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Bikash Yadav

On page SEO; Off page SEO; Technical SEO

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Technical SEO checklist for 2025

June 27, 2025

Bikash yadav

Probably heard this: A Breakup hurts more, but if you have a bad technical SEO in your websites, it hurts more. But, if you give yourself 10 minutes to read this Technical SEO guide, then you will be in the 1% in technical seo.

Let’s start with the definition, as usual 😂,

What is Technical SEO?

Technical seo is a technique to influence the Google algorithm that gives you a favor.

Let’s understand by real-life examples,

Imagine your website is a giant library. You want the robot librarians (called search engines, like Google) to find all your books (your pages) quickly and know exactly what’s inside each one.

So, Technical SEO is like:

Make sure all web pages can be easily navigated (so robots can see everything easily).
Make sure the doors are open (so robots can get in without saying May I come in).
Make sure the books are in order (so it's not confusing).
Make sure the library loads fast (so people don’t get bored waiting).

When everything works well, your library (website) gets shown to more people!

If you are clear about the meaning of technical seo, then let’s jump towards the,

How Can You Improve Your Technical SEO?

Sitemap.xml:

A map of a website is called a sitemap, the same as a “Google map” is for human navigation & sitemap.xml for a Google bot, also known as a search engine crawler or spider.

If Googlebot wants to read your web pages, then the bot has many options, but the most preferred option is sitemap.xml since 2005.

I hope you understand what it is.

Let’s jump into the benefits.

Benefits of having a sitemap.xml in technical seo:

Improve your site crawl budget.
Improve your page indexing time.
Google navigates your website better.

All the points enhance your ranking at the end, so I hope you get the points.

If these benefits do not motivate you to install the sitemap, then nothing will.

Some questions,

Can I rank our website without a sitemap?

Yes, you can rank your website because a sitemap is not a Google ranking factor.

It just boosts your crawl stat.

But, as an SEO expert, I recommend you use it, especially if your website is too big.

After this, do not forget to submit in Google Search Console (GSC).

Pro Tip: Also include an image in the sitemap.xml

Page speed:

OMG! The most important part of technical SEO is PageSpeed. I don’t know if size matters or not, but speed does. I mean website speed. Guys, just focus on the technical SEO improvements. Where are you? 😂

I argue that speed matters, but don’t trust me until I clear up why it matters.

Imagine you have visited two websites: one has a loading time of 10 sec & the other's loading time was the speed of light. Which one would you prefer? I'd pick the second one without any hesitation.

Google Recommendation: The ideal page speed is <= 2 sec on desktop and <8 sec on mobile.

Yeah, I proved website speed matters. If users love fast-loading websites, then why aren't Google algorithms, which are built for a better user experience?

But you are curious about how to enhance website speed after knowing this. Wait, I will provide you with a dedicated guide on this.

How do you check Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI)?

Go to https://pagespeed.web.dev/ and paste your URL.

You will result like this,

Benefits of having a fast website:

Faster load times = happier visitors: People hate waiting. A delay of even a couple of seconds can frustrate users and lead them to bounce.

Lower bounce rate: Slow pages drive people away before they even see your content.

Better engagement: Users are more likely to click around, explore more pages, or complete a form if everything loads quickly.

Speed directly impacts sales: Studies show that even a 1-second delay in load time can reduce conversions by 7% or more.

Less strain on servers: Optimized and fast-loading pages consume fewer resources

Mobile friendliness:

70% of users are searching on their mobile phones, and you can not afford to ignore this; otherwise, Google and users both will strike on you.

I recommend you to check manually the user experience in your smartphone instead of only relying on any tool.

I am giving you some tool links to check mobile friendliness.

https://www.webpagetest.org/

https://tools.pingdom.com/

https://www.bing.com/webmaster/tools/mobile-friendliness

Site navigation is a very important factor in user experience (UX). You must take care of a few things while optimizing for navigation, such as,

Menu bar
Header (mobile & desktop)
Drop-down menu
Sub-menu
Footer
Blog sidebar
Category
Breadcrumbs

Check the above points on your website; are they all good or not? If not, then you need to rethink it.

