Installing Rank Math, Yoast or another SEO plugin doesn’t automatically make a site “optimized”. These tools help you manage meta tags, sitemaps and settings, but technical SEO depends on how the site is built, indexed and maintained.
1. Decide what should be indexed
Not every URL needs to appear on Google. System pages such as cart, checkout, account, internal search results or private areas often need to be set to noindex.
On the other hand, commercial pages, articles and strategic content must be reachable, canonical and part of the internal structure.
2. Canonicals, redirects and duplicate URLs
When two URLs share the same intent, choose one main page and consolidate the other with a 301 where appropriate.
Avoid blanket redirects to the homepage: the destination must genuinely be equivalent to the resource it replaces.
3. A clean XML sitemap
The sitemap should contain the URLs you want discovered and indexed. There’s no point filling it with empty archives, attachment pages, duplicate content or post types you no longer use.
Also check that last-modified dates update correctly when the content changes.
4. A robots.txt without unnecessary blocks
The robots.txt file manages crawling, not removal from the index. Avoid accidentally blocking CSS, JavaScript or crawlers you want to allow.
To keep an already accessible page out of the index, you would normally use a noindex directive, not a simple Disallow.
5. Internal link structure
Articles shouldn’t live in isolation. Link related content together and lead informational guides to the relevant service pages when it makes sense.
A good internal structure helps both users and search engines understand which content is central and how it is semantically connected.
6. Core Web Vitals and performance
Speed isn’t an SEO switch where “fast = first, slow = penalized”. Core Web Vitals are part of the page experience signals and, above all, a concrete way to measure the quality of the real experience.
Check LCP, INP and CLS, telling real-user data (field data) apart from lab tests. There’s a dedicated guide to Core Web Vitals.
7. Images and media
Use efficient formats, responsive sizes, appropriate ALT text and lazy loading where useful. The main above-the-fold image should be treated differently from secondary images.
8. Status codes and 404 pages
A resource that no longer exists and has no equivalent replacement should normally return 404 or 410. A 301 is for when there really is a new, matching destination.
Also check for redirect loops, unnecessary chains and soft 404s.
9. Structured data
Schema.org can help search engines better interpret organizations, articles, products and other content. Structured data must, however, describe what actually exists on the page: it shouldn’t be added just to get a rich result.
10. Security and technical maintenance
Outdated plugins, recurring PHP errors, logs growing unchecked, stuck cron jobs and problematic server configurations aren’t “on-page SEO”, but they can undermine the site’s stability and technical quality.
That’s why a technical SEO audit also has to look at what happens beneath the frontend.
11. Content that AI systems can understand too
A clear semantic structure, up-to-date information, recognizable entities, consistent internal links and content that answers specific questions well help both traditional search and the systems that retrieve information from the web.
You don’t need to write “for AI”: you need to publish content that is understandable, verifiable and useful.
In short
Technical SEO is the sum of many decisions: indexing, canonicals, sitemaps, redirects, performance, internal linking, status codes, structured data and maintenance.
If you’d like to start with a concrete review of your site, see my web development services or get in touch.