SEO Checklists & Audits

TL;DR — This isn’t a checklist itself — it’s the map to every checklist and audit on the site. If you only remember one thing: migration means the domain, platform, or URLs are changing; redesign means only the look and template are changing on the same URLs. Pick the wrong one and you’ll audit for the wrong risks.

Evidence for this claim Google distinguishes site moves with URL changes from hosting or infrastructure changes that keep visible URLs unchanged. Scope: Google site-move categories; a real project can combine multiple change types. Confidence: high · Verified: 2026-07-14 Google Search Central: Site moves and migrations Evidence for this claim Google's SEO Starter Guide provides a baseline for crawlability, organization, content, links, and search appearance checks. Scope: General baseline rather than a substitute for project-specific review. Confidence: high · Verified: 2026-07-14 Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide

Start here if you’re not sure what you need

• Technical SEO ChecklistA technical SEO checklist is a prioritized list of the technical conditions a site must satisfy — crawlable, indexable, understandable, renderable — so search engines and AI answer engines can access and serve its pages. It's the technical-only slice of a full SEO audit. — the broadest one. CrawlabilityCrawlability is how well search engine crawlers can discover, access, and fetch a site's pages. A crawlability issue is any technical condition — blocked access, broken links, server failures, or bloated URL inventory — that stops pages from reaching the index., indexability, site speed, structured dataStructured data is a standardized way of labeling page content (using the schema.org vocabulary in JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa) so search engines can understand its meaning. It's not a direct ranking factor — its value is rich results and entity understanding., security. Start here if you just want a general health check.
• SEO Audit ChecklistAn SEO audit checklist is the structured set of things you review across a site's technical health, on-page elements, content quality, and off-page authority — used to produce a short, prioritized action plan, not an exhaustive 100–200 item inventory. — a step-by-step process for running a full audit, not just a list of things to check.

Working inside a specific platform

• WordPress SEO Checklist — permalinks, plugin setup (Yoast/Rank Math/SEOPress), archive noindexNoindex is a directive that tells search engines to keep a page out of their index, so it won't appear in search results. It works only on pages a crawler can actually fetch — a page blocked in robots.txt can never be noindexed. decisions, images, cachingCaching stores a copy of a page or resource — in a browser, a CDN edge node, or a search crawler's own cache — so it can be served again without regenerating or re-downloading it. It isn't a direct ranking factor, but it feeds page speed and crawl efficiency., and a before-you-launch gate.
• Shopify SEO Checklist — the fixed URL structureURL structure is how the parts of a web address — scheme, domain, path, query string, and fragment — are organized and formatted. It mostly affects crawling, usability, and how engines understand a page, not rankings directly., the collection/product duplicate-URL fix, structured data, and robots.txt.liquid.

Moving or rebuilding a site

These two get confused constantly, so pick carefully:

• Website Migration Checklist — the domain, platform, or URL structureURL structure is how the parts of a web address — scheme, domain, path, query string, and fragment — are organized and formatted. It mostly affects crawling, usability, and how engines understand a page, not rankings directly. is changing. RedirectA redirect sends browsers and crawlers from a requested URL to a different one. An HTTP redirect specifically is a 3xx status code paired with a Location header; meta refresh and JavaScript redirects achieve a similar navigation without being a 3xx response themselves. Permanent redirects (301/308) are Google's signal the target should be canonical; temporary ones (302/303/307) aren't. mapping is the center of this one.
• Website Redesign SEO ChecklistA website redesign SEO checklist is the step-by-step task list for refreshing a site's visual design, templates, or CMS theme while keeping the same URLs — without silently losing the on-page and technical SEO elements (titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal links, structured data, canonical tags, alt text) that were earning rankings under the old design. — same domain, same URLs, only the template/visual design is changing. Content and markup parity through the new template is the center of this one.