Pro Tip: Never let more than 3 clicks to any page from your homepage.

Schema Markup:

Schema Markup, also known as structure data, means organizing your data according to algorithm compliances (rules & regulations).

There are various kinds of schema markup, and you have to find where & when to use them according to their need.

For example, if you are selling shoes, then you have to use “product schema” on your product pages.

Google Recommended: JSON-LD language is better for schema markup than HTML.

I hope you understand what schema markup is, but what about benefits?

Look at the benefit lists:

Google can clearly understand your webpages.
It can rank you on a featured snippet.
Boost your voice search optimization.

This is the magic of Product schema markup,

I will cover this topic in depth in the next Technical optimization step.

Image Optimization:

If you want to rank on the Google image section, then follow this rule for image optimization.

I am not only talking about the featured image; you also take care of the rest of the photos available on the webpage.

Here is a Checklist for image SEO:

Choose a file name wisely because I have seen most of the people just copy the image & paste into their content. That is not a good image SEO strategy. Upload those images with proper file names.
Use captions in the images.
Use alt text. (Avoid in the decorative image)
Check that your image fits into the small screen.
You can use a Geotagged image.

HTTPS:

HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is a protection for a website. To use HTTPS, you have to install the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate.

If you are using Hostinger, then you can install it very easily, but if you are running your website on a custom coding, then you must contact your developer.

The above image shows that there is already an installed SSL and using HTTS.

Robots.txt:

Robots .txt is a file format where you can mention instructions for Google bot, such as which page you want to crawl or not.

The simple file format is:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /wp-admin/

Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

Sitemap: https://www.acethehimalaya.com/sitemap_index.xml

Suppose your website has a pdf page and you dont want to crawl that page, the Robots.txt file will be written as,

User-agent: *

Disallow: /wp-admin/

Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

Disallow: /.pdf/

Sitemap: https://www.acethehimalaya.com/sitemap_index.xml

Remember that you should not block any pages that you want to rank on Google.

Pro Tip 💡: You can block the Booking URL in the eCommerce website.

URL structure:

URL refers to “Uniform Resource Locator.” This is an address for a webpage, the same as a home address of a human.

The study shows that short & concise URLs perform better on the search engine result page.

Pro Tip💡: Try to keep it within five words.

Here are some Good and Bad URL structures:

Recommended: Simple, descriptive words in the URL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation

Recommended: Use words in your audience's language in the URL (and, if applicable, transliterated words). For example, if your audience is searching in German, use German words in the URL:

https://example.com/lebensmittel/pfefferminz

Fix Canonical’s Errors (Duplicate content):

A canonical error means Google is confused about your original page if your website has a closed match URL.

e.g. URL-1 https://www.abc.com

URL-2 https://abc.com

In the above scenario, Google is confused about your original URL and not indexing any of those or diluting your page authority.

In such case, you have to declare canonical like this.

Or,

It totally depends on you which URL you want to rank on Google and consider as original stuff.

Fixing a broken link (404):

Fixing a broken link is like fixing a broken bone. Why should you care about 404 errors more than your girlfriend's birthday date?

Let’s understand by example; imagine you visited Apple store for iPhone 16 shopping and store keeper said I do not have iPhone 16 right now then how you will feel.

Same as user search for something and visited on your website carry with lot’s of hope but your website said 404… what will user think about your site reputation—absolutely rubbish. I am right.

Yeah, then Google will punish you, and they will decide to drop your rankings.

The moral of the story is do not disappoint your audience with a 404 error. Fix and sleep without ranking drop fear.

How does Technical SEO help you to beat your Competitors?

Approximately 29% of websites have serious technical SEO problems that can significantly impact their performance in search engines. You have an opportunity to enhance your Technical part & beat them.

Having a strong technical SEO gives you an edge over those who don’t have.

Take a competitive advantage as soon as possible.