Here's a situation that happens more often than you'd think. A contractor spends good money on a new website. The photos are great, the copy is solid, and every service has its own page. A few months later, the phone is quiet and almost nothing is showing up on Google.
The cause is often something nobody can see. When the site launched, nobody turned off the setting that told search engines to stay away while it was being built. Every page still carries a "do not index" instruction. To Google, the website doesn't exist.
That's technical SEO. It's not the words on your pages. It's whether search engines and AI tools can find those pages, read them, understand them, and trust them enough to show them to people. When it's working, nobody notices. When it breaks, everything else you've paid for stops working with it.
I wrote a shorter piece on on-page SEO vs. technical SEO that explains how the two fit together. This is the full guide to the technical side: every piece, in plain language, with what it looks like when it breaks on a real contractor's website and a checklist you can use at the end.
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the work that makes your website easy for search engines and AI tools to crawl, render, index, and understand. It covers how your site is built and set up: the code, the server, the page addresses, the speed, the security, and the behind-the-scenes signals that tell Google what each page is and how it relates to the others.
Here's the simplest way I explain it to contractors. SEO has three parts:
•Technical SEO: Can search engines get in, read the page, and trust the site?
•On-page SEO: Does the page clearly answer what someone is searching for?
•Off-page SEO: Do other people and websites vouch for you? Think reviews, links, and mentions.
Technical SEO comes first because it's the foundation. Google can't rank a page it can't reach. ChatGPT can't recommend a business it can't read. You can have the best roofing content in your state, and if the technical side is broken, nobody sees it.
How Search Engines Actually Work (The Short Version)
Everything in technical SEO maps to one of four steps. If you understand these, the rest of this guide makes sense.
1.Crawling — A program called a crawler (Google's is Googlebot) visits your website and follows links from page to page, the same way you'd click around.
2.Rendering — The crawler loads the page the way a browser would, including any code that builds the content, so it can see what a visitor sees.
3.Indexing — Google decides whether to store the page in its index, which is the giant library it pulls search results from. Not every page that gets crawled gets indexed.
4.Ranking — When someone searches, Google picks the pages from its index that best answer the search and puts them in order.
AI search tools work in a similar way. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot all send their own crawlers or lean on a search index to find pages they can pull answers from. If your site fails at step one or two, you never make it to step four, in Google or in AI answers.
Technical SEO is mostly about steps one through three. Get those right and your content gets a fair shot at step four.
Crawling: Can Search Engines Find Your Pages?
How crawlers discover pages
Crawlers find pages two main ways: by following links, and by reading your XML sitemap. Links matter most. A page that nothing links to is called an orphan page, and crawlers may never find it.
What broken looks like: An HVAC company adds a "Ductless Mini-Split Installation" page. It's not in the menu, not linked from the AC services page, and not in the sitemap. Six months later it has zero impressions in Search Console because Google never found it.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a small text file that lives at yourdomain.com/robots.txt. It tells crawlers which parts of your site they're allowed to visit. It's meant to keep bots out of places like admin screens, login pages, and internal search results.
A healthy robots.txt for a contractor's website is usually short. It allows everything that matters, blocks a few private areas, and points to the sitemap.
What broken looks like: A single line that reads "Disallow: /" blocks the whole site. It's often added while a site is being built and forgotten at launch. Another common one: blocking the folders that hold your CSS and JavaScript files. Google needs those to render your pages properly, so blocking them can make your pages look broken to Google.
Two things to know:
•Robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing.: If other sites link to a page you've blocked, Google can still list the address in results, just without a description. To keep a page out of Google, use a noindex tag instead (more on that below) and let Google crawl the page so it can see the tag.
•Robots.txt is a request, not a lock.: Reputable crawlers follow it. Bad bots ignore it. Anything private belongs behind a login.
XML sitemaps
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the pages you want search engines to know about. It's a table of contents written for crawlers. Most sites keep it at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and you submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
A good sitemap:
•Lists only pages you want in search: real pages that load correctly, at their final address
•Leaves out redirected pages, error pages, noindexed pages, and duplicates
•Updates on its own when you add pages
•Stays under 50,000 addresses per file (larger sites split it into several files)
What broken looks like: The sitemap still lists 40 pages from the old website that now show errors, and it's missing the 12 new town pages you just added. Google trusts that sitemap a little less every time it finds a dead address in it.
