Technical SEO Checklist: Get Your Corporate Site Ready for Search Engines

For a corporate website to appear in search engines, search engines first need to be able to crawl it without problems, understand it and trust it. That is exactly what technical SEO provides. You can apply the checklist below step by step when building or relaunching your site.

1. Indexing and crawlability

• Make sure the site is not blocked from search engines (in WordPress, the “discourage search engines from indexing this site” option must be off).
• The robots.txt file must not block important pages.
• Low-value pages such as thank-you, quote tracking and search result pages should be kept out of the index with noindex.
• Add the site to Google Search Console and regularly check the errors in the “Page indexing” report.

2. Sitemap

An XML sitemap lists the important addresses on your site for search engines. WordPress’s built-in sitemap (/wp-sitemap.xml) is enough for most corporate sites; on multilingual sites the addresses of every language should be included too. Submit the sitemap to Search Console.

3. URL structure and canonical

• Use short, meaningful URLs with simplified characters: /hizmetler/web-tasarim/.
• Every page should have the correct canonical tag, preventing the same content from being repeated at different addresses.
• If the site is being relaunched, old addresses must be linked to new ones with 301 redirects; otherwise accumulated visibility is lost.

4. Headings and meta structure

• One H1 per page, with subheadings in an H2 and H3 hierarchy.
• A unique title for each page that includes the target keyword naturally (around 50–60 characters).
• A meta description that summarises the page and encourages clicks (around 140–160 characters).
• Meaningful alt text on images.

5. Structured data (Schema)

Structured data tells search engines what a page is about in a machine-readable way. The basic schemas for corporate sites are Organization / ProfessionalService (company details), WebSite, BreadcrumbList (page path), Service (service pages), BlogPosting (blog posts) and FAQPage (FAQs). Validate them with Google’s Rich Results Test.

6. Speed and Core Web Vitals

Recommended thresholds for Core Web Vitals, Google’s page experience metrics:

Ways to improve: serve images in WebP at the right size, give images width/height (prevents shifting), don’t load unused CSS/JS, defer scripts (defer), and use caching and a good server.

7. Mobile usability

Google evaluates sites primarily by their mobile version. On mobile, the content should be complete, text readable, buttons touch-friendly and there should be no horizontal scrolling.

8. Multilingual structure (hreflang)

If you publish in more than one language, each language should be at its own address (such as /en/, /ru/) and pages should be linked to each other with hreflang tags. Setups that change the language only via a cookie cannot be seen by search engines. For details, see our multilingual site guide.

9. Security and HTTPS

The site should run over HTTPS from start to finish. Hacked sites fill up with spam pages in search results and suffer serious losses in visibility. For security measures, see our website security guide.

10. Internal links

Link to your important pages (service pages, quote page) from blog posts and other pages with meaningful anchor text. Internal links guide visitors and show search engines which pages matter.

Quick checklist

• ☐ Search Console set up, sitemap submitted
• ☐ robots.txt and noindex settings correct
• ☐ One H1, a unique title and description on every page
• ☐ Canonical and (if applicable) hreflang correct
• ☐ Structured data validated
• ☐ Core Web Vitals in the “good” range
• ☐ No horizontal scrolling on mobile
• ☐ HTTPS and up-to-date security measures
• ☐ Old addresses redirected with 301

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between technical SEO and content SEO?

Technical SEO organises the foundation so that search engines can crawl and understand your site without problems (speed, indexing, structure). Content SEO is about creating pages that answer visitors’ questions accurately and thoroughly. The two work together.

What should Core Web Vitals values be?

Google’s recommended thresholds are: LCP (loading of the largest content) 2.5 seconds or less, INP (response to interaction) 200 milliseconds or less, and CLS (visual shift) 0.1 or less.

When will SEO work show results?

Technical fixes can be crawled and reflected within a few weeks; visibility for competitive keywords develops over time with regular content. No exact timeline or ranking can be guaranteed.

Let’s review your site’s technical SEO together: find out more about our SEO and technical site improvement service.