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Tick as you go. The order matters more than the count.
| # | Pass | Check | Why it matters | Done |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indexing | Every page you want ranked returns 200 and is not noindex | A page that cannot be indexed cannot rank, and this is the most common single fault | ||
| Indexing | robots.txt does not block anything you want crawled | One wrong line here removes a site from search | ||
| Indexing | A sitemap exists, is submitted, and lists only 200-status URLs | A sitemap full of redirects loses the crawler trust | ||
| Indexing | No two URLs serve the same content without a canonical | Duplicates split the signal between them and neither ranks | ||
| Titles | Every page has a unique title under about 60 characters | Duplicated titles are the clearest sign two pages compete | ||
| Titles | Every page has a meta description that describes that page | It does not rank the page; it decides whether the result is clicked | ||
| Titles | One H1 per page, and it matches what the page is about | |||
| Content | The primary query appears in the title, H1 and first paragraph | |||
| Content | No two pages target the same query | This is cannibalisation and it is usually self-inflicted | ||
| Content | Thin pages are either expanded or removed | |||
| Links | Every published page is linked from somewhere else on the site | An orphan is reachable only by sitemap and behaves like it | ||
| Links | Internal links use descriptive text rather than "click here" | |||
| Links | No internal link points at a redirect or a 404 | |||
| Structured data | Breadcrumb markup matches the visible breadcrumb | |||
| Structured data | FAQ, HowTo or Product markup where the page genuinely is one | Marking up something the page is not is a manual action risk | ||
| Speed | Largest contentful paint under 2.5s on mobile | |||
| Speed | No layout shift from images without dimensions | |||
| Speed | The page is usable before the JavaScript loads |
A check with no "why" is one somebody will skip. Fill the column in for your own additions.
Quarterly for a stable site, and after any migration or template change. The indexing pass is worth running monthly on its own.