Crawl budget
Crawl budget is how many pages Google is willing and able to crawl on your site in a given period. You'll hear SEO people talk about it a lot. For most contractors, it's not something to worry about. Google's own guidance says crawl budget mainly matters for very large sites with hundreds of thousands or millions of pages, or sites whose pages change constantly.
Where it can matter for a smaller business is waste. Thousands of junk addresses created by filters, calendars, tag pages, or tracking codes can make Google spend its time on pages that don't matter. Keep the site clean and crawl budget takes care of itself.
Server errors and site uptime
If your server is slow or keeps returning errors when Google visits, Google slows down how often it crawls. If it keeps failing, pages can drop out of the index. Search Console's Crawl Stats report shows how Google's visits are going and whether your server is responding well.
Cheap shared hosting is a common cause. So is a site that goes down every time a storm brings a spike in traffic, which for a roofer is exactly when you need it most.
Rendering: Can Search Engines and AI Read What's on the Page?
This is the part of technical SEO that has changed the most in the last few years, and the one most business owners have never heard of.
Some websites send the browser an almost empty page and then build the content with JavaScript after it loads. Visitors don't notice. They see the finished page. But crawlers see something different depending on how they work.
•Google: can run JavaScript, but it does it in a second pass that can happen later. Content that depends on scripts may be indexed more slowly, or miss things that only appear after someone clicks or scrolls.
•Most AI crawlers: generally read only the HTML that arrives first. They don't run your scripts. If your services, your service area, and your phone number only appear after JavaScript runs, those tools may see a blank shell with your logo on it.
The fix is server-side rendering or pre-rendering. That means the full content is already in the page when any crawler asks for it. This is one of the reasons we build next generation websites the way we do. The words, links, headings, and business details are in the page from the first moment, for Google and for AI tools.
How to check it: In Google Search Console, use the URL Inspection tool and click "View crawled page" to see the HTML Google received. A simpler test: open your page, right-click, choose "View page source," and search for a sentence from the middle of the page. If you can't find it, a crawler that doesn't run JavaScript can't either.
What broken looks like: A good-looking site where the page source shows a title, a logo, and a single empty container. When a homeowner asks ChatGPT for "a tree service near Zeeland that does stump grinding," the business never comes up, because the AI never saw that it offers stump grinding at all.
Other rendering rules worth knowing:
•Links should be real links (an "a" tag with an "href" address), not buttons that only work through scripts. Crawlers follow real links.
•Don't hide important content behind tabs or "read more" buttons that only load the text after a click.
•Avoid infinite scroll as the only way to reach older blog posts or projects. Give crawlers a normal page 2, page 3.
Indexing: Is Your Page Actually in Google?
Getting crawled doesn't mean getting indexed. Google crawls plenty of pages and decides not to keep them. Only indexed pages can show up in search.
How to check what's indexed
The Page Indexing report in Google Search Console shows how many of your pages are indexed, which ones aren't, and the reason for each. The URL Inspection tool checks one page at a time and lets you request indexing after you fix something.
You'll see reasons like these. Here's what they mean in plain English:
| Search Console status | What it means | Usually a problem? |
|---|---|---|
| Crawled, currently not indexed | Google saw the page and decided not to keep it, often because it's thin or too similar to other pages | Yes, if it's a page you care about |
| Discovered, currently not indexed | Google knows the page exists but hasn't crawled it yet | Sometimes. Common on new pages and weak internal linking |
| Excluded by noindex tag | Your site told Google not to index it | Only if you didn't mean to |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical | Google thinks it's a copy of another page | Often. Check canonicals and duplicate content |
| Alternate page with proper canonical tag | A copy that correctly points to the main version | No, that's working as intended |
| Page with redirect | The address redirects somewhere else | No, as long as the redirect is right |
| Not found (404) | The page doesn't exist | Only if it should exist or has links pointing to it |
| Soft 404 | The page loads but looks empty or like an error to Google | Yes. Add real content or return a proper 404 |
Noindex tags
A noindex tag is a line in a page's code that tells search engines not to include that page in search. It's useful on purpose: thank-you pages, login pages, staging copies of a site, and internal search results.
