doesn't belong — Google will ignore it or, worse, flag it.

6. The underrated win — internal links

Most sites have great pages that no other page links to. Fix that, and rankings move within weeks.

For every important page, ask: which 3 other pages should link to it, with descriptive anchor text? Build that map once, ship the links, and watch positions drift up.

7. Monitoring

• Google Search Console for indexing and queries.
• A weekly Core Web Vitals check.
• A monthly crawl with a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb.

Technical SEO isn't a one-time audit. It's a quiet habit that keeps your content's hard work from leaking out the bottom of the bucket.