SEO tips for websites: a 14-point checklist to help you rank higher

The SEO checklist at a glance

In the usual vocabulary, tips 2 to 4, 9, 10 and 13 are technical SEO, tips 5 to 7, 11, 12 and 14 are on-page SEO, and tip 8 is local SEO. Tip 1 is how you check all of them.

Make sure Google can find and index your pages

These four fixes decide whether your pages can appear at all. Google's technical requirements are short: Googlebot is not blocked, the page returns an HTTP 200 status, and it has indexable content. Meeting them makes a page eligible to be indexed, not guaranteed, and Google adds that it costs nothing to be in its results, whatever anyone tells you.

1. Set up Google Search Console

Search Console is Google's free view of how it crawls, indexes and serves your site, and most checks in this list use it. When you add a property, you choose its type:

• Domain property (example.com): covers every subdomain and both http and https, and can only be verified with a DNS record at your domain provider.
• URL-prefix property (https://www.example.com/): covers only URLs under that exact prefix, and can be verified with an HTML file, an HTML tag, Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager.

Choose the Domain property if you can edit DNS: it also shows the http:// and non-www duplicates that tip 4 is about. Verification lasts only as long as Search Console can still find your token, so leave the DNS record or tag in place, and add a second method in case a template change removes the first.

Google suggests checking in about once a month or after you change the site; it emails you when it finds new issues. Start with two reports. Page indexing lists the URLs Google tried to index and why some were not. Performance shows the queries people used, with clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR) and average position. Google's guide to generative AI search adds a Generative AI performance report for how your pages do in features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Bing Webmaster Tools does the same job for Bing, and Bing's webmaster guidelines, which also cover Copilot, ask for the same basics as this list.

Check: a site:example.com search on Google, which the SEO Starter Guide suggests as a first test, returns your pages, and both reports show data.

2. Remove anything that blocks crawling or indexing

Two different controls are easy to confuse:

Google's introduction to robots.txt is explicit that it is not a way to keep a page out of Google: a disallowed URL can still be indexed from links on other sites and shown without a description. And a noindex rule only works if the crawler can fetch the page and read it. A page that is both disallowed and tagged noindex can therefore stay in the results, because Google never sees the tag.

Whole sites disappear this way when a staging setup reaches production: a Disallow: / rule, a site-wide noindex, or a CMS setting that hides the site from search engines. Status codes matter too. A missing page should return 404, a moved one should 301 to its new address, and a "not found" message served with a 200 status is reported as a soft 404.

Check: in the Page indexing report, look under "Why pages aren't indexed" for pages you want found listed as "URL blocked by robots.txt", "URL marked 'noindex'", "Soft 404" or "Server error (5xx)". For one page, the URL Inspection tool tests live whether crawling and indexing are allowed, and can request indexing once it is fixed. Do not aim for 100% indexed: Google indexes only canonical pages, so duplicates and redirected URLs rightly show as not indexed. How crawlers read robots.txt is covered in web crawling and indexing explained.

3. Serve every page over HTTPS

HTTPS protects what visitors send and read, and browsers are about to warn before sites without it. Google announced in October 2025 that Chrome 154, scheduled for October 2026, will turn on "Always Use Secure Connections" by default, so Chrome asks for the user's permission before it first opens a public site without HTTPS.

For search, HTTPS works through canonicalization. Google prefers the HTTPS version of a page as canonical unless something contradicts it: an invalid certificate, insecure dependencies other than images (mixed content), an HTTPS page that redirects to HTTP, or a canonical tag pointing at the HTTP version. Its page experience guide, last updated in September 2026, says that apart from Core Web Vitals, page experience aspects such as secure serving do not directly lift rankings. So the point is to switch cleanly, not to collect a bonus:

1. Install a valid certificate that covers every host name you use, including www.
2. Redirect every http:// URL to its https:// equivalent with a 301, in one hop.
3. Update internal links, canonical tags and the sitemap to the https:// URLs.
4. Add HSTS once everything works over HTTPS.

Check: loading http:// versions of a few pages lands straight on https://, with no certificate or mixed-content warning. To keep an expiring certificate from undoing the fix, see how to renew an SSL certificate; our hosting and maintenance service includes certificate, domain and DNS expiry alerts.