It's a disaster by accident. The situation at the top of this guide is the classic version. A site gets built with noindex on every page, and nobody removes it at launch.
Thin and low-value pages
Google doesn't promise to index everything. Pages that are nearly empty, say the same thing as other pages, or don't add anything useful often end up as "Crawled, currently not indexed." This is where technical SEO and content overlap. Forty town pages that only swap the town name are a technical problem and a content problem at the same time. Here's how to build service area pages that rank instead.
Site Architecture and Internal Linking
Site architecture is how your pages are organized and connected. For a home service business, a clear structure usually looks like this:
•Homepage
•Main service pages: Roof Replacement, Roof Repair, Gutters, Siding
•Specific services under each: Metal Roofing, Storm Damage Repair, Emergency Tarping
•Service area pages: one page for each town you actually serve, with real local detail
•Supporting content: blog articles and guides that answer the questions customers ask, linking back to the service they relate to
•Trust pages: About, Reviews, Projects or Gallery, Warranties, Financing, Contact
Why it matters
A clear structure tells Google which pages matter most and how they relate. Pages linked from your homepage and main menu get treated as important. Pages buried five clicks deep, or linked only from the footer, get treated as less important. A good rule of thumb is that every page you want to rank should be reachable within three clicks of the homepage.
Internal links
Internal links are links from one page on your site to another. They help crawlers find pages, they pass ranking value around the site, and the words you link with (the anchor text) tell Google what the linked page is about.
Good internal linking looks like this:
•Each service page links to the related services and to the town pages where you do that work
•Each town page links back to the services you offer there
•Each blog article links to the service it supports, using descriptive words like "storm damage roof repair," not "click here"
•No page important to your business is an orphan
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are the small trail near the top of a page, like Home > Services > Roof Repair. They help visitors and crawlers understand where a page sits, and with breadcrumb schema they can show up in search results in place of the plain web address.
URL Structure
Your page addresses (URLs) should be short, readable, and describe the page. Compare these two:
•yourroofingco.com/roof-repair/holland-mi
•yourroofingco.com/page?id=4471&cat=12
The first tells people and search engines what's on the page before they click. The second tells them nothing.
Simple URL rules:
•Use lowercase letters and hyphens between words
•Keep them short and descriptive
•Avoid dates in blog addresses unless the content truly expires
•Pick one format and stick to it, including whether addresses end with a slash
•Don't change addresses once a page ranks. If you must, redirect the old one
Duplicate Content and Canonical Tags
Duplicate content is the same or nearly the same content showing up at more than one web address. It's rarely a penalty. The real problem is that Google has to guess which version to show, splits the value between them, and may pick the wrong one.
Where duplicates come from on contractor sites
•The site loads at both http:// and https://
•The site loads with and without "www"
•Addresses work with and without a slash at the end
•Tracking codes on links (like ?utm_source=facebook) create new versions of the same page
•Town pages copied from one another with only the town name changed
•Printer-friendly or filtered versions of the same page
The fixes
•Pick one version of your domain: (https, with or without www) and permanently redirect every other version to it
•Use canonical tags.: A canonical tag is a line in the page's code that says "this is the main version of this page." Every page should have one that points to itself, at its clean, final address. Copies point to the original
•Make similar pages actually different.: A canonical tag can't fix 40 near-identical town pages. Real local content can
Redirects, Broken Links, and 404 Errors
Redirects
A redirect sends people and crawlers from one address to another. The two you need to know:
•301 (permanent): The page has moved for good. Use this when you change a page's address, merge two pages, or move to a new domain. Google passes the old page's value to the new one
•302 (temporary): The page has moved for now. Use it rarely, such as a short-term promotion
Things to avoid:
•Redirect chains: Page A redirects to B, which redirects to C, which redirects to D. Each hop slows things down, and Google stops following after several. Point A straight at D
•Redirect loops: A sends to B and B sends back to A. The page never loads
•Redirecting everything to the homepage: When an old page has a clear replacement, redirect it there. Dumping every old address on the homepage often gets treated like a 404 anyway
The website redesign trap
This is one of the most expensive technical SEO mistakes a business can make, and one of the most common reasons traffic falls after a redesign. A contractor launches a new website, every page address changes, and nobody maps the old addresses to the new ones. The old "Storm Damage Repair" page that brought in calls for years now shows an error. Rankings drop, sometimes for months.
