A restrained checklist for confirming that a site can be crawled, understood, and measured before deeper SEO work begins.
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Short answer
A technical SEO baseline is a first-pass crawlability and clarity check. Before chasing rankings, confirm that important pages resolve cleanly, expose one canonical URL, appear in the sitemap when appropriate, and are not blocked accidentally.
Evidence label
Starter Guide This is a restrained starter entry built for clarity, verification, and later expansion.
Why it matters
Many SEO arguments are wasted because the site shell is unstable. A baseline checklist reduces noise and gives later experiments a cleaner starting point.
How to verify
Load the important public URLs and confirm they return successfully.
Inspect each page for a title, meta description, canonical, and one clear H1.
Confirm the XML sitemap lists the URLs that should be indexed.
Confirm robots.txt is readable and not blocking intended content.
Review internal links so important pages are discoverable without search.
Cost and effort
For a small static site, most baseline checks are low-cost and mostly editorial. The heavier work starts when the site has duplicated paths, mixed templates, rendering issues, or inconsistent deployment behavior.
Sources and notes
Google Search Central documentation on sitemaps, canonicals, and robots handling is a useful primary reference for these checks.
This guide is a baseline shell, not a full technical audit framework.