4. Give every page one canonical URL

The same page often answers at several addresses: http and https, with and without www, with and without a trailing slash, or with tracking parameters such as ?gclid=. Google picks one, the canonical, to index and show, and consolidates signals such as links onto it. Duplicate content is not a spam violation and brings no penalty, but it wastes crawling on URLs you do not care about and can leave Google showing an address you did not choose.

Google lists the ways to state your preference, strongest first, and they add up when combined:

1. Redirects (strong): 301 every protocol and host variant to the preferred one.
2. rel="canonical" (strong): an absolute URL to the preferred address on each page, including a self-referencing canonical on the preferred page itself.
3. Sitemap inclusion (weak): list only the preferred URLs.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/services/drain-cleaning/" />

Be consistent: link internally to the canonical URL, never declare one URL in the sitemap and another in the tag, and do not use robots.txt or noindex to pick a canonical.

Check: URL Inspection shows a "User-declared canonical" and a "Google-selected canonical" for any URL, and they should match. "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user" in the Page indexing report means Google does not consider your chosen page a duplicate of the one declaring it.

Tell searchers and Google what each page is about

Google says it always seeks to show the most relevant content, even when page experience is poor. These three fixes make each page's relevance obvious, to Google and to the person reading the result.

5. Write a unique, descriptive title for every page

The <title> element is the main source of the title link, the clickable headline of a result, and Google describes that headline as often the primary thing people use to decide which result to click. Google also draws on the page's main visible heading, other headings, og:title and anchor text, and it may replace a title that is half-empty, outdated, inaccurate or repeated boilerplate.

• Give every page its own title that describes that page: "Emergency drain cleaning in Ottawa | Example Plumbing", not "Home" or "Services".
• Put the words that identify the page first and the brand at the end, after a separator. Google sets no character limit but truncates title links to fit the device width.
• Do not repeat keywords ("plumber, plumbers, plumbing Ottawa"); Google calls that keyword stuffing, and it can make the result look spammy.
• Make the main visible heading, usually the first <h1>, say the same thing as the title.

Check: export every title with a site crawler such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider or Sitebulb and look for duplicates and empty titles, then search site:example.com to see the title links Google actually shows. Google has to recrawl a page to notice a new title, which can take a few days to a few weeks.

6. Match each page to one search intent, with headings that outline it

A page does well for a query when it satisfies what the searcher wanted: an answer, a price, a service nearby. Give each page one job, and do it near the top.

• Pick the question from real searches. For an existing site, the queries in the Performance report are the best record of the words people already use to find you. Cover a question and its phrasings on one page: Google's generative AI guide notes that its AI systems understand synonyms and general meaning, so there is no need to capture every long-tail variation.
• Answer first. Bing's guidelines ask for the same thing in their own words: focus each URL on one topic and place essential information near the top.
• Outline with headings. One <h1> that states the topic, <h2> sections for what a reader scans for. Google's SEO Starter Guide says heading order does not matter to Google Search, though a logical order helps screen reader users.
• Write for people. Google's helpful content guidance asks whether a reader leaves having learned enough to reach their goal, and says outright that Google has no preferred word count.

To plan pages around a topic's entities and questions rather than single keywords, see semantic SEO.

Check: in the Performance report, filter by page and read its top queries. Each should be a question the page answers; a page that ranks for queries it does not answer needs a section that answers them, or a different page.

7. Write a meta description that summarizes the page

Google builds the snippet under the title link mostly from the page content, and uses the <meta name="description"> tag when it describes the page more accurately. The description changes what people read before they click.

• Write a unique description for each page. If time is short, Google's own advice is to start with the home page and the most visited pages.
• Summarize that specific page in a sentence or two, with the facts a searcher needs: what, where, when, for whom. There is no length limit; Google truncates the snippet to fit the screen.
• Skip keyword lists. Google says descriptions made of keywords are less likely to be shown.

<meta
  name="description"
  content="Same-day drain cleaning across Ottawa: blocked sinks, toilets and main sewer lines, with the price confirmed before work starts."
/>

Check: no two important pages share a description. Pages with many impressions and a low CTR are where a better title and description pay off first; finding untapped SEO opportunities in Search Console walks through that analysis.

Show up in local results

8. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile

When someone searches for a business near them, Google shows local results on Search and Maps, and a verified Business Profile is how your business appears there. Google's guidelines allow a profile if your business has a physical location customers can visit, or travels to customers where they are. A virtual office, a rented address you do not work from, is not eligible, and a business that does neither, such as an online-only shop, is outside these guidelines.

