Technical SEO checklist: basics that Indian agencies miss
Technical SEO is not glamorous but it is foundational. A site with technical issues that go unfixed will underperform no matter how good the content is. Here is what to check.
I have reviewed SEO audits from several Indian agencies over the years. The quality varies enormously. Some are thorough. Many are superficial, covering keyword density and meta tags while missing fundamental technical issues that are actively limiting rankings.
Technical SEO is the foundation. All the content creation and link building in the world performs below its potential if the site has crawling issues, duplicate content, broken pages, or poor page speed. This checklist covers the issues I see most commonly missed.
HTTPS and SSL certificate
Every website in 2021 should be serving on HTTPS. HTTP sites show a "Not Secure" warning in Chrome, which damages trust and may slightly harm rankings. If your site is still on HTTP, your hosting provider can install an SSL certificate. Many quality hosting plans include free SSL certificates through Let's Encrypt.
Check that your site does not have a mix of HTTP and HTTPS URLs. If some pages are still accessible on HTTP, this creates duplicate content issues. All HTTP URLs should redirect permanently (301 redirect) to their HTTPS equivalent.
XML sitemap and robots.txt
Your XML sitemap lists all the pages you want Google to index. Submit it to Google Search Console under "Sitemaps." Check that your sitemap only includes pages you want indexed and does not include noindex pages, redirect URLs, or broken pages.
Your robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which parts of your site they should and should not access. Check that it has not been misconfigured to block important pages. A robots.txt that says "Disallow: /" blocks all crawling of your site. I have seen this happen after website migrations and go unnoticed for weeks.
Duplicate content from URL variations
A single page can be accessible under multiple URLs if your website is not configured carefully. www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com might both serve the same content. yoursite.com/page and yoursite.com/page/ (with a trailing slash) might both exist. yoursite.com/page?utm_source=google might be indexed as a separate page from yoursite.com/page.
These variations split link equity across multiple URLs for the same content. Set a canonical URL for every page using the canonical tag. Configure 301 redirects to consolidate all variations to a single preferred URL. Set your preferred URL format (with or without www) in Google Search Console.
Crawl errors in Search Console
Google Search Console's Coverage report shows which pages Google could not crawl (crawl errors), which pages it chose not to index, and which pages are indexed. Review this report regularly.
404 errors for pages that should exist need fixing. Either restore the page or redirect the URL to a relevant replacement. 404 errors for pages that no longer exist and have no relevant replacement can be left as 404, which is fine.
Soft 404 errors are pages that return a 200 status code (which means "page found") but display content that says "page not found." Google dislikes these and they should be fixed by either restoring the content or returning a proper 404 status.
Page speed
Covered extensively elsewhere in this blog, but included here because it is technical. Run Google PageSpeed Insights on your top 10 pages. Address the highest-impact issues first: image compression, render-blocking scripts, and server response time.
Internal linking and orphan pages
Every important page on your website should have at least one internal link pointing to it from another page. An "orphan page" with no internal links is difficult for Google to discover and assign importance to. Use Google Search Console to find pages that are indexed but receiving no clicks. Check whether these pages have internal links pointing to them.
Your internal link structure should help users and Google navigate from broad topics to more specific ones logically. Your homepage links to your main service pages. Your main service pages link to relevant blog posts and specific service sub-pages.
Structured data errors
If you have added structured data markup to your site, check the Rich Results Test tool in Google Search Console for errors. Invalid structured data can be flagged and may prevent you from appearing in rich results.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I run a technical SEO audit?
A full technical audit annually is the minimum. A lighter review quarterly covering crawl errors, page speed, and sitemap health is good practice. After any significant website changes (migration, redesign, new plugins), run a full audit before and after.
My site has hundreds of 404 pages from old URLs. Do I need to fix all of them?
Prioritise 404 pages that had significant traffic or backlinks pointing to them. Use Google Search Console to identify 404 pages that Google is actively crawling and whether any of them have external backlinks through a tool like Ahrefs or Ubersuggest. Redirect those with historical value. Low-traffic, no-backlink 404 pages have minimal impact.
Does Google penalise duplicate content?
Not a manual penalty in most cases. But Google has to choose which version of duplicate content to index, and it may not choose the version you prefer. It can also dilute link equity. Addressing duplicate content consolidates authority to your preferred URLs.