[CHK/seo checklist]
Printable 24-point SEO audit checklist.
The short version of the full guide. Print it, save it, hand it to a teammate, or use it before you touch a redesign.
Technical SEO
The site has to be crawlable, stable, fast enough, and structurally sane before content helps.
- HTTPS enabled
- Mobile-responsive on a real phone
- Core Web Vitals marked Good in Search Console
- XML sitemap submitted
- robots.txt not blocking JS/CSS
- Homepage schema markup in place
- Key page-type schema markup in place
- Canonical tags set correctly
- No broken internal links
- No orphan pages
Content SEO
This is the publishing layer — topic clustering, internal links, and page structure that earns passage-level visibility.
- Topical map documented
- Pillar page exists
- At least 8 cluster posts published
- Cluster posts link back to pillar and to each other
- Title tags written for clicks, not just keywords
- Meta descriptions written like ad copy
- Passage-indexing structure used throughout
- Author bios on every post
Authority + Behavioral
These are the trust and demand signals that compound once the site basics are no longer fighting you.
- Google Business Profile claimed if relevant
- Listed on Wikidata
- Consistent business info across directories
- At least 5 real backlinks
- People search your brand by name
- Direct traffic source exists (email, social, community, etc.)
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Want the full playbook behind the checklist?
Read the full guide if you want the why behind each item, the Google leak context, the AI Overview angle, and the 90-day execution plan.