1. Add or claim the profile, which is free, and complete verification.
2. Use your real-world business name, as it appears on your storefront and website, with no added keywords.
3. Choose the category that fits best, and fill in hours, your address or service area, and photos.
4. Reply to reviews, and keep the details the same as on your website.

Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, where prominence reflects how well known the business is, including how many websites link to it and how many reviews it has. Google also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Citations, review collection within the rules, location pages and LocalBusiness markup are covered in our local SEO guide.

Check: search your business name on Google Maps from a phone and confirm the name, category, hours and address or service area are the ones you set.

Make every page work well on a phone

9. Use a responsive layout with the same content on mobile

Google uses the mobile version of a page, crawled with a smartphone user agent, for indexing and ranking. This is mobile-first indexing, and it makes the phone layout the version that counts, whatever share of your customers use a desktop.

• Use responsive design: the same HTML at the same URL, laid out by screen size. Google recommends it as the easiest pattern to build and maintain.
• Keep the same content, headings, structured data and robots meta tags on mobile and desktop. Accordions and tabs are fine as long as the content is there.
• Do not load primary content only after a tap, swipe or typing; Google does not load content that needs user interaction.

Check: run a live test in URL Inspection and look at the screenshot of the rendered page. Google also points to Lighthouse, built into Chrome, for finding mobile usability problems.

10. Pass Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals measure real visits, and Google says its ranking systems use them. A page passes when it meets all three "good" targets at the 75th percentile of page loads, measured separately on mobile and desktop. The ranges below are the ones the Core Web Vitals report uses:

INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital in March 2024, so guides that still mention FID are out of date. Know which data you are reading. The Core Web Vitals report and the field data in PageSpeed Insights come from the Chrome UX Report (CrUX): real Chrome visits over the previous 28 days, so a quiet site may have none. Lighthouse is a lab test on a simulated device, useful for debugging, but it cannot measure INP and uses Total Blocking Time as a stand-in.

The usual fixes, by metric:

• LCP: never lazy-load the likely LCP image; put it in the HTML with fetchpriority="high", compress it and serve AVIF or WebP. A slow server response (TTFB), from redirect chains or a server far from visitors, can make 2.5 seconds impossible; a CDN brings content closer. web.dev's LCP guide breaks the time into these parts.
• INP: ship less JavaScript and break up long tasks so the main thread can respond to input.
• CLS: set width and height (or CSS aspect-ratio) on every image and video, and reserve space for embeds and ads, as web.dev's CLS guide recommends.

Keep it in proportion. Google says good scores do not guarantee top rankings, and that chasing a perfect score just for SEO reasons may not be the best use of your time. When the fix is a rebuild, our web design and development work keeps performance budgets in the build pipeline, so a change that makes a key template slower fails its checks before it ships.

Check: the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console shows your URL groups as Good on both mobile and desktop; for a single URL, PageSpeed Insights shows field and lab data side by side.

11. Give images alt text and serve modern formats

Images matter twice: they can rank in Google Images, and an image is often the largest element on screen, the one LCP times. Google's image guidelines set the rules:

• Use <img> elements (inside <picture> is fine). Google does not index CSS background images.
• Write alt text that describes the image in the context of the page. Google calls it the most important image attribute and reads it, with computer vision, to understand the image; it also acts as anchor text when the image is a link, and it is what screen reader users hear. Do not fill it with keywords.
• Use short, descriptive file names: drain-camera-inspection.jpg, not IMG_0042.jpg. Google says they give very light clues.
• Google Search supports BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG and AVIF, and web.dev suggests AVIF or WebP to cut an image's load time.

<picture>
  <source srcset="/images/drain-camera-inspection.avif" type="image/avif" />
  <img
    src="/images/drain-camera-inspection.jpg"
    alt="Technician's camera showing tree roots inside a clay sewer pipe"
    width="1200"
    height="800"
  />
</picture>

Check: a site crawler lists images with an empty or missing alt; decorative images should have alt="" on purpose, and every meaningful one should describe what it shows.

Help Google connect and read your pages

12. Link related pages with descriptive anchor text

Google uses links to find new pages and as a signal of relevance, and internal links are the ones you fully control.

