Technical SEO Checklist for Manchester Businesses (2026)

✅ Google Tools Setup

Before you can fix technical issues, you need the right data.

• Google Search Console is set up and ownership is verified for your domain
• Your XML sitemap is submitted in Google Search Console
• Google Analytics 4 is connected to your site
• Google Tag Manager is set up with conversion tracking (form submissions, phone calls)
• You have reviewed the Coverage report in Google Search Console for indexing errors
• You have reviewed the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console

✅ Crawlability

• robots.txt file exists at yourdomain.com/robots.txt and is not blocking important pages
• No important pages are disallowed in robots.txt by mistake
• The Googlebot user-agent is not blocked in robots.txt
• Crawl the site with Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) and review all status codes
• All 404 error pages have been identified — important ones have 301 redirects in place
• Redirect chains are flattened — no 301 → 301 → 301 redirect sequences
• Your XML sitemap is correctly formatted, includes all important URLs, and excludes noindex pages
• Your sitemap URL is referenced in robots.txt
• Crawl budget is not being wasted on thin, duplicated, or parameterised URLs

✅ Indexation

• Run "site:yourdomain.com" in Google to check how many pages are indexed
• No important pages have a noindex meta tag applied by mistake
• No important pages are returning noindex via the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header
• Pages that should not be indexed (thank-you pages, admin, staging) have noindex applied
• Google Search Console's Coverage report shows no significant Valid with warnings or Excluded issues
• Google can access your page — no login walls or authentication blocks on pages that should be public

✅ Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

• Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights — note your mobile and desktop scores
• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is under 2.5 seconds on mobile
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) is below 0.1
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint) is below 200ms
• Your main hero image (likely your LCP element) is preloaded with a link rel="preload" tag
• Render-blocking CSS is inlined or deferred where possible
• Non-critical JavaScript is deferred or loaded asynchronously
• Browser caching is enabled on your server
• A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is in use, particularly for global or national businesses
• Server response time (TTFB) is under 600ms

✅ Mobile and HTTPS

• Your site passes Google's Mobile-Friendly Test
• Body text is at least 16px on mobile
• Tap targets (buttons, links, form fields) are at least 48×48px and well-spaced
• The mobile layout does not require horizontal scrolling
• All content visible on desktop is also available on mobile (no hidden content blocks)
• Your entire site runs on HTTPS — no HTTP pages remain
• HTTP URLs redirect to their HTTPS equivalents via 301
• Your SSL certificate is valid and has not expired
• Mixed content warnings (HTTPS page loading HTTP resources) are resolved

✅ Duplicate Content

• All pages have a canonical tag pointing to their preferred URL
• www and non-www versions of your site both redirect to a single canonical version
• HTTP and HTTPS versions do not both appear as unique pages in Google's index
• URL parameters (e.g. ?sort=price, ?page=2) are handled — either excluded in Search Console or canonicalised
• For WordPress: category, tag, and author archive pages are noindexed or canonicalised
• For Shopify: product pages in collections have correct canonical tags to the standalone product URL
• Paginated pages (page 2 onward) are correctly handled — not self-canonicalising to page 1 incorrectly
• No near-duplicate pages exist — e.g. near-identical location pages with only the town name changed

✅ Schema Markup

• LocalBusiness schema is implemented with: business name, address, phone, opening hours, URL, business type
• Schema is validated with Google's Rich Results Test — no errors
• BreadcrumbList schema is implemented on all pages with a logical hierarchy
• FAQPage schema is implemented on pages with FAQ sections
• Service schema is implemented on service pages
• Review schema is NOT self-implemented with fake reviews (this violates Google's guidelines)
• No schema markup is present that describes content not visible on the page

✅ Site Structure and Internal Linking

• All important pages are reachable within 3 clicks from the homepage
• No important pages are "orphaned" — all have at least one internal link pointing to them
• Your most important service and location pages are linked from the navigation and/or homepage
• Breadcrumb navigation is implemented on all pages below the homepage
• Related pages are linked to each other where relevant
• No redirect chains in internal links — update internal links to point directly to final URLs

✅ Images

• All images are compressed — use tools like Squoosh or ShortPixel
• Images are served in WebP format where browser support allows
• Images have descriptive, keyword-relevant alt text (not stuffed, but descriptive)
• Images are correctly sized — do not serve a 3000px wide image in a 600px container
• Images below the fold are lazy-loaded (loading="lazy" attribute)
• The main hero or LCP image is NOT lazy-loaded (it should load eagerly)

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Working through this checklist will help you identify and prioritise the technical SEO improvements that will have the most impact on your rankings. If you would rather have a professional assess your technical SEO, MancSEO provides technical SEO services and SEO audits for Manchester businesses. Get in touch for a free consultation.