Pillar-specific checklists and audits

• International SEO Checklist — URL structure, hreflangHreflang is an annotation (in HTML, HTTP headers, or XML sitemaps) that tells search engines which language and optional region a page targets, and which alternate versions exist. It only works when every page in the cluster references all the others., geotargetingConfiguring a site or URL to target users in a specific country., and localizationLocalization is adapting content for a specific target market — not just translating the words, but adjusting currency, formats, idioms, cultural references, local search terms, and trust signals so the experience feels native. for a multi-country or multi-language site.
• International SEO Audit — auditing an international site that’s already live.
• Mobile SEO Checklist — content parity, mobile Core Web VitalsGoogle's three real-user UX metrics — LCP (loading), INP (responsiveness), and CLS (visual stability) — used by Google's ranking systems, with no official weight attached, measured on field data., and mobile usabilityWhether a page is easy to use on a mobile/touch device — legible text without zooming, tap targets sized and spaced to avoid mis-taps, content that fits the viewport with no horizontal scrolling, and no intrusive interstitials. Distinct from mobile-first indexing and Core Web Vitals..
• On-Page SEO Checklist — titles, headers, internal linksAn internal link is a hyperlink from one page on a website to another page on the same website. Internal links help search engines discover your pages and pass ranking signals (PageRank and anchor-text context) between them., and content-level on-page factors.
• SaaS SEO Checklist — SaaS-specific structure, content, and conversion considerations.
• Ecommerce SEO AuditAn ecommerce SEO audit is a systematic review of an online store's crawlability, indexation, duplicate content, on-page, technical, and link health — designed to surface the small set of issues that actually hold rankings and revenue back, not to produce a 500-point checklist. — auditing a live ecommerce site (product/category pages, faceted navigationFaceted navigation (faceted search, product filtering) lets visitors refine a list of products or content by attribute — price, color, size, brand, rating. The SEO problem: each filter combination can spawn a distinct crawlable URL, turning a small catalog into millions of near-duplicate pages that waste crawl budget and dilute ranking signals., stock status).
• Enterprise SEO AuditAn enterprise SEO audit is a systematic evaluation of a large-scale website — usually millions of URLs across multiple CMS platforms, teams, and regions — to find the technical, indexing, content, and link issues that limit organic visibility. Unlike a standard audit, it must account for organizational complexity and ruthless prioritization, because technical perfection at scale is neither possible nor worth paying for. — auditing at enterprise scale (governance, multi-team workflows, larger site architectures).

TL;DR — Every checklist and audit on this site, one directory, grouped by the job you’re actually doing rather than by pillar. The two most-confused pairs — migration vs. redesign, and “checklist” (build/launch, ordered steps) vs. “audit” (already live, diagnostic) — get called out explicitly below so you land on the right one the first time.

Evidence for this claim Google distinguishes site moves with URL changes from hosting or infrastructure changes that keep visible URLs unchanged. Scope: Google site-move categories; a real project can combine multiple change types. Confidence: high · Verified: 2026-07-14 Google Search Central: Site moves and migrations Evidence for this claim Google's SEO Starter Guide provides a baseline for crawlability, organization, content, links, and search appearance checks. Scope: General baseline rather than a substitute for project-specific review. Confidence: high · Verified: 2026-07-14 Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide

Why this page exists

Checklists on this site live in whichever pillar and cluster they belong to — WordPress SEO Checklist sits in Platform SEOPlatform SEO covers the SEO considerations specific to the technology a site is built on — CMS, website builder, headless stack, or JavaScript framework. Each platform has different defaults, constraints, and required configurations that affect crawling, indexing, and ranking., International SEO Checklist sits in International SEOInternational SEO is the practice of optimizing a site so search engines understand which countries and/or languages it targets, and serve the right version to each user. It spans URL structure, hreflang, and on-page localization.’s fundamentals cluster, and so on. That’s the right place for them structurally, but it means there’s no single page where you can see every checklist at once and pick the right one. This page is that indexStoring a crawled page in the search index so it can appear in results. Crawled is not the same as indexed — Google selects what to keep, and indexing isn't guaranteed..

Checklist vs. audit — the distinction that matters

A checklist on this site is generally an ordered, build/launch-time task list: things to do in sequence before something goes live, or to set something up correctly the first time. An audit is a diagnostic process for a site that’s already live: what to check, in what order, to find what’s currently wrong. Several pillars have both — an audit to find the problems, a checklist to fix or prevent them.

