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 Checklist — the broadest one. Crawlability, indexability, site speed, structured data, security. Start here if you just want a general health check.
• SEO Audit Checklist — 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 noindex decisions, images, caching, and a before-you-launch gate.
• Shopify SEO Checklist — the fixed URL structure, 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 structure is changing. Redirect mapping is the center of this one.
• Website Redesign SEO Checklist — 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, hreflang, geotargeting, and localization 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 Vitals, and mobile usability.
• On-Page SEO Checklist — titles, headers, internal links, and content-level on-page factors.
• SaaS SEO Checklist — SaaS-specific structure, content, and conversion considerations.
• Ecommerce SEO Audit — auditing a live ecommerce site (product/category pages, faceted navigation, stock status).
• Enterprise SEO Audit — 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 SEO, International SEO Checklist sits in International SEO’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 index.

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 Checklist — crawlability, indexability, speed, structured data, security — the broadest starting point.
• SEO Audit Checklist — 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 links, image alt text.

CMS and ecommerce platforms

• WordPress SEO Checklist — permalinks, plugin choice and setup, archive noindex judgment calls, caching, images, redirects, 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 structure changes. Centers on URL mapping, 301 redirects, staging QA, and a post-launch monitoring window.
• Website Redesign SEO Checklist — same domain and URLs, only the template/design changes. Centers on preserving on-page elements (titles, H1s, internal links, schema, alt text) through a new theme, and crawl-diffing staging against live before launch.

Both of these live under the Migrations 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, hreflang, geotargeting, localization) and International SEO Audit (diagnostic: auditing a site that’s already live internationally).
• Mobile SEO Checklist — content parity, mobile Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, in a mobile-first-indexing world.
• SaaS SEO Checklist — SaaS-specific site structure and content considerations.
• Ecommerce SEO Audit — diagnostic audit for a live ecommerce site: product/category pages, faceted navigation, stockouts.
• Enterprise SEO Audit — 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 SEO Checklist for the platform-level setup, and the Technical SEO 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 Checklist, SEO Audit 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.