Before any redesign or platform move, make a list of every old address, especially pages with traffic, rankings, or links from other sites, and match each one to its new home with a 301 redirect. Then keep your Google Search Console verification and your Google Analytics tracking in place through the move, so you can see what happened and fix it fast.
Broken links and 404 errors
A 404 is the "page not found" error. Some 404s are normal. A page you deleted on purpose with no replacement should return a 404. The problems are:
•Broken internal links: Your own pages linking to addresses that no longer exist. Fix the link
•Lost backlinks: Other websites linking to a page that's gone. Redirect it to the best matching page so you keep that value
•Soft 404s: Pages that say "nothing here" but tell crawlers everything is fine. Either add real content or return a proper 404
Give your site a helpful custom 404 page with your phone number, your main services, and a search box, so a lost visitor still has a way to reach you.
HTTPS and Site Security
HTTPS means your site has a security certificate (the padlock in the browser bar) that encrypts what passes between the visitor and your site. Google confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal back in 2014, and browsers like Chrome warn visitors when a page isn't secure.
What to check:
•Every page loads on https, and the http version redirects to it
•The certificate renews automatically and hasn't expired
•No "mixed content," meaning a secure page that loads an image or script from an insecure http address
•Your forms submit securely
Security goes beyond the padlock. A hacked website can get flagged in Google with a warning, or quietly filled with spam pages you can't see. Google Search Console's Security Issues report will tell you if Google has found a problem. Keep your platform, plugins, and logins up to date, and use strong passwords with two-step sign-in on anything that controls your website or domain.
Page Speed and Core Web Vitals
Why speed matters
A homeowner with water dripping into the living room isn't going to wait for a slow page. They hit the back button and call the next company on the list. Speed affects your rankings, and it affects whether the visitors you already earned ever call you.
Core Web Vitals in plain English
Core Web Vitals are Google's measurements of how a page feels to a real person. There are three:
| Metric | What it measures | Google's "good" target |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | How long until the main content, usually the big image or headline, shows up | 2.5 seconds or less |
| Interaction to Next Paint (INP) | How quickly the page responds when someone taps a button or a menu | 200 milliseconds or less |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | How much things jump around while the page loads | 0.1 or less |
Google measures these from real Chrome users and looks at how the slower visits go, not just the fastest. INP replaced an older metric called First Input Delay in March 2024, so if you see FID in an old report, it's out of date.
The usual speed problems on contractor sites
•Huge images: A 6 MB photo straight off a phone or drone, shown at the size of a postage stamp
•Autoplay background videos: on the homepage
•Too many add-ons: Chat widgets, review widgets, tracking pixels, sliders, and plugins that each add their own code
•Cheap or overloaded hosting
•Layout shifts: A banner or image that loads late and pushes the "Call Now" button down just as someone taps it
How to fix them
•Compress and resize images, and use modern formats like WebP or AVIF
•Set a width and height on images so the page saves space for them and nothing jumps
•Lazy-load images further down the page, but never the main image at the top
•Cut scripts and widgets you don't need, and load the rest after the main content
•Use good hosting with a content delivery network (CDN) that serves your site from servers close to your visitors
Test any page free with Google's PageSpeed Insights, and check the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console for your whole site. For more, read why mobile website speed matters for roofers.
Mobile-First Indexing
Google now looks at the mobile version of your website first when it decides how to index and rank it. That means your phone version is your real website as far as Google is concerned.
