Technical SEO

Look for crawl errors (server errors, soft 404s, 3xx redirects, and non-indexable URLs - these are the sitemap KILLERS -  Search considers your sitemap untrustworthy if you're directing spiders to crawl retired, redirected, or weak pages). Review robots.txt and meta robots tags to see if important pages are accidentally blocked. 

Analyze Website Speed and Performance. I use Google PageSpeed Insights (Lighthouse) to check load times and page performance. I select a sample of four pages: Home, Blog, a heavy content page, i.e., news or articles, and products and services, or one of each. 

Then, identify issues such as render-blocking resources, large image files, inefficient scripts, or slow server response times. A good resource: use Developer Tools>Console>Coverage, take a look at the unused code. This is a good place to consider tree-shaking to identify code that can be delayed, deferred, or deleted. 

Examine Site Architecture and URL Structure. Ensure a clear, logical URL hierarchy. Use your folder (and sub-folders) intelligently. 

Check for deep pages buried too many clicks away. 

Look for canonicalization issues, such as pages canonicalized to other pages in the sitemap, and inconsistent URLs (www vs non-www, HTTP vs HTTPS, and trailing/ vs open/).

Look for mixed content warnings when some elements load over HTTP, with file content types labeled correctly. Images are not Text - look for opportunities to ease Search’s workload. Remember, Search has billions of pages to crawl and index. 

Next, review Structured Data and Schema Markup. Validate your schema markup using Google’s Rich Results Test or Schema.org Validator. Look for errors or missing structured data that could impact rich snippets and send stronger search signals about the content before indexing. 

Evaluate Internal Linking: Identify orphan pages with no internal links. Ensure important pages get adequate link equity. Look for excessive or irrelevant internal links. Make sure your internal links are one-to-one. Try to avoid wasting Search's precious milliseconds with redirect hops.