1. Redirects. Every http:// and www URL should 301 to one https canonical version. Check that there are no redirect chains and no 500 errors on old URLs.
2. robots.txt and sitemaps. Block only what truly should stay private, such as admin and API paths, and list a clean XML sitemap that contains only 200, indexable, canonical URLs.
3. Canonical tags. Each page should point to itself unless it is a deliberate duplicate.
4. Rendering. If the site is built with a JavaScript framework, confirm that the important text and links are in the server-rendered HTML, not only added after scripts run.
5. Core Web Vitals. Measure real-user data where you can. Compress responses with gzip or Brotli, serve modern image formats, and keep third-party scripts to a minimum.
6. Heading structure. Navigation menus should not use heading tags, so that the H1 is the first real heading on each page.
7. Structured data. Organization, Service, FAQ and Article schema help search engines and AI tools understand the page. Validate it after every release.
8. Internal links. Make sure every page you care about is linked from relevant pages, not just from the menu.

Fix these first and every later SEO effort works harder.

AllureSEO, part of Allure Digital, offers technical SEO services for businesses across the United States.