My step-by-step checklist, in priority order, for auditing crawling, indexing, rendering, Core Web Vitals and more, updated for Google's 2026 changes.
Technical SEO
Crawling, indexing, Core Web Vitals, structured data and site architecture, explained with checklists.
What Google really supports in LocalBusiness markup, how I add hours, coordinates, departments and services, and why your own review stars won't show.
Most 404s are harmless, but a few can quietly cost you traffic and links. Here's how I find the ones that matter and fix them properly.
Filters can create millions of near-duplicate URLs. Here is how I choose which facet pages rank, block the rest, and keep Googlebot focused on products.
Measure real-user data first. Then fix hosting, caching, images, fonts and scripts one change at a time, so your WordPress site gets faster without breaking forms or checkout.
How I name, describe, compress and mark up images so Google can find and understand them, from Google Images to Lens, Circle to Search and AI Mode.
How hreflang tells Google which language or regional version of a page to show, the three ways I add it, and how to avoid the errors that get it ignored.
How Google picks a canonical URL, why duplicate pages appear, how to set rel=canonical the right way, and what I do when Search Console says Google picked a different page.
Google can run JavaScript, but it renders in a separate step and never clicks or scrolls. Here is how that works and how I keep content visible.
Server logs show exactly how Googlebot and AI crawlers move through your site. Here is how I get them, verify bots and find real problems.
What XML sitemaps really do, which URLs belong in them, how Google treats lastmod, and how I submit, monitor and fix sitemaps on sites of any size.
Which AI bots read robots.txt, what blocking each one really changes, and rules you can copy to stop model training without vanishing from AI search answers.