Technical SEO Checklist: 16 Checks for Crawling and Speed

Kwebby's Technical SEO Checklist has 16 items in four groups, and 10 of them carry a High priority tag. Each item tests one thing that decides whether search engines can crawl, index, load and understand your pages. You tick the item once you have verified it, and a live score shows how much of the list is done.

This guide explains each group and names the free Kwebby tool that performs each check.

Key Takeaways

• The Kwebby Technical SEO Checklist has 16 items in four groups: Crawlability & Indexation (5), Site Speed & Core Web Vitals (5), Mobile & HTTPS (3) and Structured Data (3).
• Ten items are High priority and six are Medium, so every group except Structured Data is mostly High priority.
• Google's Core Web Vitals targets are LCP within 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds and CLS under 0.1.
• A sitemap helps Google discover URLs but does not guarantee crawling or indexing.
• robots.txt manages crawler access. It does not keep a page out of Google, so use noindex for that.
• A free Kwebby tool covers each check, from redirects and headers to SSL and schema.

What the Kwebby Technical SEO Checklist Covers

The Kwebby Technical SEO Checklist is a free, interactive list of 16 checks for crawling, speed, mobile, HTTPS and structured data. Each item carries a High or Medium priority tag. It sits in Kwebby's SEO Checklists hub.

How to Use the Interactive Checklist

Start with Crawlability & Indexation, tick an item only after you have tested it on your live site, and use the Score percentage to see how much remains.

1. Read the counters at the top: the Score, the "0 / 16 Complete" count and the High and Medium totals.
2. Begin with Crawlability & Indexation. Nothing else matters if Google cannot reach or index the page.
3. Open the matching Kwebby tool for each check and test a real URL, not a staging copy.
4. Tick the box when the check passes. If it fails, fix it first and retest.
5. Check one template from each page type, such as a blog post, a product page and the homepage, because templates share most problems.
6. Run the full list again after every redesign, migration or platform update.

The Checklist Sections Explained

The four groups run from access to speed to device support to markup: first make pages reachable, then fast, then usable on phones, then easy to read for machines.

Crawlability & Indexation (5 items)

This group confirms Google can reach your pages and has permission to index them. Four of its five items are High priority.

• Verify robots.txt is correctly configured (High). Google says a robots.txt file tells crawlers which URLs they can access and is used mainly to avoid overloading your site. Build one with the Robots.txt Generator, then confirm with the Google Index Checker that important pages appear in results.
• Submit an XML sitemap to Google Search Console (High). Google states that a sitemap helps it discover URLs but does not guarantee crawling or indexing. The XML Sitemap Generator sets priority, change frequency and last modified date for each URL and downloads a sitemap.xml file.
• Check for accidental noindex tags (High). Staging sites often carry a noindex tag that survives launch. View the raw HTML with the Get Source Code of Webpage tool and look at the response headers with Get HTTP Headers, because noindex can sit in either place.
• Audit redirect chains and keep them to one hop (Medium). Trace every step with the WWW Redirect Checker, which shows the full chain, status codes and final destination.
• Fix broken internal links (High). Scan a page with the Broken Links Finder and repoint or remove every 404.

Site Speed & Core Web Vitals (5 items)

This group measures how fast the page loads, responds and holds still. Three items are High priority, one for each Core Web Vitals metric.

• Achieve LCP under 2.5 seconds (High). Largest Contentful Paint measures how fast the main content loads.
• Achieve CLS below 0.1 (High). Cumulative Layout Shift measures how much the layout jumps.
• Achieve INP under 200 ms (High). Interaction to Next Paint measures how quickly the page responds to input, and it replaced FID as a Core Web Vitals metric. Google's Core Web Vitals documentation lists these same targets and says they align with what its core ranking systems seek to reward. Run all three through the Page Speed Checker.
• Enable gzip or brotli compression (Medium). The Check Gzip Compression tool reports whether your site uses Gzip, Brotli or Deflate and shows the actual page size.
• Implement caching headers (Medium). Read the cache-control header with Get HTTP Headers. The Page Size Checker shows your HTML size plus counts of external CSS, JS and image files, which points to what to cache.

Mobile & HTTPS (3 items)

This group checks that phones get the full page over a secure connection. Two of the three items are High priority.

• Use responsive design, not a separate mobile site (High). Google indexes the mobile version of your content, and its mobile-first indexing guide recommends responsive design and the same content and structured data on both versions. Test with the Mobile Friendly Test, which returns Lighthouse scores through Google PageSpeed Insights.
• Use HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate (High). The SSL Checker shows the expiry date, issuer, protocol and cipher for any domain.
• Fix mixed content warnings (Medium). Mixed content means HTTP files load on an HTTPS page. Open the page source and search for "http://" references, then update them to HTTPS.

Structured Data (3 items)

This group helps machines read what each page is. Only one item is High priority.

• Implement relevant JSON-LD schema (High). Pick types that fit the page, such as Article, FAQ, Product or LocalBusiness. Google recommends JSON-LD where your setup allows it. The Schema Markup Generator builds it.
• Validate schema with Google's Rich Results Test (Medium). Valid markup makes a page eligible for enhanced display. It does not guarantee it.
• Add breadcrumb schema to interior pages (Medium). Breadcrumb markup describes where a page sits in your site.

Mistakes to Avoid

The most common mistake is using robots.txt to hide a page. Google states that robots.txt is not a mechanism for keeping a page out of Google, and a blocked page can still be indexed if other sites link to it.

• Hiding pages with robots.txt. Use noindex or password protection when a page must stay out of search.
• Shipping staging settings. Check for noindex tags and blocked paths the day a site goes live.
• Listing junk in the sitemap. Include only the canonical URLs you want indexed.
• Trimming mobile content. Google warns that a mobile version with less content can lose rankings and traffic.
• Testing only the homepage. Test one URL per template.
• Never retesting. A deploy can undo a fix, so rerun the list after every release.

Free Kwebby Tools for Each Stage

Kwebby has a free tool for every group on this checklist. Start with the Website Reviewer for a quick pass, then open the specific tool for each failed check.

Browse every option in the Free SEO Tools hub. For title, content and keyword checks, finish with the SEO Checklist.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is a technical SEO checklist?

A technical SEO checklist is a list of checks that confirm search engines can crawl, index, load and understand your site. It covers items such as robots.txt, sitemaps, redirects, page speed, mobile design, HTTPS and structured data. Kwebby's version has 16 items in four groups.

How many items are on the Kwebby technical SEO checklist?

The Kwebby Technical SEO Checklist has 16 items: Crawlability & Indexation (5), Site Speed & Core Web Vitals (5), Mobile & HTTPS (3) and Structured Data (3). Ten are High priority and six are Medium. The counters at the top show your Score and how many of the 16 you have completed.

What are the Core Web Vitals targets?

Google's targets are Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. Each is measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. The Kwebby checklist has one item for each target.

Does an XML sitemap guarantee my pages get indexed?

No. Google says a sitemap helps it discover URLs but does not guarantee that every URL in the file is crawled or indexed. A sitemap still helps most on new sites with few links and on large sites.

Can robots.txt keep a page out of Google?

No. Google says robots.txt is not a mechanism for keeping a page out of Google, and a blocked page can still be indexed if other sites link to it. Use a noindex tag or response header, or password-protect the page.

Final Thoughts

Kwebby's Technical SEO Checklist turns a long audit into 16 checks you can verify one at a time. Begin with Crawlability & Indexation, move to speed, then mobile and markup, and use the matching free tool for each check. Retest after every release, because technical fixes slip back during updates. When the score is high, open the SEO Checklist to work on keywords, titles and content.