Technical SEO Checklist for Small Business (in Plain English)

Your website is like a house. The design is the paint, the furniture, the nice lamp. Technical SEO is the plumbing and the wiring.

Nobody visits a house to admire the pipes. But if the water doesn’t run, nobody stays either.

You don’t need to be a developer to check the basics. This technical SEO checklist has eight points, and you can review most of them in 20 minutes with your phone and a free Google tool. Where something needs a technical hand, I’ll tell you.

First: how Google reads your site

Google sends a little robot to visit your pages. It does three things:

1. Finds your pages by following links.
2. Reads them, like a visitor would.
3. Saves them in its index, so they can show up in searches.

If something blocks any of those steps (a broken link, a page that takes forever, a door locked by mistake), that page never shows up. It doesn’t matter how good it is.

The checklist is about keeping those three steps clean.

1. The lock: HTTPS

Open your site. Next to the address there should be a small lock, and the address should start with https://.

If the browser says “Not secure,” many people leave right there. And Google doesn’t like it either.

If it fails: ask your hosting company to install an SSL certificate. Most give it for free today, and it should renew by itself.

2. Speed on the phone

Open your site on your phone, on mobile data, not Wi-Fi. Does the main content show up in a couple of seconds?

For a more precise number, use Google’s free tool PageSpeed Insights. Paste your address and look at the mobile result. Don’t panic if it isn’t 100. Look at what it says to fix first. Usually it’s heavy photos.

More on this here: How to speed up your website.

3. It works on the phone

Google looks at the phone version of your site to decide where to rank you. Check:

• Can you read without zooming?
• Can you tap the buttons without hitting the wrong one?
• Does anything move sideways when you scroll?
• Is the same information there as on the computer?

My full guide on this: Mobile friendly website.

4. The map: your sitemap

A sitemap is a list of your pages made for Google. If you use WordPress with an SEO plugin like Rank Math or Yoast, you probably already have one. Try yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml.

Then tell Google it exists: create a free account in Google Search Console, add your site and submit the sitemap. It takes ten minutes, and it’s also where Google tells you when something’s wrong.

5. No broken links

A broken link is a door that opens to a wall: the famous “404 page not found.” Visitors get annoyed and the robot wastes time.

Click every link in your menu, your footer and your main buttons. Search Console also shows you the pages Google tried to open and couldn’t.

6. Redirects when something changes

If you change the address of a page (or delete it), the old address needs to send people to the new one. That’s called a 301 redirect.

Without it, anyone who saved the old link, and Google too, hits a wall. With WordPress, plugins like Rank Math do it in a minute.

7. Clean addresses

Compare:

• yoursite.com/services/brake-repair/
• yoursite.com/?page_id=4928&ref=2

The first one tells people and Google what the page is about. Keep your addresses short, in lowercase, with words separated by hyphens. And once a page is live, don’t change its address without a redirect (see point 6).

8. Your business info in Google’s language

There’s a type of code called schema that tells Google clearly: “this is a business, this is its address, these are its hours.” Without it, Google guesses. With it, Google knows.

For a local business, the important one is LocalBusiness: name, address, phone, hours. For blog articles, Article, and for questions, FAQ. Rank Math and similar plugins add most of this without touching code.

The technical SEO checklist in one table

What I’d do if I were you

1. Check points 1, 2 and 3 today. They’re the ones your customers feel.
2. Open Google Search Console this week. It’s free and it tells you what’s wrong.
3. Review the list once a month, or let someone do it for you.

That last part is exactly what my Care plan does for $60 a month: updates, backups, speed and these checks. If you want the bigger picture of how to show up on Google, read Local SEO for small business. Or ask me and I’ll take a look at your site.

Frequently asked questions