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SEO best practices, by category

The working checklist behind every Dr Urls audit. Each category: why it matters, the practices that keep you clean, and deep-dive guides for every issue we detect. This library grows with every new check the scanner learns.

Crawlability

Crawlability is whether search engine bots can physically reach and read your pages. Before Google can rank anything, Googlebot has to fetch it: follow links to it, receive a successful response, and parse the HTML. Crawl problems are silent — the page looks fine in a browser while bots hit walls (robots rules, broken chains, server errors, infinite URL spaces). Because everything downstream depends on the crawl, fixing crawlability issues usually unlocks more value per hour than any other SEO work.

The checklist

  • Keep robots.txt minimal and deliberate — block admin/duplicate spaces, never CSS/JS assets.
  • Maintain an XML sitemap that lists only canonical, indexable, 200-status pages, and reference it in robots.txt.
  • Keep every important page within 3 clicks of the homepage.
  • Return proper status codes: 200 for content, 301 for permanent moves, 410 for gone — never soft-404s.
  • Collapse redirect chains to a single hop; update internal links to point at final URLs.
  • Keep URL parameters under control — infinite filter/sort combinations burn crawl budget.

Deep dives (22)

Indexability

Indexability is whether a crawled page is allowed into the search index at all. A page can be perfectly reachable and still tell Google to ignore it — through a noindex directive, a conflicting canonical, or an X-Robots-Tag header set by the server. These directives are absolute: one stray meta tag removes a page from search entirely. Indexability issues are the most binary in SEO — the page either can rank or it cannot — which is why they sit at the top of every serious audit.

The checklist

  • Audit noindex directives after every deploy — one templating mistake can deindex a section overnight.
  • Give every indexable page exactly one self-referencing canonical URL.
  • Never mix signals: a page should not be canonicalised away AND noindexed AND in the sitemap.
  • Use hreflang pairs that reciprocate; a one-way hreflang is ignored.
  • Check the HTTP layer too — X-Robots-Tag headers override what you see in the HTML.

Deep dives (16)

Metadata

Metadata is how your page introduces itself to search engines and social platforms: the title tag, meta description, canonical URL, Open Graph and Twitter cards. Titles remain one of the strongest on-page relevance signals, and descriptions drive click-through rate from the results page even though they aren't a direct ranking factor. Bad metadata rarely breaks a site — it quietly bleeds clicks on every query where you appear.

The checklist

  • Write one unique title per page, 50–60 characters, primary topic first, brand last.
  • Write meta descriptions as ad copy: 140–155 characters, include the query intent, end with a reason to click.
  • Ship Open Graph + Twitter Card tags on every shareable page — social embeds are free impressions.
  • Keep canonical URLs absolute, lowercase, and consistent with your internal links.
  • Never duplicate titles across pages — duplicates tell Google the pages are interchangeable.

Deep dives (37)

Structured data

Structured data (JSON-LD / schema.org) is how you describe your content to machines in their own vocabulary: this is a product with this price, an article by this author, an event on this date. It powers rich results — stars, FAQs, breadcrumbs, product info — which materially raise click-through rates. Invalid or incomplete markup doesn't just miss the enhancement; sustained abuse can earn manual actions, so correctness matters as much as presence.

The checklist

  • Use JSON-LD in the head, one graph per page, validated against schema.org.
  • Mark up what's actually on the page — invisible markup risks manual actions.
  • Complete the fields rich results need: price+availability for products, dates for events, steps for how-tos.
  • Add Organization + WebSite schema sitewide, and sameAs links to every social profile.
  • Re-validate after redesigns — markup silently breaks when templates change.

Deep dives (18)

Content

Content is what actually earns rankings: text that answers the query better than the competition. Search engines evaluate depth, originality, structure (headings), and freshness. Thin, duplicated, or poorly structured content doesn't just fail to rank — it can drag down a domain's overall quality assessment. Every content issue here is ultimately about the same question: does this page deserve to be someone's answer?

The checklist

  • One H1 per page that states the topic; H2/H3 in strict hierarchy underneath.
  • Cover the query completely — the best-ranking page is usually the one that ends the search session.
  • Keep paragraphs short, front-load conclusions, and use lists for anything enumerable.
  • Update cornerstone pages on a schedule; freshness compounds.
  • Delete or merge thin pages — 10 strong pages outrank 100 weak ones on the same domain.

Deep dives (18)

Performance

Performance is both a ranking signal (Core Web Vitals) and a conversion multiplier. Google measures real-user loading (LCP), interactivity (INP), and visual stability (CLS) — and slow sites lose visitors before analytics even registers them. Most performance issues concentrate in a few repeat offenders: unoptimised images, render-blocking resources, and third-party scripts. Fixing the top three usually moves the needle more than fixing the next thirty.

The checklist

  • Serve images in modern formats (WebP/AVIF), sized to their container, with explicit dimensions.
  • Inline critical CSS and defer everything else; eliminate render-blocking third parties.
  • Set far-future cache headers on static assets and an ETag on everything.
  • Preload the fonts and hero image; font-display: swap to avoid invisible text.
  • Measure with real-user Core Web Vitals, not just lab scores — Google ranks on field data.

Deep dives (42)

Mobile

Google indexes the mobile version of your site — desktop is the afterthought, not the other way round. Mobile issues (missing viewport, tap targets too close, content wider than the screen, intrusive interstitials) directly gate rankings for every query. With most traffic on phones, a mobile problem is not a subset of your audience — it is your audience.

The checklist

  • Ship a correct viewport meta tag on every page — it is one line and it gates everything.
  • Keep tap targets ≥ 44×44px with real spacing between them.
  • Never let content overflow the viewport horizontally.
  • Test on a real mid-range phone over 4G, not just desktop devtools.
  • Avoid intrusive interstitials — Google demotes pages that greet mobile users with a wall.

Deep dives (14)

Accessibility

Accessibility overlaps heavily with SEO because both depend on machine-readable structure: alt text, heading hierarchy, labels, contrast. Screen readers and search crawlers consume the same signals. Accessible sites rank better not by special treatment but because the same fixes — descriptive alt attributes, proper headings, real link text — are exactly what search engines parse for meaning. It is also, in a growing number of jurisdictions, the law.

The checklist

  • Give every informative image an alt attribute that describes its content; decorative images get alt="".
  • Maintain heading hierarchy — never skip levels for styling reasons.
  • Make link text meaningful out of context; screen readers list links in isolation.
  • Keep text contrast at WCAG AA (4.5:1) minimum.
  • Make everything keyboard-operable with a visible focus state.

Deep dives (30)

Security

Security issues erode both rankings and trust. HTTPS has been a ranking signal since 2014, and browsers actively warn users away from insecure or mixed-content pages — a warning interstitial is a 100% bounce rate. Missing security headers rarely block indexing, but they widen your attack surface, and a hacked site (injected spam, malicious redirects) can be removed from results entirely. Security is the SEO work you do so you never have to do recovery work.

The checklist

  • Serve everything over HTTPS and redirect HTTP with a single 301.
  • Send HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, and a Content-Security-Policy on every response.
  • Eliminate mixed content — one insecure asset breaks the padlock.
  • Keep dependencies and CMS plugins patched; most site hacks are known-CVE exploits.
  • Monitor Search Console's security section — Google often knows you're hacked before you do.

Deep dives (25)

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