The full directory, by category

General / platform-agnostic

• Technical SEO ChecklistA technical SEO checklist is a prioritized list of the technical conditions a site must satisfy — crawlable, indexable, understandable, renderable — so search engines and AI answer engines can access and serve its pages. It's the technical-only slice of a full SEO audit. — crawlabilityCrawlability is how well search engine crawlers can discover, access, and fetch a site's pages. A crawlability issue is any technical condition — blocked access, broken links, server failures, or bloated URL inventory — that stops pages from reaching the index., indexability, speed, structured dataStructured data is a standardized way of labeling page content (using the schema.org vocabulary in JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa) so search engines can understand its meaning. It's not a direct ranking factor — its value is rich results and entity understanding., security — the broadest starting point.
• SEO Audit ChecklistAn SEO audit checklist is the structured set of things you review across a site's technical health, on-page elements, content quality, and off-page authority — used to produce a short, prioritized action plan, not an exhaustive 100–200 item inventory. — the process for running a full audit end to end, not just a static list.
• On-Page SEO Checklist — content-level factors: titles, headers, internal linksAn internal link is a hyperlink from one page on a website to another page on the same website. Internal links help search engines discover your pages and pass ranking signals (PageRank and anchor-text context) between them., image alt textAlt text is the value of the `alt` attribute on an HTML `<img>` element — a short text substitute chosen for the image's purpose and context, not a literal description of what it shows. It makes images accessible to screen-reader users and helps search engines understand images, mainly for image search..

CMSA content management system (CMS) is software that lets users create, manage, and publish digital content — like blog posts and pages — without writing raw code. WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are the most common open-source CMS platforms. and ecommerce platforms

• WordPress SEO Checklist — permalinks, plugin choice and setup, archive noindexNoindex is a directive that tells search engines to keep a page out of their index, so it won't appear in search results. It works only on pages a crawler can actually fetch — a page blocked in robots.txt can never be noindexed. judgment calls, cachingCaching stores a copy of a page or resource — in a browser, a CDN edge node, or a search crawler's own cache — so it can be served again without regenerating or re-downloading it. It isn't a direct ranking factor, but it feeds page speed and crawl efficiency., images, redirectsA redirect sends browsers and crawlers from a requested URL to a different one. An HTTP redirect specifically is a 3xx status code paired with a Location header; meta refresh and JavaScript redirects achieve a similar navigation without being a 3xx response themselves. Permanent redirects (301/308) are Google's signal the target should be canonical; temporary ones (302/303/307) aren't., schema, pre-launch gate.
• Shopify SEO Checklist — fixed URL prefixes, the collection/product canonical mismatch, robots.txt.liquid, app bloat, pre-launch.

Moving or rebuilding a site — the pair most worth reading side by side:

• Website Migration Checklist — domain, platform, or URL structureURL structure is how the parts of a web address — scheme, domain, path, query string, and fragment — are organized and formatted. It mostly affects crawling, usability, and how engines understand a page, not rankings directly. changes. Centers on URL mapping, 301 redirects, staging QA, and a post-launch monitoring window.
• Website Redesign SEO ChecklistA website redesign SEO checklist is the step-by-step task list for refreshing a site's visual design, templates, or CMS theme while keeping the same URLs — without silently losing the on-page and technical SEO elements (titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal links, structured data, canonical tags, alt text) that were earning rankings under the old design. — same domain and URLs, only the template/design changes. Centers on preserving on-page elements (titles, H1s, internal linksAn internal link is a hyperlink from one page on a website to another page on the same website. Internal links help search engines discover your pages and pass ranking signals (PageRank and anchor-text context) between them., schema, alt textAlt text is the value of the `alt` attribute on an HTML `<img>` element — a short text substitute chosen for the image's purpose and context, not a literal description of what it shows. It makes images accessible to screen-reader users and helps search engines understand images, mainly for image search.) through a new theme, and crawl-diffing staging against live before launch.

Both of these live under the MigrationsA site migration is any significant change to a website's URL structure, domain, platform, protocol, or hosting that can affect how search engines crawl, index, and rank it. The risk scales with how much you change at once. hub, which covers the full range of migration types in one place if you need the broader context first.

