Technical SEO is the foundation of your site's search performance. While content and backlinks get most of the attention, technical issues can silently tank your rankings. Here are 10 checks you should run every month to keep your site in top shape.
1. Crawl Your Site for Broken Links
Broken links frustrate users and waste crawl budget. Every month, run a full site crawl to identify 404 errors, redirect chains, and orphaned pages. SeoSync's broken link detection automatically checks both internal and external links during every audit, flagging issues before they impact your rankings.
2. Check Your Core Web Vitals
Google uses Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) as ranking signals. Monitor these metrics monthly to catch regressions early. Look for pages where LCP exceeds 2.5 seconds or CLS is above 0.1. SeoSync tracks your Core Web Vitals over time with trending charts, so you can see whether your performance is improving or declining.
3. Validate Your XML Sitemap
Your sitemap tells search engines which pages to crawl. Check that it's up to date, doesn't include noindexed pages, and returns a 200 status code. A broken or outdated sitemap can prevent new content from being discovered. Use SeoSync's free sitemap validator tool to check yours in seconds.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://example.ca/</loc>
<lastmod>2026-03-01</lastmod>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
</urlset>4. Review Your Robots.txt
A misconfigured robots.txt can accidentally block important pages from being crawled. Review it monthly to ensure you're not blocking CSS, JS, or image files that search engines need to render your pages. Our free robots.txt validator catches common mistakes instantly.
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /api/
Sitemap: https://example.ca/sitemap.xml5. Audit Your Meta Tags
Missing or duplicate title tags and meta descriptions hurt your click-through rates. Check every page for: unique title tags under 60 characters, compelling meta descriptions under 160 characters, proper Open Graph tags for social sharing, and canonical tags pointing to the correct URL. SeoSync checks all of these automatically during every audit.
<head>
<title>Best SEO Tools for Canadian Businesses | SeoSync</title>
<meta name="description" content="Audit your site with 34 automated checks..." />
<meta property="og:title" content="Best SEO Tools for Canadian Businesses" />
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.ca/seo-tools" />
</head>6. Monitor Your Page Speed
Page speed directly impacts both user experience and rankings. Test your key pages monthly and look for: unoptimized images, render-blocking JavaScript, excessive third-party scripts, and missing browser caching headers. Track improvements over time to prove the ROI of your optimization efforts.
7. Check for Mobile Usability Issues
With mobile-first indexing, Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking. Ensure your pages are responsive, tap targets are properly sized, text is readable without zooming, and no content is wider than the screen. SeoSync's mobile audit checks catch these issues automatically.
8. Review Your HTTP Headers
Security headers like HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, and Content-Security-Policy protect your users and signal trust to search engines. Missing security headers can expose your site to attacks and may negatively impact rankings. Our free HTTP header checker tool analyzes your headers in one click.
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Frame-Options: DENY
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'
Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin9. Track Your Keyword Rankings
Rankings fluctuate constantly. Monthly tracking helps you spot trends: Are your target keywords moving up or down? Are competitors overtaking you for important terms? Are new SERP features (featured snippets, People Also Ask) appearing for your keywords? SeoSync tracks keywords daily and shows SERP feature presence so you never miss an opportunity.
10. Analyze Your Competitors
Your competitors are optimizing too. Monthly competitor analysis helps you understand: which keywords they're targeting, where they're outranking you, what content gaps exist, and what technical advantages they have. SeoSync's competitor tracking monitors up to 10 competitors per project on the Pro plan, giving you actionable insights to stay ahead.
Automate Your Monthly Checks
Running these checks manually is time-consuming. The best approach is to automate as much as possible. With SeoSync, a single audit covers broken links, meta tags, Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, security headers, and more — all in under two minutes. Set up your projects, run audits regularly, and let AI-powered summaries highlight what needs your attention first.