Thread by @danielkcheung

Does #technicalseo scare you?

Have you been putting it off?

I hear you.
I see you.
I've got you.
Because I was you.

For all you "non-technical" SEOs out there, here's a shortcut to getting better with #techseo 👇🧵

Technical SEO is about uncovering inefficiencies a site's webpages have to be crawled, rendered, indexed, and ranked.

But this scope of work is SUPER broad.

📋 Find out what could be holding it back with a 170+ point technical SEO checklist I made just for Wordpress builds 👇

Now before you get started, a few things:
• you do NOT have to complete all the checks
• there is no fail grade, instead;
• a 'triage' using IFS statements gives you a prompt to consider your next steps
• pass = ✔️ (generally speaking)
• requires attention = dig a lil deeper

One more thing: technical SEO is not a one-off task because, "QA is an evolving process" - @myriamjessier + @tentaclequing

And a checklist is a great starting point. However, completing this checklist ≠ technical audit.

The checklist is in the next tweet (I promise) 👇

First, open the link and MAKE A COPY of the Google Sheet 👇

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

My philosophy to auditing Wordpress builds:

Google tends to treat WP sites *generally* well. But as a site grows, technical debt can accumulate, sending mixed signals to search engines.

Most of these issues are human-created.

Let's dive into a few of these 👇

🔍 Is there a robots.txt file?

✔️ yes, but there may be incorrect configurations.
⚠️ no, is it a very small website? If not, a robots.txt can help with better crawling.

💡Further reading👇developers.google.com/search/docs/ad…

🔍 Are crawlers or search engine crawlers being blocked in the robots.txt file?

⚠️ yes, investigate what is being blocked and why.
✔️ no, but should there be files/assets/URLs that should be blocked?

🔍 Are paginated URLs being blocked in robots.txt?

⚠️ yes, investigate what is being blocked and why.
⚠️ no, understand what pagination strategy is being used and decide whether these should be blocked in robots.txt.

💡Further reading👇developers.google.com/search/docs/ad…

🔍 Are JavaScript files being blocked in robots.txt?

⚠️ yes, investigate what is being blocked and why.
✔️ no, this is usually fine.

💡Further reading ft. @g33konaut courtesy @sejournal searchenginejournal.com/google-blockin…

🔍 According to Search Console crawl stats, have HTML files been crawled in the last 72-hours?

✔️ yes, Google is crawling HTML pages - good!
⚠️ no, Google hasn't crawled any pages - this is not good and you should allocated time to finding out and verifying why this is the case.

🔍 Does the website have a sitemap?

✔️ yes, nice.
⚠️ no, is it because the website has less than 50 URLs? If not, a sitemap will be beneficial.

💡Here is @danielwaisberg explaining what a sitemap is and why it helps with crawling 👇

🔍 Is the sitemap index URL(s) referenced in the robots.txt file?

✔️ yes, crawlers can easily find the URLs that you care about.
⚠️ no, is there a sitemap and has it been submitted to GSC?

💡Further reading via @woorank 👇 woorank.com/en/blog/how-to…

🔍 Are non-indexable URLS in the sitemap?

⚠️ yes, remove 301 and 404s from the sitemap.
✔️ no, nice - the sitemap contains accurate instructions for crawling and indexing.

💡Further reading via @sitebulb 👇
sitebulb.com/hints/xml-site…

🔍 Are redirects being done client-side via meta refresh?

⚠️ yes, there are MUCH better ways to implement 301 redirects on Wordpress.
✔️ no, awesome - all good here.

💡Further reading: @contentking explains why meta-refreshes are bad 👇
contentkingapp.com/academy/redire…

🔍 Does the website have pagination?

⚠️ yes, how is pagination and indexing of paginated series handled?
✔️ no, that's one less thing you have to worry about.

💡Further reading based on @jes_scholz
danielkcheung.com.au/pagination-eco… 👇

🔍 Have paginated URLs been included in the sitemap(s)?

⚠️ yes, investigate how deeper URLs are linked to and indexed because paginated series are typically not important pages to rank on the SERPs.
✔️ no.

🔍 Are there any internal links not wrapped by an <a> tag?

⚠️ yes, these links aren't crawlable - this is bad.
✔️ no.

💡Further reading 👇 developers.google.com/search/docs/ad…

🔍 Is the site www or non-www?

• If www by default, does non-www redirect to www?
• If non-www by default, does www redirect to non-www?

✔️ yes, all good.
⚠️ no, these variations can confuse Google which version to serve in the SERPs.

🔍 Do URLs end with a / or non-trailing slash?

• If URLs have a / by default, do URLs without / redirect to /?
• If URLs do not / by default, do URLs with a / redirect to non-/?

✔️ yes, all good.
⚠️ no, these variations can confuse Google which version to serve in the SERPs.

🔍 Are there URLs marked as "Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt" in Search Console index coverage?

⚠️ yes, verify if they should be.
⚠️ no, should there be URLs that should be blocked?

💡Further reading via @yoast 👇

yoast.com/help/crawl-err…

🔍 Are there excluded URLs reported in Search Console index coverage?

⚠️ yes, do these include URLs that should be indexed?
✔️ no, all is well (which is rare for WP sites with 200+ URLs).

💡Further reading 👇

support.google.com/webmasters/ans…

🔍 Are there internal links pointing to 404 or 301 URLs?

⚠️ yes, these are causing user frustration. Fix them.
✔️ no, not an issue, nothing to see here.

💡Further reading via @semrush 👇
semrush.com/blog/broken-li…

And that's enough for now. I hope you found this 🧵 useful.

Hi 👋 I'm Daniel.
I share actionable SEO tips.
Follow me for more insights👇

twitter.com/danielkcheung

By the way, if you have ANY questions about #technicalseo you CAN most definitely ASK. I may not know the answer but I will point you in the right direction (or to someone more knowledgeable such as @Jammer_Volts @azarchick @davewsmart @inkovic @Suzzicks @mira_inam).