Why work from an SEO checklist at all?

SEO has hundreds of moving parts. A checklist turns that sprawl into a finite, repeatable sequence, so nothing important gets skipped and you can prove the work was done. It also enforces the right order: fix crawlability and indexability before spending effort on content and Core Web Vitals.

Can the page be crawled?

Check first whether search engines can reach the page. If robots.txt blocks it or it is a crawl dead-end with no internal links pointing to it, engines never see it, and nothing downstream matters until this passes.

Is the page allowed to index?

A page can be perfectly crawlable and still be invisible. Confirm there is no stray noindex tag, a correct self-referencing canonical, and a 200 HTTP status, otherwise the page tells Google to keep it out of the index.

Can authority reach the page?

Internal links and a clean redirect and sitemap setup decide whether a page is discovered and fed ranking strength or left an orphan. Only once a page can be crawled, indexed, and reached by internal authority do titles, content depth, Core Web Vitals and structured data pay off.

Which checklist should I start with?

If you've never audited the site before, start with the 20-point technical checklist top to bottom, it's ordered so foundation issues surface first. If you've already audited once and just want a fast sanity check after a deploy, run the 15 mistakes list instead, it's the shorter, higher-frequency subset.

Do these checklists cover everything the Kalenux audit checks?

No, and they aren't meant to. The full audit runs well over a hundred checks across crawlability, indexability, canonicals, redirects, sitemaps, links, content, performance, security, structured data and localization. These checklists distil that down to the items with the highest impact per minute spent, for a manual review or a pre-launch gate. For full coverage on an ongoing basis, run the automated audit.

Home/SEO Guide/Checklists

SEO guide · category 10 · run it

Same checks, right moment.

The other nine guides explain each problem. These lists put them in the order to check, before launch, during a migration, and every week after.

Last reviewed · 1 Oct 2026Reference article · 14 sources →

Run every check free →Jump to the lists

Pre-launch · shop.com4 / 7

✓robots.txt allows the live site ✓No leftover noindex from staging ✓Every page returns 200 ✓HTTPS everywhere, no mixed content ✓Sitemap submitted in Search Console ✓Unique title on every page ✓Core Web Vitals in the greenillustrative

before a new site goes live

Pre-launch: fix in order of damage.

Staging settings that ship to production are the most common launch failure. Work left to right: the first column can take the whole site out of search.

1check first

Blocks indexing

If missed: The whole site can vanish from search.

robots.txt doesn’t disallow the whole siteCrawlability guide →No noindex left over from stagingIndexability guide →Staging password removedCrawlability guide →Canonicals point at live URLs, not stagingIndexability guide →

2check second

Costs traffic

If missed: Some pages are found late, or not at all.

Every important page linked from navigationLinks guide →HTTPS with a one-hop redirect from httpSecurity guide →XML sitemap lists only live, canonical URLsSitemaps guide →hreflang set on every language versionLocalization guide →

3check last

Costs clicks

If missed: Pages rank, but fewer people choose them.

Unique, descriptive title on every pageContent guide →Meta descriptions on key templatesContent guide →LCP image prioritised; images have dimensionsPerformance guide →

moving URLs, domains or platforms

Migration: four phases, one URL map.

Every phase works from the same list of old and new URLs. Lose that list and nothing can be verified.

PlanWeeks before

1.1Crawl the old site and keep the URL list
1.2Map every old URL to its new one
1.3Benchmark rankings and traffic

SwitchLaunch day

2.1Deploy one-hop 301s for every mapped URL
2.2Update canonicals, hreflang and internal links
2.3Submit the new sitemap; use Change of Address for domain moves

WatchFirst weeks

3.1Crawl the old URL list: every one should 301 to a 200
3.2Watch Search Console for 404 spikes and crawl errors
3.3Expect temporary ranking movement while Google reprocesses

KeepA year on

4.1Keep redirects live for at least a year
4.2Keep renewing the old domain
4.3Fix links that still point at old URLs

after launch

Recurring: small checks, often.

Problems arrive with each release. A short routine catches them before rankings do. Each strip shows twelve weeks.

Weekly~5 min

Search Console: new errors or security issues
Core Web Vitals report for regressions

Monthly~1 hour

Full crawl: new 404s, redirect chains, orphan pages
Pages dropped from the index
Duplicate titles from new templates

Quarterly~half a day

Re-check robots.txt and sitemap against the site
Review hreflang clusters and canonicals
Audit third-party scripts for speed and security

why the lists run in this order

Each layer hides the problems above it.

A page that can’t be crawled shows no content issues. Fix from the bottom up, or later fixes are wasted.

1CrawlCan it be reached?

2IndexIs it allowed in?

3StructureLinks, redirects, sitemaps

4SignalsContent, hreflang

5ExperienceSpeed, security

checklist questions, answered

Quick answers, then back to the list.

How often should I audit my site?

A quick Search Console check weekly, a full crawl monthly, and a full audit before and after any launch or migration.

Can I skip the pre-launch list for a small site?

The first priority group takes minutes and prevents the worst failures. Check it even on a one-page site.

How long do rankings take to settle after a migration?

Google says most pages of a medium-sized site can take a few weeks to move in its index, and larger sites longer.

Reference article · 14 sources

Audits and migrations, as Google documents them.

An SEO audit is a structured review of a website against the technical requirements and best practices that search engines publish, carried out to find issues that stop pages being crawled, indexed or shown well. A site migration, moving to new URLs, a new domain or a new platform, is the change most likely to cause such issues, and Google publishes a dedicated procedure for it.

KALENUX REFERENCESEO audits and site migrations