Pillar-specific

• International SEO Checklist (build/launch: URL structure, hreflangHreflang is an annotation (in HTML, HTTP headers, or XML sitemaps) that tells search engines which language and optional region a page targets, and which alternate versions exist. It only works when every page in the cluster references all the others., geotargetingConfiguring a site or URL to target users in a specific country., localizationLocalization is adapting content for a specific target market — not just translating the words, but adjusting currency, formats, idioms, cultural references, local search terms, and trust signals so the experience feels native.) and International SEO Audit (diagnostic: auditing a site that’s already live internationally).
• Mobile SEO Checklist — content parity, mobile Core Web VitalsGoogle's three real-user UX metrics — LCP (loading), INP (responsiveness), and CLS (visual stability) — used by Google's ranking systems, with no official weight attached, measured on field data., mobile usabilityWhether a page is easy to use on a mobile/touch device — legible text without zooming, tap targets sized and spaced to avoid mis-taps, content that fits the viewport with no horizontal scrolling, and no intrusive interstitials. Distinct from mobile-first indexing and Core Web Vitals., in a mobile-first-indexingStoring a crawled page in the search index so it can appear in results. Crawled is not the same as indexed — Google selects what to keep, and indexing isn't guaranteed. world.
• SaaS SEO Checklist — SaaS-specific site structure and content considerations.
• Ecommerce SEO AuditAn ecommerce SEO audit is a systematic review of an online store's crawlability, indexation, duplicate content, on-page, technical, and link health — designed to surface the small set of issues that actually hold rankings and revenue back, not to produce a 500-point checklist. — diagnostic audit for a live ecommerce site: product/category pages, faceted navigationFaceted navigation (faceted search, product filtering) lets visitors refine a list of products or content by attribute — price, color, size, brand, rating. The SEO problem: each filter combination can spawn a distinct crawlable URL, turning a small catalog into millions of near-duplicate pages that waste crawl budget and dilute ranking signals., stockouts.
• Enterprise SEO AuditAn enterprise SEO audit is a systematic evaluation of a large-scale website — usually millions of URLs across multiple CMS platforms, teams, and regions — to find the technical, indexing, content, and link issues that limit organic visibility. Unlike a standard audit, it must account for organizational complexity and ruthless prioritization, because technical perfection at scale is neither possible nor worth paying for. — auditing at enterprise scale, where governance and cross-team workflow matter as much as the technical items themselves.

How to use more than one

These aren’t mutually exclusive. A large WordPress site moving to a new domain would reasonably use the Website Migration Checklist for the move itself, the WordPress SEOWordPress SEO is the process of configuring, optimizing, and maintaining a WordPress site so search engines can efficiently crawl, index, and rank it. WordPress gives you a solid foundation, but its defaults — ?p=123 permalinks, attachment pages, thin archives — need cleanup before a site is actually well-optimized. Checklist for the platform-level setup, and the Technical SEOTechnical SEO is the practice of making a site easy for search engines to crawl, render, index, and (now) be eligible for AI answers. It's the foundation that lets your content and links rank — not a ranking trick of its own. Checklist as a general final pass before calling it done.

• This page is a directory of every checklist and audit on the site, not a standalone checklist.
• Checklist = ordered build/launch task list. Audit = diagnostic process for an already-live site.
• Migration (domain/platform/URL changes) and redesign (same URLs, new template) are the pair most often confused — they solve different problems and use different checklists.
• General starting points: Technical SEO ChecklistA technical SEO checklist is a prioritized list of the technical conditions a site must satisfy — crawlable, indexable, understandable, renderable — so search engines and AI answer engines can access and serve its pages. It's the technical-only slice of a full SEO audit., SEO AuditAn SEO audit checklist is the structured set of things you review across a site's technical health, on-page elements, content quality, and off-page authority — used to produce a short, prioritized action plan, not an exhaustive 100–200 item inventory. Checklist.
• Platform-specific: WordPress, Shopify.
• Pillar-specific: International (checklist + audit), Mobile, SaaS, On-Page, Ecommerce (audit), Enterprise (audit).
• Checklists can be combined — e.g. a migration checklist plus a platform checklist plus a general technical pass.

Which checklist do I actually need?

Test yourself: Picking the right SEO checklist

Five quick questions on matching a situation to the right checklist or audit. Pick an answer for each, then check.