• Use real <a href="..."> links. Google cannot reliably follow elements without an href or links that exist only as script events.
• Make sure every page you care about has a link from at least one other page on your site: from the home page to each service, from each article to the service it relates to, and between related services.
• Write anchor text that is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant: "our [drain cleaning service]", not "click here" or "read more". Do not cram keywords into it; that is keyword stuffing.
• Link to the canonical URL, not to a redirecting or parameter version.

Check: read only the anchor text of each link, out of context, as Google suggests. If you cannot tell what the linked page is about, rewrite it. A crawler's list of pages with no internal links (orphans) shows what needs linking.

13. Submit an XML sitemap

A sitemap lists the URLs you want indexed. It sits this low on the list because Google says you might not need one if your site has about 500 pages or fewer, every important page can be reached by links from the home page, and you have few images, videos or news articles you want found. It is still cheap insurance, and WordPress, Wix and Blogger usually generate one for you; on WordPress, make sure only one sitemap is live, as our WordPress SEO guide explains.

If you build or check one, follow Google's sitemap rules:

• List absolute, canonical URLs only: no redirects, noindex pages or 404s.
• Keep each file under 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed, encoded as UTF-8; larger sites split it into several files.
• Google ignores <priority> and <changefreq>, and uses <lastmod> only if it is consistently accurate, so update it for real content changes, not a new copyright year.
• Submit it in the Search Console Sitemaps report and add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt. Submission is a hint, not a guarantee of crawling.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/services/drain-cleaning/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-09-10</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

In robots.txt, one line points every crawler to it:

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Bing's guidelines ask for the same canonical-only sitemap and add IndexNow, a way to notify Bing the moment a URL is added, updated or removed; web crawling and indexing explained covers how it works.

Check: the Sitemaps report shows when Google last read the file and any processing errors.

14. Add structured data that matches the visible page

Structured data describes a page in the schema.org vocabulary so that it can be eligible for rich results. Google recommends JSON-LD, which sits in its own script block instead of being woven through the visible HTML. The types a small business site usually needs are all in Google's list of supported features: Organization or LocalBusiness on the home or contact page, Breadcrumb, Article for posts and Product snippets for products.

<script type="application/ld+json">
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Plumber",
    "name": "Example Plumbing",
    "url": "https://www.example.com/",
    "telephone": "+1-613-555-0100",
    "address": {
      "@type": "PostalAddress",
      "streetAddress": "100 Example Street",
      "addressLocality": "Ottawa",
      "addressRegion": "ON",
      "addressCountry": "CA"
    }
  }
</script>

Google's general guidelines come down to honesty and modest expectations. Mark up only what readers can see on the page, never fake reviews or unrelated content. Valid markup does not guarantee a rich result. A structured data manual action removes a page's eligibility for rich results without affecting how it ranks.

Google's guide to generative AI search adds that structured data is not required for its AI features, and that there is no special schema to add for them.

Check: run Google's Rich Results Test on the URL; it should detect the markup with no errors. After launch, Search Console's rich result reports flag errors across the site.

What not to spend time on

Google's SEO Starter Guide lists things it believes you should not focus on, and its newer guidance adds a few:

• Meta keywords. Google Search does not use the keywords meta tag.
• Word counts. Content length alone does not matter for ranking; there is no minimum or maximum.
• Keywords in the domain name or URL. They have hardly any effect beyond appearing in breadcrumbs.
• Heading order and number. Useful for accessibility, irrelevant to Google's ranking.
• E-E-A-T as a ranking factor. Google says plainly that it is not one. What Google does look at is covered in how Google judges relevance and authority.
• llms.txt files and special "AI" markup. Google's generative AI guide says Google Search does not use them and that optimizing for AI search is still SEO. AI's impact on SEO covers what the other AI engines read.
• Bought or traded links. Paying for links, excessive link exchanges and automated link building are link spam. Earn links with pages worth citing, as the power of quality backlinks explains.

Work down the list in order and give each change time before you judge it: Google says some changes take effect within hours and others take several months, and suggests waiting a few weeks. If you would rather have the list worked through for you, our SEO service starts with a technical SEO audit: a crawl of the whole site and a read of Search Console, with the issues ranked by impact and effort. If your business sells IT services, our guide to SEO for IT companies and MSPs covers the pages, proof and tracking that bring leads.