Technical SEO can absorb infinite time. For a small site, a handful of things matter and the rest is noise you can safely ignore.
The short list
- Indexable: search engines can reach your pages. Check you are not accidentally blocking them.
- Fast enough, particularly on mobile. Compress images, cut unused scripts.
- Mobile usable: readable text, tappable targets, nothing overlapping.
- Sensible URLs: readable, stable, and not changed casually.
- Unique titles and descriptions per page. Duplicates across a site are common and lazy.
- Internal links so pages are reachable and related pages point at each other.
- A sitemap, submitted once in Search Console.
That is most of it for a site with tens of pages rather than thousands.
Set up Search Console today
It is free, it tells you what you actually rank for, which pages have problems, and when something breaks. Skipping it means operating blind for no reason.
What not to worry about
Meta keywords are dead. Keyword density is not a thing. Exotic schema markup rarely moves a small site. Chasing perfect performance scores past "fast enough" is a hobby, not a strategy.
Do not break what works
The most common self-inflicted disaster is a site redesign that changes every URL without redirects. If you must change URLs, map old to new and redirect them permanently, or you will donate years of accumulated ranking.
Try it
Set up Search Console, submit your sitemap, and fix any pages it reports as not indexed. That single hour is worth more than most tactics in this course.