On this page
- Key takeaways
- 1. Can Google index your important pages?
- 2. Is your sitemap clean?
- 3. Is the site fast on a phone?
- 4. Does it work properly on mobile?
- 5. Is every page reachable through links?
- 6. Are redirects set up properly?
- 7. Is the site secure?
- 8. Do your titles and headings make sense?
- 9. Do you have structured data?
- 10. Is duplicate content under control?
- What to fix first
- Want us to check your site?
Technical SEO is everything that helps Google find your pages, load them quickly and understand what they're about. It isn't glamorous, but if it's broken, nothing else you do for SEO works as well as it should. Good content on a page Google can't index is invisible.
Here's the checklist we work through for local business websites, in the order we usually fix things.
1. Can Google index your important pages?
Start in Google Search Console, under Pages. Look for:
- Service and location pages listed as "Excluded" or "Not indexed"
- Pages accidentally set to
noindex(common after a redesign, or when a staging setting is left on) - Pages blocked in
robots.txt - Duplicate pages where Google has picked the wrong one as the main (canonical) version
If your "Emergency plumber in Mississauga" page isn't indexed, it can't rank, however good it is. Fix this first.
2. Is your sitemap clean?
Your XML sitemap should list every page you want in Google and nothing else: no redirects, no 404s, no thank-you pages. Submit it in Search Console and check the number of discovered pages matches what you expect.
3. Is the site fast on a phone?
Most local searches happen on a phone, often on mobile data. Check your key pages in Google's PageSpeed Insights and look at the Core Web Vitals:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — how quickly the main content appears
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — how quickly the page responds when someone taps
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — whether things jump around while loading
The usual culprits on small business sites are oversized images, too many plugins, heavy sliders and chat widgets that load before anything else. Compressing images and serving them in modern formats such as WebP is often the quickest win.
Free download
Find out what's stopping local customers from finding you on Google
The Ontario Local SEO Checklist
- 32 practical checks across your Google Business Profile, reviews, listings, website, tracking and AI answers
- A simple scoring guide that shows where you stand and what to fix first
- Plain-English steps you can do yourself, most in under an hour
PDF · 5 pages · printable
Free download
When customers ask AI for a recommendation, does your business come up?
How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI
- A 10-minute self-test to see what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews say about you
- 10 practical actions that make your business easier for AI tools to find, understand and trust
- A one-page action plan for your first week, first month and beyond
PDF · 7 pages · printable
4. Does it work properly on mobile?
Beyond speed: can people read the text without zooming? Are buttons big enough to tap? Is your phone number a tap-to-call link? Does a pop-up cover the page? Google ranks the mobile version of your site, so the mobile experience is the one that counts.
5. Is every page reachable through links?
Google discovers pages by following links. Any page that's only reachable through the sitemap, or not at all, is an "orphan" and tends to rank poorly. Every service and location page should be linked from your menu, footer or a related page.
Check for broken internal links too. A link to a page that no longer exists wastes authority and frustrates visitors.
6. Are redirects set up properly?
When you rename or move a page, the old URL should permanently redirect (301) to the new one, in a single hop. Long redirect chains and redirects that point to the homepage instead of the matching page lose rankings that took years to build. This matters most after a website redesign.
7. Is the site secure?
Every page should load over HTTPS, with no "mixed content" warnings from images or scripts loaded over HTTP. The non-secure and www/non-www versions should all redirect to one main version.
8. Do your titles and headings make sense?
Each page needs a unique title tag and one clear H1 that says what the page is about and, for local pages, where. Duplicate titles across many pages make it hard for Google to tell them apart. This overlaps with on-page SEO, but it shows up in every technical audit.
9. Do you have structured data?
Schema markup tells Google, and AI tools, the facts about your business in a format they read directly:
- LocalBusiness (or a more specific type, like Plumber or Dentist) with your name, address, phone, hours and service area
- FAQPage on pages with real FAQs
- BreadcrumbList to show where a page sits in your site
Make sure the details match your Google Business Profile exactly.
10. Is duplicate content under control?
Location pages are the classic trap: 20 pages that are identical apart from the city name. Google tends to pick one and ignore the rest. Each location page needs genuinely local content: the areas you serve, local projects, local reviews and local FAQs.
What to fix first
If you only have time for three things:
- Make sure your important pages are indexed.
- Fix mobile speed on your top service pages.
- Fix broken links and redirect chains, especially after a redesign.
Everything else builds on those.
Want us to check your site?
Our free SEO audit includes a technical health check of your site, an on-page review of your most important pages and a prioritised fix list. Get my free SEO audit.
Want this checked on your own site? Get my free SEO audit
Written by
VASP Digital teamVASP Digital · London, Ontario
Articles written by the VASP Digital team: the strategists, content leads and client success managers who do the work every day.
