You don't need an expensive subscription to find out why a page isn't ranking. Most SEO problems are ordinary and fixable: a missing meta description, a second H1 that shouldn't be there, a broken link leaking authority, a sitemap that never got submitted.
This checklist walks through ten technical SEO checks you can run today, for free. Each one pairs with a browser-based tool that does the heavy lifting, so you can go from 'something's off' to a concrete fix list in an afternoon.
1. Start with a full-page audit
Before checking individual signals, get an overview. Run a page through the SEO Audit tool for a categorized report — meta tags, headings, links, images, structured data and technical basics — then crawl the whole site with the Website SEO Audit to catch site-wide issues like duplicate titles and broken internal links.
Website SEO Audit (Crawler)Crawl your whole site and find SEO issues.2. Check your title and meta description
Every page needs one unique, descriptive title (around 50–60 characters) and a compelling meta description (120–160). The Meta Tags Analyzer shows exactly what a page serves and flags anything missing, too long, or accidentally set to noindex.
Writing new tags? The Meta Tag Generator builds them, and the SERP Snippet Preview shows how they'll look in Google before you ship.
3. Fix your heading structure
Search engines read your H1–H6 outline to understand the page. You want exactly one H1 and no skipped levels. The Heading Structure Analyzer lays out the outline and flags multiple H1s, skipped levels and empty headings.
4. Hunt down broken links
Broken links frustrate visitors and waste crawl budget. Check any page with the Broken Link Checker, and see the full internal/external picture — nofollow, anchor text, top domains — with the Link Analyzer.
5. Confirm your canonical tags
Canonicals tell Google which URL is the 'real' one. Most pages should point to themselves. The Canonical Checker verifies the tag is present, absolute, self-referencing and consistent with your Open Graph URL.
6. Validate your sitemap and robots.txt
A broken sitemap fails silently. Validate yours against the protocol with the Sitemap Validator, or build one from a crawl with the Sitemap Generator. Then confirm you're not accidentally blocking important pages using the Robots.txt Tester.
7. Add structured data
Schema markup unlocks rich results like FAQs and star ratings. Check what a page already has — and whether it's valid — with the Structured Data Checker, and generate new markup with the Schema Markup Generator.
8. Test your page speed and Core Web Vitals
Speed is a ranking factor and a conversion factor. The Page Speed Test reports Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) and Lighthouse scores for mobile and desktop, with a ranked list of the fixes that will help most.
9. Review your images
Images are often a page's heaviest content and biggest missed opportunity. The Image SEO Checker finds images missing alt text or dimensions (a Core Web Vitals issue), and the Image Compressor shrinks the heavy ones.
10. Check security headers and HTTPS
HTTPS is a ranking signal, and security headers protect your visitors. Review both with the HTTP Header Checker and confirm your certificate is valid and not about to expire with the SSL Certificate Checker.
Work through these in order once, fix what turns up, then re-run the full-site audit to confirm. Repeat quarterly — SEO is maintenance, not a one-time project.