HoangPham
VITiếng Việt
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Apr 09, 2026 · Tốc độ & SEO

Technical SEO for a new website: 15 things to do before it hits Google

The technical SEO checklist I run before handing over every site: indexing, URL structure, speed and Core Web Vitals, structured data, multilingual setup and Search Console monitoring.

Great content struggles on Google if the technical base is broken: pages not indexed, duplicates, slow loads. These are the 15 things I check before handing over any website.

Group 1: Can Google read the site?

  1. Nothing blocked by mistake: untick WordPress's "discourage search engines" at launch; make sure robots.txt doesn't block CSS/JS or key folders.
  2. A clean XML sitemap with only pages you want indexed (no cart, internal search or thank-you pages).
  3. Google Search Console verified as a domain property (DNS) to cover http, https and www; submit the sitemap.
  4. One canonical version: https, with or without www, everything else 301-redirected.

Group 2: Structure and duplicates

  1. Short, meaningful URLs: /services/web-design/ rather than /?p=123.
  2. Correct canonicals for paginated, filtered and sorted pages.
  3. One H1 per page, logical H2/H3, unique titles and descriptions.
  4. Internal links: key pages linked from the menu, home page and related posts; no broken links.

Group 3: Speed and experience

  1. Core Web Vitals good on mobile: LCP ≤ 2.5 s, INP ≤ 200 ms, CLS ≤ 0.1 (per web.dev, at the 75th percentile).
  2. Images at display size, WebP/AVIF, hero image not lazy-loaded, dimensions declared.
  3. Mobile first: readable text, tappable buttons, no horizontal overflow.

Group 4: Help Google understand content

  1. Structured data: Organization/LocalBusiness, Article, Product, BreadcrumbList. Validate with the Rich Results Test; let one plugin own schema.
  2. Descriptive alt text and meaningful image file names.
  3. Multilingual: one URL per language with reciprocal hreflang.

Group 5: Monitor after launch

  1. Check regularly: the Pages report (what isn't indexed and why), Performance (queries, clicks) and Core Web Vitals in Search Console; fix 404s with sensible redirects.

Common problems

SymptomUsual cause
"Crawled – currently not indexed"Thin or duplicate content, few internal links
Many duplicate pagesMissing canonicals, filter parameters, both www and non-www
Poor CLSImages/ads/banners without dimensions, font swaps
Poor LCPHeavy hero image, slow server, no caching

Wrapping up

Technical SEO is "do it once, benefit for a long time". With a solid base, every new post or product page has a better chance on Google. See the complete WordPress guide for speed details, or my Speed & SEO service.