How to use this checklist
Treat each point as a question for your team or agency, not a task for you. A good answer comes with evidence and a named owner.
The format follows the SEO ownership map from Cristobal Varela’s book, What Executives Get Wrong About SEO: every part of search has an accountable role, and leadership’s job is to fund the work and make sure nothing falls between teams.
Indexing checks (1–4): can buyers find the pages that sell homes?
A page that isn’t indexed can’t produce an organic inquiry.
| Check | Why it matters | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Is every active community page indexed? | An unindexed community never reaches a buyer, and indexing is usually lost through templates, not single pages. | Web development lead, with the SEO lead |
| 2. Are quick move-in homes in search while they are still for sale? | These homes may be listed for weeks. Found after they sell, they contribute nothing. | Web development lead, following the SEO lead’s policy |
| 3. Is anything in search that shouldn’t be? | Filter pages, sold homes and duplicates compete with real pages and lead buyers to dead ends. | SEO lead, with web development |
| 4. Does the sitemap list only the pages we want found? | A stale sitemap slows new communities and keeps retired URLs alive. | Web development lead |
Content checks (5–9): does every page have one job?
Builder sites rarely lack content. They have too many pages doing the same job, so no page wins.
| Check | Why it matters | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| 5. Are community pages competing for the same searches? | Communities targeting the same city language take turns ranking, and none ranks well. | SEO lead, with the content lead |
| 6. Does each floor plan page have a reason to exist? | One plan in several communities creates near-identical pages that split visibility. | Content lead, with the SEO lead |
| 7. Do we report branded and non-branded search separately? | Branded searches reflect demand created elsewhere; growth comes from buyers who haven’t chosen you yet. | Analytics lead |
| 8. Does every key page have one clear H1 and logical headings? | A template that tags logos as headings buries the topic on every page it builds. | Web development lead |
| 9. Is every important page linked from other pages? | Pages reachable only through the sitemap are found late and support nothing around them. | SEO lead |
Page competition is the most common finding on multi-community sites. At one national home builder, giving each page a defined role cut keyword cannibalization from 83% to 24% in four months without adding pages. When plans repeat across communities, a scalable content strategy decides which page owns which search, and heading errors get fixed in the template, as the heading hierarchy case study shows.
Performance checks (10–13): do the heaviest pages work on a phone?
Builder sites are image-heavy, and buyers browse on phones.
| Check | Why it matters | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| 10. How heavy are our galleries and renderings? | Oversized images are a silent tax on inquiries, paid on every visit. | Web development lead, with creative |
| 11. Do community, plan and inventory templates pass Core Web Vitals on real phones? | Buyers rarely land on the homepage; the templates carrying search traffic are what count. | Front-end lead |
| 12. Can a buyer on a phone compare plans and book a tour easily? | Forms and galleries that fail on mobile lose the inquiry after the click. | Front-end lead, with marketing |
| 13. Are there broken pages or redirect chains on URLs that matter? | Closeouts and redesigns break pages with history, and their earned value disappears. | Web development lead |
Local and structured data checks (14–15): do engines read your business correctly?
Search engines and AI assistants confirm who you are from your profiles and structured data.
| Check | Why it matters | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| 14. Are Google Business Profiles complete and accurate for every community and sales center? | A profile pointing to a sold-out community sends ready buyers to a dead end. | Local or division marketing manager |
| 15. Does structured data describe our communities, homes and plans accurately? | It translates pages into facts machines read, such as price and availability. Markup that disagrees with the page confuses them. | SEO lead, with web development |
The local SEO audit guide covers the community-by-community review behind check 14.
What to fix first: templates and indexing before more content
Fix templates and indexing before you fund more content. A missing community page costs more than any article can recover, and one template fix lifts every page built on it. A sensible order:
- Indexing problems on communities, available homes and floor plans
- Template defects that repeat across hundreds of pages
- Page competition, so each market, community and plan owns one search
- Local accuracy across profiles and pages
- New content, once existing pages can be found and convert
Before you approve more content, ask which template, once fixed, will lift the most pages. A technical SEO audit answers that question with evidence and gives each fix an owner.
