Ten Technical SEO Checks for an Online Store

The ten checks below find the technical problems that most often hold back an online store: pages Google cannot or will not index, and filter URLs that waste crawling. Work through them in order, because each one affects the next.

1. Compare indexed pages with the pages you want indexed

In Search Console, open the Page indexing report and compare the indexed count with your product and collection count. A large gap points to a crawl or quality problem. A count far higher than your catalog usually means filter or parameter URLs are being indexed.

2. Decide which filter pages should exist in search

A filter page such as “black leather boots” can deserve to rank. A filter page sorted by price, low to high, does not. Keep the useful combinations crawlable with clean URLs and canonical tags to themselves, and block or canonicalize the rest.

3. Check canonical tags on variants

If color and size variants have separate URLs, each one should either canonicalize to the main product or be a page you intend to rank. Mixed signals, such as a canonical pointing to a redirected URL, make Google choose for you.

4. Handle out-of-stock and discontinued products on purpose

Keep temporarily unavailable products live with accurate availability markup. Redirect permanently discontinued ones to the closest relevant product or collection, not the homepage. Pages with backlinks deserve the most care.

5. Check product structured data

Product pages should carry Product markup with price, currency and availability that match the visible page and your Merchant Center feed. Mismatches can cause rich result and listing problems. Add review markup only for real, visible reviews.

6. Test that important content appears without interaction

View the rendered HTML in Search Console’s URL Inspection tool. Titles, descriptions, prices and internal links should be present. Content that appears only after a click or on scroll may not be seen, and many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript.

7. Measure Core Web Vitals by template

Use the Core Web Vitals report to see which templates fail, usually collection pages with many images. Fix the highest-traffic template first. Speed affects conversion as well as rankings.

8. Review robots.txt and crawler access

Confirm robots.txt does not block CSS, JavaScript or the pages you want indexed. If you want to appear in AI search products, check the rules for their search crawlers, such as OAI-SearchBot. Training crawlers such as GPTBot are controlled separately, and allowing them is your call.

9. Keep XML sitemaps clean

Include only canonical pages that return a 200 status and are not noindexed. Split large catalogs into several files and submit them in Search Console.

10. Link important pages from important pages

Collections should link to best sellers, and your homepage and navigation should reach your top collections in one click. A product that sits five clicks deep behind filters is easy for Google to ignore.

Start with the page types that earn the most revenue and move outward from there. If you want a second set of eyes on your store, the free audit covers items 1, 5, 6 and 8.