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The 20-Point SEO Self-Check Checklist
Updated July 2026 · 9 min read · By MintShovels Team
Rankings don't fall overnight — they erode one forgotten setting at a time. Run this 20-point check monthly and you'll catch problems while they're still cheap to fix.
Crawlability & indexation (1–5)
1. XML sitemap — submitted in Search Console and returns 200.
2. robots.txt — doesn't accidentally block CSS/JS or key pages.
3. No orphan pages — every important URL is linked from somewhere.
4. Canonical tags — point to the correct version, no self-conflicting loops.
5. Index coverage — zero unexpected "excluded" or "soft 404" in GSC.
On-page basics (6–11)
6. Unique title tags — under ~60 chars, with the target keyword near the front.
7. Meta descriptions — present, compelling, not duplicated.
8. One H1 per page — and a logical H2/H3 outline.
9. Internal links — related pages link to each other with descriptive anchors.
10. Image alt text — describes the image; not keyword-stuffed.
11. Mobile-friendly — renders and is usable at 390px width.
Performance & trust (12–16)
12. Core Web Vitals — LCP < 2.5s, CLS < 0.1, INP responsive.
13. HTTPS everywhere — no mixed content warnings.
14. Page speed — images lazy-loaded and properly sized.
15. Structured data — valid Organization/Article/Breadcrumb markup.
16. No broken links — internal 404s fixed or redirected.
AI & future-proofing (17–20)
17. Clear authorship & entity signals — who/what the site is, stated plainly.
18. Direct answers — content answers questions in plain language AI can quote.
19. Freshness — key pages updated within the last 12 months.
20. Brand mentions — consistent name/description across the web.
How to make it stick as a habit
A checklist you run once is worthless; one you run monthly is gold. Put it on a calendar, not a todo list. Each pass should take 20–30 minutes: skim the 20 points, mark what changed, and fix only what's red. Over a year this catches the slow erosion — a broken internal link from a redesign, a page that quietly dropped from index, a title someone overwrote — before any of it costs rankings. The audit tool handles the mechanical pass; your eyes handle the judgment the tool can't.
What this list deliberately leaves out
This is a health check, not a growth plan. It won't tell you which new topic to write, or whether a competitor just launched a better page. Those are strategy questions for a different day. What it guarantees is that the foundation underneath any strategy stays solid — because the best content in the world can't rank on a site that fails points 1 through 5. Run the free audit for the numbers, then use this list to decide what the numbers mean for your site.
Shortcut: Our
free SEO audit runs most of these 20 checks automatically in seconds — use it as the engine, and treat this list as the human review on top.