Great content can't rank if search engines struggle to crawl or understand your site. Use this checklist to find and fix technical issues.
Crawling and indexing
- XML sitemap with all important URLs, submitted in Google Search Console
- robots.txt that doesn't block important pages or resources
- No accidental "noindex" tags on key pages
- Canonical tags to avoid duplicate content
- Clean handling of URL parameters and filters
Site structure
- Logical hierarchy: home → categories → detail pages
- Important pages reachable within a few clicks
- Descriptive, short URLs
- Internal links with meaningful anchor texts
- Breadcrumbs
Status codes
- Fix broken links (404s)
- Use 301 redirects for moved content
- Avoid redirect chains
- Ensure the server responds quickly and reliably
Performance and mobile
- Good Core Web Vitals
- Responsive design, readable without zooming
- Compressed images in modern formats
Structured data
Schema.org markup helps search engines understand content: Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Article, FAQ, Product, Breadcrumb. Validate it with Google's tools.
International SEO
For German and English versions:
- separate URLs per language,
- hreflang tags linking language versions,
- no automatic redirects based on browser language that hide versions from crawlers.
Security
HTTPS everywhere, no mixed content.
Monitoring
- Google Search Console: indexing reports, Core Web Vitals, search queries
- Regular crawls with an SEO crawler
- Alerts for sudden traffic drops
Priorities
Fix issues that block indexing first, then speed and structure, then enhancements like structured data.
This website itself uses an XML sitemap, structured data, hreflang between German and English pages and fast, lightweight pages.
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