# Technical SEO Cheat Sheet
_Crawl, index, canonical — in the order search engines apply them_
Technical SEO is a pipeline: a page must be crawlable before it can be indexed, and indexable before ranking is even a question. Most problems are one stage failing silently.
> Difficulty: intermediate  
> Version: 1.0  
> Updated: 2025-06-06  
> Categories: SEO  
> Tags: Regex

Source: https://invitationbuddy.com/cheat-sheet/technical-seo-cheat-sheet

---

## Directives
| Directive | Says | Common mistake |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `robots.txt Disallow` | Do not CRAWL this path  Expecting it to de-index — a blocked URL can still be listed |
| `` | Do not INDEX this page  Blocking the page in robots.txt so the tag is never read |
| `rel="canonical"` | This is the preferred version  Every page pointing at the homepage |
| `301` | Moved permanently  Chaining several hops instead of pointing at the final URL |
| `302` | Moved temporarily  Using it for a permanent move, so equity never transfers |
| `410` | Gone, deliberately  Serving 404 for content you intentionally removed |
| `hreflang` | This page in another language  Missing the required self-referencing tag |

## Audit order
- [ ] Can it be crawled? — robots.txt, then server response, then internal links pointing at it
- [ ] Can it be indexed? — No noindex, canonical points at itself, returns 200
- [ ] Does it render? — If content only appears after JavaScript, confirm it survives rendering
- [ ] Is it unique? — Near-duplicate pages compete with each other, not with rivals
- [ ] Is it fast on a phone? — Core Web Vitals are measured on mobile first
- [ ] Is the structured data truthful? — Marking a page as something it is not gets rich results suppressed site-wide

## FAQs
**Why is a page still in the index after I blocked it in robots.txt?**
Because Disallow blocks CRAWLING, not indexing. The engine can still list a URL it has never fetched. To remove it, allow the crawl and serve a noindex tag.

**Should every page have a canonical tag?**
Yes, and it should usually point at itself. The common failure is pointing every page at the homepage, which asks search engines to drop the entire site but one page.

---
_Generated from https://invitationbuddy.com/cheat-sheet/technical-seo-cheat-sheet_