Technical SEO Checklist for a Modern Server-Rendered Website

Rendering

• Check the raw HTML response: headings, body text, internal links and metadata should all be present.
• Use real anchor elements with href attributes for navigation; buttons and click handlers are not reliable links for crawlers.
• Avoid content that appears only after user interaction, such as text hidden behind "load more" buttons that fetch new data.
• Compare the rendered HTML in Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool with what users see.
• Do not block framework asset paths, such as a Next.js site's /_next/ directory, in robots.txt; Google needs CSS and JavaScript to render pages correctly.

Status codes

Collapse redirect chains into a single hop, remove redirect loops, and update internal links so they point directly at final addresses.

Canonical URLs and duplicates

• Give each indexable page an absolute, self-referencing canonical URL.
• Watch for a common framework mistake: a canonical tag set once in a shared layout, which makes every page point at the homepage.
• Normalize HTTP to HTTPS, one hostname and one trailing slash convention with 301 redirects.
• Point URLs with sorting, filtering or tracking parameters at the clean version, or keep them out of the index.
• Keep internal search result pages out of the index.

Robots rules

• robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing. To keep a page out of search results, use a noindex robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header.
• Do not block a noindexed page in robots.txt, or crawlers never see the noindex instruction.
• Do not list private administration paths in robots.txt; the file is public. Protect those areas with authentication instead.

Titles, descriptions and headings

• Write a unique, descriptive title for every page.
• Write meta descriptions that summarize the page; search engines may still generate their own snippets.
• Use one h1 that names the page's topic and a logical heading hierarchy beneath it.
• Add Open Graph tags so shared links display a correct title, description and image.

Sitemaps

• List only canonical, indexable URLs that return status 200.
• Split large sitemaps under a sitemap index; the sitemap protocol limits each file to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed.
• Set lastmod to the date content last changed meaningfully, not the build or deployment time. Search engines use lastmod only when it proves reliable.
• Reference the sitemap in robots.txt and submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Consider IndexNow to notify participating search engines, including Bing, when pages change.

Structured data

• Use JSON-LD with types that match the page, such as Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList, Article or Service.
• Describe only what is visible on the page and true. Never add ratings, reviews, addresses or authors that do not exist.
• Validate markup, and remember that rich results are never guaranteed.

Performance

• Track Core Web Vitals from real users: Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift.
• Serve responsive images and prioritize the main image above the fold.
• Self-host fonts and reserve space for images and embeds to avoid layout shifts.
• Reduce JavaScript shipped to the browser, and cache static assets.

Search and AI features

Google states that the same foundational SEO practices apply to AI features such as AI Overviews: pages must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet, and no special markup or files are required. Bing's guidelines likewise reward useful content and warn against manipulation. Nobody can guarantee rankings, indexing or inclusion in AI answers.

Preview and staging environments

• Protect staging with authentication, which is the most reliable option.
• Also send noindex on every staging response.
• Before launch, confirm that production does not still carry staging's noindex settings.

Launch and monitoring

1. Crawl the new site before launch to check status codes, canonicals, titles and broken links.
2. Map every old URL to its new address with 301 redirects.
3. Check robots.txt and indexing settings in production.
4. Submit sitemaps and monitor indexing reports.
5. Watch server logs for 404s and fix or redirect them.