A homepage SEO punch-list that doesn’t become a three-week rabbit hole

Most SEO audits dump hundreds of warnings. Owners still don’t know what to fix first.

Before you open Screaming Frog or buy a tool, run this public-HTML pass on the homepage (no CMS login):

1. Title — present? ~50–60 characters? Not “Home”?
2. Meta description — present? Roughly under ~155 characters?
3. H1 — exactly one, matching what the page sells?
4. Image alts — content images missing empty alts?
5. Basics — canonical; accidental noindex; status 200

Sort into P0 / P1 / P2. Ignore vanity scores until those are clean.

No ranking, traffic, or revenue guarantees.

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Update (Oct 2026): the OpsPacket Site Health Snapshot and free punch-list offer mentioned in the original version of this post are retired. The checklist above still stands on its own.