Technical SEO is the foundation that determines whether your content can even compete in search results. A beautifully written blog post will never rank if search engines cannot crawl, render, and index the page efficiently. This checklist covers the issues we most commonly find and fix during technical audits at iCubeTech.
Crawlability and Indexation
Start with your robots.txt file — verify it is not accidentally blocking important pages or entire directories. Check your XML sitemap: it should include only canonical, indexable URLs and be submitted to Google Search Console. Run a crawl with Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to identify orphan pages (pages with no internal links), redirect chains longer than 2 hops, and 4xx/5xx errors. For JavaScript-rendered sites built with React or Next.js, verify that Google can see your rendered content by using the URL Inspection tool in Search Console. If your content depends on client-side JavaScript, implement server-side rendering (SSR) or static site generation (SSG) for all SEO-critical pages.
Core Web Vitals Optimization
Google's Core Web Vitals — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — are ranking factors with measurable impact. Target LCP under 2.5 seconds by optimizing your largest above-the-fold element, typically a hero image or heading. Serve images in WebP or AVIF format with explicit width and height attributes to prevent layout shift. Lazy-load below-the-fold images and defer non-critical JavaScript. For INP, minimize main thread blocking by breaking up long tasks and using web workers for heavy computation.
Structured Data and Internal Linking
Implement relevant schema markup for every content type: Article for blog posts, LocalBusiness for service pages, Product for e-commerce, and FAQ for question-answer sections. Validate with Google's Rich Results Test before deploying. Build a logical internal linking structure with descriptive anchor text — every important page should be reachable within 3 clicks from the homepage. Create topic clusters: a pillar page that covers a broad topic with links to detailed subtopic pages that link back. This architecture helps search engines understand your site's topical authority and surfaces your deepest content for long-tail queries.