Pull up a chair and let me tell you about the night I almost quit digital marketing.

I’d spent a whole weekend cranking out the perfect blog post—stats, screenshots, the works. Hit “publish,” poured myself a victory coffee… and Google treated it like it never existed. Yep, I’d left a sneaky little “no-index” box ticked. Ouch.

That fiasco sent me down the rabbit hole we call technical SEO. Today I run an agency in Cardiff that fixes those invisible trip-wires for a living. If you’d prefer to dodge my rookie mistakes, here’s the checklist I swear by.
1. Are You Even on the Map?

First thing I do? Paste a few URLs into Google Search Console. If the crawler shrugs, something’s blocking it.

    Could be a rogue <meta name="robots" content="noindex">.

    Could be a crusty robots.txt rule from a staging site.

Nine times out of ten, flipping that setting and hitting “Request re-index” gets pages showing within a day. On massive catalogues we prioritise money pages first—nothing more satisfying than watching revenue jump when formerly “invisible” products finally rank.
2. The 404 Scavenger Hunt

Next up: Screaming Frog. Think of it as a nosy spider that clicks every link and tattles on the broken ones. Every 404 is cash leaking out of your cart. I once found 3 k dead URLs on a safety-gear store—old gloves discontinued, customers shunted to error pages. We slapped 301s on the lot, bounce rate fell, sales perked up, high-fives all round.
Quick redirect rules

    Have a successor product? 301 the old page to the new one.

    Got valuable backlinks? Consider resurrecting the page and swapping in fresh content.

Leaving a popular URL to 404 is like locking your shop door and posting a sign that says “Try our competitor.”
3. Pick Fights You Can Win

Tiny budget? Skip the Everest-grade keywords. I aim for long-tails like “extra-long cuff nitrile welding gloves size 10.” Fewer searches, sure, but way less competition and a lot more buying intent. Seen brand-new domains hit page one in six weeks on that tactic.
4. The Three-Screen Reality Check

Remember when responsive design was a nice-to-have? Now Google won’t shut up about it—and neither will users. Before launch (and after big plugin updates) I test on desktop, tablet and phone. If a dropdown misbehaves or images crawl in at glacier speed, we fix it before Google’s Core Web Vitals light up red.
5. Don’t Cheap Out on Hosting

I get it: early-stage founders hate recurring costs. But bargain-bin shared servers often take two seconds just to say “hi.” That slow Time to First Byte is a silent rankings killer. Splash out on decent managed hosting or a CDN; conversions will thank you.
6. Internal Links = Breadcrumbs for Bots

Every new article should get a couple of links from older authority pages and return the favour. It’s like handing Google a VIP pass: “Psst, new stuff over here!” Visitors stay longer, crawl budget gets used smarter, everyone wins.
7. Build Menus Your Nan Understands

Mega-menus stuffed with cryptic jargon impress exactly nobody. My rule: three clicks, max, from home page to product. Clear labels, logical groups, no cutesy wordplay. If Nan can find the checkout, Googlebot can too.
8. Schedule a Quarterly Detox

Themes update, plugins bloat, gremlins creep back. Every three months I run a fresh crawl, skim Search Console, and eyeball uptime logs. Not glamorous, just essential housekeeping.
Wrapping Up (and a Tiny Sales Pitch)

Technical SEO isn’t a magic trick—it’s more like flossing. Skip it and things get ugly; stick to the routine and you’ll keep that page-one grin. So: fix indexation, squash 404s, chase winnable keywords, stay fast, audit often, repeat.

Too busy? If you’re anywhere near Cardiff, my crew’s been untangling this stuff for a decade. Otherwise, armed with the pointers above, you’ve got everything you need to start climbing the SERPs. Now go unbreak those links—before another customer stumbles into ‘em.