Most developers treat SEO as "someone else's job" — a marketing concern that happens after the site ships. But a huge chunk of SEO is actually decided at the code level, long before a marketer ever touches the content. If you're building sites — for clients, for yourself, or as side projects — a few technical fundamentals can make or break how discoverable that work ever becomes.
Here's the technical SEO checklist I use when reviewing or building sites, from a digital marketing + web perspective.
Core Web Vitals Aren't Optional Anymore
Google uses three core metrics as direct ranking signals:
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — how fast the main content loads
