🔴 Critical — Must fix before launch · 🟡 Important — Fix if possible · 🟢 Optional — Nice to have

Technical SEO is the foundation of everything. If search engines can't crawl, understand, or index your pages — no amount of great design or content will save you. Start here before touching anything else.

🕷️ Crawlability & Indexing

💡 Why this group matters: These are the literal gates between your website and Google. Get these wrong and your pages won't appear in search results no matter how good your content is.

robots.txt 🔴 Critical

Your robots.txt is the very first file Googlebot reads when it visits your domain. One wrong line silently kills your entire site's visibility.

How to check: Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser

• [ ] File is accessible and loads without errors
• [ ] No global Disallow: / rule (this blocks every page — a common staging leftover)
• [ ] Core directories are NOT blocked: /blog /features /pricing /about /contact
• [ ] Sensitive directories ARE blocked: /admin /staging /dashboard /api /internal
• [ ] No wildcard rules accidentally blocking important URL patterns (e.g. Disallow: /fe* blocking /features)
• [ ] Your sitemap is declared at the bottom: Sitemap: <https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml>
• [ ] Tested every important URL in the robots.txt Tester inside GSC
• [ ] If on Webflow, WordPress, or Next.js — verified no staging restriction was pushed to production

⚠️ Common mistake: Staging environments typically block all crawlers with Disallow: /. This rule often gets deployed to production by accident. Always verify after every deploy.

🛠️ yourdomain.com/robots.txt → robots.txt Tester → robots.txt Validator

sitemap.xml 🔴 Critical