What that requires:
•The same content on mobile and desktop.: If you hide sections, services, or reviews on mobile to make it "cleaner," Google may not count them
•Readable text: without zooming
•Buttons and links far enough apart: to tap with a thumb
•Tap-to-call phone numbers: on every page
•Forms that are easy to fill out: on a phone, with only the fields you really need
•No full-screen pop-ups: that cover the content as soon as someone arrives from Google
Images and Video
Images are some of the most valuable content on a contractor's site. They prove you do real work. They also cause a lot of technical problems.
•Alt text: A short description of what's in the image, for screen readers and search engines. Describe the photo honestly: "New architectural shingle roof on a two-story home in Holland, Michigan." Don't stuff it with keywords
•File names: "metal-roof-install-grand-haven.webp" beats "IMG_4471.jpg"
•Size and format: Resize to the largest size the page will show, compress, and use WebP or AVIF
•Real photos over stock: Your own job photos show search engines and homeowners that you're a real local business. We keep the location data in our clients' job photos for that reason. Here's more on proving you're local with job site photos
•Video: Host it on YouTube or a video service and embed it, rather than uploading big files to your own server. Give each video a title and description that say what it shows
Structured Data (Schema Markup)
Structured data is code added to your pages that states facts about your business in a format machines read without guessing. Instead of hoping Google figures out that you're an HVAC company in Hudsonville that does furnace repair, you tell it directly.
The schema types that matter for home service businesses
•LocalBusiness: or a more specific type: RoofingContractor, HVACBusiness, Plumber, Electrician, GeneralContractor, HousePainter, and others. Include your business name, address or service area, phone, hours, website, logo, and the areas you serve
•Organization: Your business name, logo, and social profiles, usually on the homepage
•Service: Each service you offer, on its own service page
•FAQPage: Questions and answers that actually appear on the page
•BreadcrumbList: The breadcrumb trail for each page
•Article: or BlogPosting: For blog posts and guides, with the author and publish date
•Review: content only where it follows Google's rules. Google doesn't show star ratings for reviews a business publishes about itself on its own site, so don't count on that
Schema rules that keep you out of trouble
•Only mark up what's visible on the page.: Schema should describe the page, not add things that aren't there
•Match your Google Business Profile exactly.: Same business name, phone number, address, and hours everywhere
•Keep it current.: Old phone numbers and old hours in schema send mixed signals
•Test it: with Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator
A note on expectations: schema doesn't guarantee fancy search results. Google decides when to show rich results, and it's pulled back on some of them. For example, FAQ rich results now show mainly for well-known government and health websites. Schema is still worth doing because it makes your business details clear to Google and to AI tools, which is the point.
Local Technical SEO for Home Service Businesses
If you're a roofer, HVAC company, plumber, tree service, or cleaner, a few technical items matter more for you than for an online store.
•NAP consistency: Your business Name, Address, and Phone number should match exactly on your website, your Google Business Profile, your schema, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Facebook, and the major directories. Mismatches confuse search engines and AI tools alike
•Google Business Profile connected to the right page: Link your profile to your homepage or the right location page, and make sure that page loads fast and clearly states your service area. Our Google Business Profile checklist for every home service trade covers the profile side
•Service area pages that are crawlable and distinct: Linked from your menu or service pages, not just a footer list, with real local detail and real job photos from that town
•Location in the page itself: Your town, county, and service area written in plain text on the page, not only inside an image or a map
•An embedded map: on your contact or location page where it makes sense
•Tap-to-call and tracking that works: Calls and form fills are the whole point. Make sure phone links work on every page and that your analytics records them
For the bigger picture on ranking in your area, read our local SEO guide for roofers.
Technical SEO for AI Search (AEO and GEO)
Homeowners are asking ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot to recommend contractors. Showing up in those answers is called answer engine optimization (AEO) or generative engine optimization (GEO). A lot of what gets you there is the same technical work in this guide, plus a few extras.
