Search changed more in the last two years than in the previous ten. This checklist is what we actually run inside Nexon Digital Studio audits before touching a single keyword.
Technical foundation
If crawling and rendering are broken, nothing else matters.
- Clean, crawlable HTML rendered server-side
- XML sitemap that matches live, indexable routes
- robots.txt that allows search and AI crawlers
- Canonical tags on every page
- Core Web Vitals: LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1
- HTTPS, no mixed content, no redirect chains
On-page optimisation
Every indexable page needs a job and a query it is trying to win.
- Unique title under 60 characters with the primary keyword
- Meta description under 160 characters written for clicks
- One H1 per page, logical H2/H3 structure
- Descriptive alt text on every meaningful image
- Internal links from high-authority pages to money pages
Content that earns rankings
Search engines reward depth plus originality. Build topic clusters around a pillar page, refresh decaying posts quarterly, and add original data, screenshots or expert quotes that no competitor can copy.
Off-page and authority
Focus on digital PR, niche partnerships and unlinked-brand-mention reclamation rather than bulk directories. Fifty relevant links will beat five hundred irrelevant ones every time.
