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SEO Fundamentals

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Titles and descriptions

• Verify every page has a title, and that no two important pages share one.
• Verify titles lead with what the page is about and end with the brand, not the reverse.
• Verify titles are not truncated into meaninglessness in results — roughly 60 characters is the practical limit.
• Verify no title is a template default like "Home", "Untitled" or the framework's placeholder.
• Verify every page has a meta description written for a human deciding whether to click.
• Verify descriptions are not duplicated across pages or auto-generated from the first sentence of the body.
• Verify titles and descriptions are in the server-rendered HTML, not set by client-side JavaScript.
• Verify templated titles for large page sets still read as sentences rather than as slot-filling.

Structure

• Verify each page has exactly one h1 that matches what the page is about.
• Verify heading levels descend without skipping — this is the same item as the accessibility one, and both audiences benefit.
• Verify the primary content is in main, and that navigation, header and footer are marked as such.
• Verify URLs are readable, lowercase, hyphenated, and stable enough that you will not need to change them.
• Verify URLs do not carry session ids, tracking parameters or sort order as part of their canonical form.
• Verify breadcrumbs exist on deep pages and match the URL hierarchy.

Canonical and duplication

• Verify every page has a self-referencing canonical tag with an absolute URL.
• Verify the canonical points to the version you actually want indexed, and that it returns 200.
• Verify no page canonicalises to a noindex page, which asks the crawler to do two contradictory things.
• Verify paginated pages self-canonicalise; canonicalising page 2 to page 1 hides everything after the first page.
• Verify parameter variants — sort, filter, tracking — canonicalise to the clean URL.
• Verify the same content is not reachable at both trailing-slash and non-trailing-slash URLs.
• Verify uppercase and lowercase paths do not both resolve.
• Verify print, AMP or alternate views canonicalise correctly.

International

• Verify hreflang annotations are reciprocal — every version points to every other, including itself.
• Verify an x-default exists for visitors who match no listed locale.
• Verify language and region codes are valid and describe the content, not the customer you wish you had.
• Verify hreflang and canonical do not contradict each other.
• Verify localised pages are actually localised; the same English page on five country URLs is duplication, not internationalisation.

Links and status codes

• Verify every important page is reachable from the homepage within three clicks.
• Verify there are no orphan pages — in the sitemap but linked from nowhere.
• Verify internal anchor text describes the destination rather than saying "click here".
• Verify a missing page returns a real 404 status, not a 200 with an error message — a soft 404 keeps the URL indexed forever.
• Verify the 404 page helps: search, main navigation, and a link home.
• Verify permanent moves use 301, not 302; a 302 tells the crawler to keep the old URL.
• Verify no redirect chains or loops, and that no chain is longer than one hop.
• Verify outbound links to untrusted or user-generated destinations carry the appropriate rel.
• Verify broken internal links are found by a crawl before a user finds them.

Content and parity

• Verify the mobile page contains the same content as desktop; indexing is mobile-first, so anything hidden on mobile effectively does not exist.
• Verify content is not gated behind a cookie banner or a modal that the crawler sees instead of the page.
• Verify thin or near-duplicate pages generated from a template are either consolidated or given a reason to exist.
• Verify images have descriptive alt text, which serves search and accessibility at once.
• Verify the site is served over HTTPS everywhere, with no mixed content.
• Verify page speed has been dealt with in performance/ rather than treated as an SEO afterthought.