Let the right AI crawlers in
Each AI company has its own crawlers, and your robots.txt file and your hosting company's security settings decide whether they get in. Some of the common ones:
| Company | Crawler | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI (ChatGPT) | OAI-SearchBot | Finding pages to show in ChatGPT search answers |
| OpenAI (ChatGPT) | GPTBot | Collecting content to train OpenAI's models |
| Anthropic (Claude) | Claude-SearchBot and ClaudeBot | Search results in Claude, and model training |
| Perplexity | PerplexityBot | Finding pages for Perplexity answers |
| Microsoft (Copilot) | Bingbot | Bing search, which also feeds Copilot |
| Google (Gemini) | Google-Extended | A setting that controls whether Google can use your content for Gemini. It doesn't affect your regular Google rankings |
For a local contractor, I generally recommend letting the search crawlers in. You want to be found and recommended. Whether to allow the training crawlers is a business decision you can make separately.
One catch to watch for: some hosting and security services, Cloudflare among them, offer settings that block AI crawlers at the firewall, no matter what your robots.txt says. If you want to be in AI answers, check those settings too.
Make your content easy to pull answers from
•Content in the page from the first load, not built by scripts (see the rendering section above)
•Clear headings that match real questions, followed by a direct answer in the first sentence or two
•Your business facts stated plainly in text: what you do, where you do it, how to reach you
•Schema that matches your visible content and your Google Business Profile
•Lists and tables where they make information easier to scan
What about llms.txt?
llms.txt is a proposed file, similar to robots.txt, that gives AI tools a plain-text summary of your site and its most important pages. It's cheap to add, and some AI tools may read it. But it's not a standard any major AI company has committed to, and Google has said publicly that it doesn't use llms.txt for search. I treat it as a nice extra, not a ranking factor. If someone sells you llms.txt as the key to showing up in ChatGPT, keep your wallet in your pocket.
Track it
Bing Webmaster Tools now includes an AI Performance report that shows when your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing's AI answers. It's one of the first places you can see real data on AI visibility, and it's free. For more on this side of search, read where AI search gets its business data and our generative engine optimization guide.
The Smaller Pieces That Still Count
These won't apply to every contractor, but a complete technical SEO picture includes them.
•Pagination: When blog posts or projects span several pages, give each page a normal, crawlable link (page 2, page 3) and a unique address. Google no longer uses the old "rel=next/prev" tags, so the links themselves are what matter
•Hreflang: Tags that tell Google which language or country version of a page to show. You only need these if you have the same content in more than one language, like an English and a Spanish version of your site
•Staging sites: Test copies of your website should be password protected or noindexed so they never compete with your real site in Google
•Intrusive pop-ups: Full-screen pop-ups that block content right when someone arrives from search hurt the mobile experience. Small banners are fine
•Accessibility: Many accessibility basics, like alt text, real headings, readable contrast, and buttons that work with a keyboard, also make your site easier for crawlers to understand. Here's our guide to ADA website accessibility for home service contractors
•Log file analysis: Your server keeps a record of every visit, including every crawler visit. Larger sites use these logs to see exactly what Googlebot and AI crawlers are reading and what they're skipping. For most small business sites, Search Console's Crawl Stats report covers the same ground
•IndexNow: A way to tell Bing and some other search engines the moment a page is added or changed. Google doesn't use it, but it can help you show up faster in Bing, and Bing feeds Copilot
Tools for Checking Your Own Site
You don't need expensive software to find most technical problems. These are the ones worth knowing.
•Google Search Console (free): The most important one. It shows what's indexed and why pages aren't, your Core Web Vitals from real visitors, sitemap status, security issues, manual penalties, and the searches your pages show up for. If you don't have it set up, start here
•Bing Webmaster Tools (free): The same idea for Bing, which also powers Copilot, plus the AI Performance report
•PageSpeed Insights (free): Tests the speed and Core Web Vitals of any single page, on mobile and desktop
•Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator (free): Check your structured data
•A site crawler: like Screaming Frog (free up to 500 pages): Crawls your site the way Google does and flags broken links, redirect chains, missing titles, duplicate pages, and noindex tags
•Google Analytics 4 (free): Shows what visitors do once they arrive, including calls and form submissions when it's set up to track them
•Your browser's "View page source": The quickest way to see whether your content is in the page or built by scripts
One rule I hold to on every site we manage: never remove the Google Search Console verification or the Google Analytics tracking during a redesign, a cleanup, or a speed fix. Lose those and you lose your history and your ability to see problems.
