SEO checklist: 40 technical, on-page and AI checks

An SEO checklist is a list of yes or no checks that tell you whether a site can be crawled, understood, trusted and cited. Work through it in order: technical first (if Google cannot fetch a page, nothing else counts), then on-page, content, links and AI visibility. Fix every "no" in the technical section before you spend time anywhere else.

The checks below apply to most sites. For the parts that only matter to some businesses, use the dedicated guides: the local SEO audit covers Google Business Profile and Maps, and SEO for Shopify covers store themes, collections and duplicate product URLs. If you run a small business and do SEO yourself, SEO for small business turns these checks into a few hours a month.

How to use this checklist

• Check one representative page of each template (home, category, product or service, article) rather than every URL.
• Write the answer next to each item. "Not sure" counts as "no" until you have looked.
• Order the fixes by how many pages a failure touches. A broken template beats a broken paragraph.

1. Technical

• The site loads over HTTPS, and HTTP and www variants redirect to one version with a single 301 (a permanent redirect).
• robots.txt does not block pages you want found, and does not block the CSS or JavaScript they need to render.
• An XML sitemap lists only live, indexable URLs and is submitted in Google Search Console.
• Important pages return status 200. Removed pages return 404 or 410, or redirect to a close replacement.
• No redirect chains: each old URL reaches its destination in one hop.
• Each page has a canonical tag (the tag naming the preferred URL) that points to itself or to the true original.
• Pages you want indexed have no noindex tag.
• Main content is in the HTML the server sends, or renders without user interaction.
• Pages are usable on a phone without zooming or sideways scrolling.
• Core Web Vitals in Search Console show no large group of "poor" URLs.
• The Pages report in Search Console has no unexpected spike in "Crawled, currently not indexed" or "Discovered, currently not indexed".

2. On-page

• Every page has one unique title, with the main topic near the start and under about 60 characters.
• Every page has a meta description (the snippet text under the title) that says what the page offers.
• One H1 per page that matches what the searcher expects.
• Headings follow the structure of the content, not a keyword list.
• URLs are short, readable and stable.
• Images have descriptive alt text and sensible file sizes.
• Structured data (schema markup) matches what is visible on the page and passes Google's Rich Results Test. See schema markup for AI for which types are worth adding.
• Important pages are linked from the navigation or from other relevant pages, not only from the sitemap.
• No two pages target the same search with the same intent. If they do, merge them or make one clearly different.

3. Content

• Each important page answers its main question in the first paragraph.
• The page matches the search intent: look at what ranks for the query and check whether you offer the same kind of page (guide, tool, product, list).
• Facts, prices and screenshots are current, and the page shows a date when freshness matters.
• Authors or the business behind the content are named, with a way to check who they are.
• Thin pages (little text, nothing a reader could not get elsewhere) are improved, merged or removed.
• Each page has a clear next step: a product, a signup, a related guide.
• You have pages for the questions customers actually ask, taken from sales calls, support tickets and Search Console queries.

4. Links

• No internal links point to 404 pages or through redirects.
• Your most valuable pages receive the most internal links.
• Orphan pages (pages no other page links to) are linked or removed.
• You know which sites link to you and which pages they link to. How to check backlinks shows the free ways.
• You know who links to your competitors but not to you. Those are your first outreach targets.
• Old pages with backlinks that now return 404 are redirected to a relevant live page.
• You are not buying links or running link schemes, which can earn a manual action.

5. AI visibility

• AI crawlers you want (for example GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) are not blocked in robots.txt or by your CDN's bot rules.
• Key facts (what you sell, for whom, prices, location) are stated plainly in text, not only in images or scripts.
• You know which prompts in your market mention competitors and not you.
• You know which third-party pages (reviews, lists, forums) AI answers cite for those prompts, and whether you appear on them.
• Your brand is described consistently across your site, profiles and directories.

Read what AEO is for what to do once you find the gaps, and how to get cited by ChatGPT for tracking them over time.

What to fix first

1. Anything that stops indexing: noindex, robots blocks, broken canonicals, server errors.
2. Template problems that touch many pages: titles, internal links, rendering.
3. Pages that already rank on page two for searches you care about. They are the cheapest gains.
4. New content and links, once the base is sound.

Run the checklist with zaDojo

You can tick most technical and on-page items by hand with Search Console and a browser. To do it with an agent, connect zaDojo and ask for an audit:

/zadojo:seo-audit Audit example.com and tell me the few fixes that matter most.

The SEO Audit skill crawls the site, reads Search Console when it is connected, and saves a short report with the fixes ranked. For the AI visibility section, the AI Visibility Audit skill checks how AI answers in your market mention and cite you. A plain site audit and Search Console reads use no credits; keyword and AI data are charged per call, as listed in the MCP guide.

Questions people ask

How often should I run an SEO checklist?

Run the full list when you launch or redesign a site, and the technical section after any release that changes templates, URLs or hosting. A monthly look at Search Console catches most problems in between.

Is an SEO checklist enough to rank?

No. A checklist removes the things that hold a page back. Ranking still depends on whether your page is the best answer to the search, and on how many trusted sites point to you.