The blog post shows how to check if GA is set up, but if you can log in and see traffic, it is. This doesn't count against dev time.

Log in and see if the client has this set up. This doesn't count against dev time.

Check that the robot.txt file is on the site properly.

Submitted to GSC, up to date, and only containing canonicalised 200-status URLs.

Run a crawl in Screamingfrog to check indexability. See which pages aren't being indexed. You can also find these in SEMRush. Also check indexing in Google Search Console. Check that pages that aren't supposed to be indexed, aren't.

Make sure the metadata is properly tagged for SEO standards. Title tags, meta description, image tags, and check for proper H tag structure.

You can check this in the PageSpeed insights tool, but you can also log in and check by the individual page in Google Search Console.

Look for plugin overload in "Reduce JavaScript execution time". This doesn't count against dev time.

Make sure the client's website follows the rules in this blog post.

Make sure the client's website follows the rules in this blog post.

Make sure the client's website follows the rules in this blog post.

Check for the http://, https://, and http://www., and https://www. variants of the site using a site: search.

Test 3 random pages on the website to make sure images lazy load.

Test 3 random pages on the website to make sure images are the .webp file type

Check for "Image elements do not have explicit width and height"

If the website has videos, check to see if they lazy load. Especially embeds.

Run a SEMRush or Ahrefs audit to look for any website structure issues. The site should pass with 90+ Health Score to be considered a pass here.

Make sure the internal links on the website aren't HTTP or 301 redirects and that the internal linking structure of the website is good. Check for redirect chains.

Rich results, products, articles, breadcrumbs, FAQs, etc.

Check that the site uses HTTPS. Make sure no HTTP resources are loaded on HTTPS pages.

Check that the site supports HSTS: https://domsignal.com/hsts-test

Check that the site makes proper use of canonical tags.

Check that hreflang is appropriately used for international seo

Go through this list of hacks and make sure the site doesn't have any of them.

It should be on AWS or equivalent in terms of speed. For local, it's best to get on a server closest to their geographic location.

It should be on AWS or equivalent in terms of speed.

Make sure their site is leveraging browser cacheing. Use this tool: https://cache-checker.com/

Check for weird things in the HTML. Inline is a good thing to spot.

These are pages that are useless and get no traffic from any source.

Check for crawl traps and set proper canonical or noindex rules.

Make sure site uses pagination in best practices.

Check for duplicate content and if it's a problem.

Ensure search engines can render key content (test with “fetch & render” or mobile-friendly test).