The Technical SEO Checklist
Use this as a starting point. Fix the items at the top first. They're the ones that can make a site invisible.
Critical: fix these first
•Pages are indexable: No accidental noindex tags on pages you want found
•Robots.txt isn't blocking the site: And it isn't blocking CSS, JavaScript, or crawlers you want in
•The site is on HTTPS: With a valid certificate, and http redirects to https
•One version of the domain: www or non-www, with the other redirecting to it
•Content is in the page source: Your services, service area, and contact details can be read without JavaScript
•Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are set up: With your sitemap submitted
•Old addresses redirect: Every old page with traffic or links has a 301 to its best new match
High priority
•XML sitemap is clean: Only live, indexable pages at their final addresses
•No broken internal links or redirect chains
•Every page has a self-referencing canonical tag
•Core Web Vitals pass on mobile: LCP 2.5 seconds or less, INP 200 milliseconds or less, CLS 0.1 or less
•Mobile version has the same content as desktop: Tap-to-call works on every page
•LocalBusiness schema matches your Google Business Profile: Name, address, phone, hours, and service area
•Important pages are within three clicks of the homepage: No orphan pages
Ongoing maintenance
•Images are compressed, sized, and labeled: With honest alt text and descriptive file names
•Town pages are distinct: Real local content and photos, linked from your service pages
•AI search crawlers can reach the site: Check robots.txt and your hosting firewall settings
•Service, FAQ, Article, and Breadcrumb schema are in place: And they pass the Rich Results Test
•Custom 404 page: With your phone number and main services
•Security: Platform and plugins updated, two-step sign-in on your website, domain, and hosting accounts
How often to check
•Every week: Glance at Search Console for new indexing errors or security warnings
•Every month: Check Core Web Vitals, broken links, and new pages being indexed
•Every quarter: Run a full crawl of the site and review everything on this list
•Before and after any redesign, platform move, or big change: Do the full checklist, plus a redirect map
The Bottom Line
Technical SEO isn't glamorous, and most of it is invisible to your customers. That's exactly why it gets ignored. But it decides whether everything else you do online actually gets seen.
The good news is that technical SEO is the most objective part of SEO. Either Google can crawl your page or it can't. Either your page loads fast on a phone or it doesn't. Either your schema matches your Google profile or it doesn't. Problems are measurable, and once they're fixed, they mostly stay fixed, as long as someone keeps an eye on things.
If you'd like a second set of eyes, we'll check your website against this list and show you what to fix first. At Resonating Brands, we build and manage next generation websites for roofers, HVAC companies, and home service contractors with the technical foundation built in from day one. Contact us to get started.
For how technical SEO fits with content, read on-page SEO vs. technical SEO. For the full picture of how SEO, AEO, and GEO work together, read our SEO, AEO and GEO ranking guide.
Sources
•Google Search Central, "In-depth guide to how Google Search works"
•Google Search Central, "Introduction to robots.txt"
•Google Search Central, "Build and submit a sitemap"
•Google Search Central, "Crawl budget management for large sites"
•Google Search Central, "Understand JavaScript SEO basics"
•Google Search Central, "Block Search indexing with noindex"
•Google Search Central, "How to specify a canonical URL"
•Google Search Central, "Redirects and Google Search"
•Google Search Central, "Mobile-first indexing best practices"
•Google Search Central, "Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results"
•Google Search Central, "Introduction to structured data markup"
•Google Search Central, "Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results", August 8, 2023
•Google Search Central, "HTTPS as a ranking signal", August 6, 2014
•web.dev, "Interaction to Next Paint becomes a Core Web Vital on March 12"
•OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI crawlers"
•Search Engine Roundtable, "Google-Extended bot does not affect Google Search"
•Search Engine Land, "Google says normal SEO works for ranking in AI Overviews and llms.txt won't be used"
•Search Engine Land, "Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance report"
•Schema.org, "HomeAndConstructionBusiness"
Janette O'Shaughnessy is the founder of Resonating Brands, a boutique digital marketing agency based in West Michigan that specializes in next generation websites, voice agents, and lead generation systems for home service contractors.
