There have been a number of suppositions on technical SEO in 2016 which was known as “SEO Makeup”. But after crawling and indexing, technical SEO audit is the next important step for your website to increase its ranking in Google’s search engine results. So here in this post, we are focusing only on the fundamental steps about technical SEO checklist that you should not miss in 2017.
Below we have covered total 9 Technical SEO Audit Checklist for 2017 in which some of them are evergreens, and some of them are pretty new that will make your website aesthetically and technically perfect and appealing!
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1) Check your web pages for Indexing:
Search Indexing is mainly used to know about how many of our website’s pages are indexed by search engine. In fact, we can also check the same by using SEO Auditor or by directly entering site:domain.com in the search engine.
2) Prevent indexing of Pages with no SEO value:
Each website has one or more pages with no SEO value, for example, privacy policy, term & condition, etc. In that case, indexing of the same nothing but a hopeless case. So prevent indexing those pages that you want to keep out of search engines.
3) Eliminate Duplicate Content & Pages:
According to the technical expert, duplicacy of content and pages are more dangerous for search engine optimization. So you should always check your website for the same & remove immediately if you find any.
4) Make sure you have Fresh Sitemap:
Website owners already know the importance of “Sitemap”. The Sitemap will help search engine to know about the pages, structure and load the new contents faster of your website. But make sure your XML sitemap should be updated all the time when you added new text/content to your website.
5) Remove 404 Errors from Indexing:
You can temporarily or permanently remove 404 errors in your search console property from Google search results with Remove URLs tool.
For Temporary Removal, Use the following steps:
• Firstly, open Remove URLs page.
• Secondly, click on Temporarily hide.
• Thirdly, enter the relative path of the directory, image, or page as per the requirements. After that, click Continue.
• Fourthly, you have to choose any one of the following options on the form:
• Temporarily hide page from search results and remove from cache
• Remove page from cache only
• Temporarily hide directory
• Lastly, click on the Submit Request to temporarily block a Search Console property page from Google Search.
For Permanent Removal:
To remove images, pages, directories or a URL from Google search permanently you must ensure that your web server returns either a 404 (Not Found) or 410 (Gone) HTTP status code. Non-HTML files (like PDFs) should be totally detached from your server. If you want to indicate that any of your website pages should not be indexed, then use Noindex Meta Tag.
6) HTTPs Is Compulsory:
If you are using an HTTP website then you should migrate your website to HTTPs to increase the level of security towards the personal and other sensitive data like login credentials. In December 2016, the security team of Google Chrome has announced that the browser will start labeling Http connections as non-secure by the beginning of 2017. So it is compulsory for you to use HTTPs to make your website even more secure. In fact, Google will also give a slight boost to your HTTPs website’s ranking. For more information, click
7) Check Internal or Broken links:
The first and foremost step in on-page SEO is Internal links. So always check your site for broken links. If you find any broken link on your site, repair it immediately because it can hurt your site’s ranking indirectly.
8) Test & Improve your Website Landing Speed:
It goes without saying that site landing speed is playing a vital role in ranking. If your site’s speed is too slow then it will effect on your site ranking. So, you should always test your site’s loading issues by using Google Page Speed Tool.
9) Make Mobile-Friendly Website:
Today’s Google mainly emphasizes on indexing mobile friendly pages in comparison to the desktop version. So make sure to keep your website mobile friendly for highest rank because it will control the overall ranking of your website. You can test your site pages for mobile friendliness by using Google Mobile-Friendly test tool. With this tool, you can also track or check mobile ranking time to time.