There are two kinds of SEO problem: “we don’t rank for anything” and “Google won’t even crawl us properly.” Most small-business sites struggle with the second one and don’t know it. This is the checklist we run through on every free audit.
Phase 1: Can Google find you?
- Sitemap.xml exists, lists your important pages, uses absolute URLs, and is referenced in robots.txt
- robots.txt doesn’t block the pages you care about (a misplaced
Disallow:hides your whole site) - Internal links — every important page is reachable from the homepage in a few clicks; orphan pages don’t index
- Redirects — old URLs use 301s, not 302s; know the difference — see our redirects guide: 301 is permanent and passes ranking signals, 302 is temporary
Phase 2: Can Google read it?
- One H1 per page, descriptive; logical H2/H3 structure
- Unique titles and meta descriptions — no boilerplate
- Fetch or render as Google does — if your content loads via JavaScript, make sure it’s present server-side
- Images have descriptive alt text and aren’t the page’s only content
- Canonical tags point each page to itself (or the correct preferred version)
Phase 3: Does it pass ranking signals?
- HTTPS everywhere — see what an SSL certificate protects
- Core Web Vitals in the green — LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1 (we explain these here)
- Mobile-friendly — responsive layout, no horizontal scrolling
- Structured data — Organization, Article, FAQ, Product as appropriate, so rich results can appear
Phase 4: Keep it fresh
- Draft pages removed or noindexed
- Dead links cleaned up, redirects added
- Structured data validated after site changes
- Search Console errors reviewed monthly
How long does it take?
Crawlability fixes are fast — often a day or two of work. Ranking improvements then compound over weeks and months. Depth of content and authority take longer, but a site Google can’t crawl will never get there.
Start with a free audit — we’ll tell you whether you have a crawl problem or a content problem, because the fix is different in each case.