Technical SEO focuses on how your website is built and delivered to search engines. It ensures your site is crawlable, indexable, fast, mobile-friendly, and error-free. Even great content won’t rank well without solid technical foundations.

🏗️ Site Architecture and Crawlability

  • Use a clear hierarchy: Homepage → Categories → Posts
  • Limit the number of clicks from homepage to content (ideally under 3)
  • Use breadcrumbs to improve navigation
  • Maintain a logical and consistent URL structure

Tip: Use internal linking to support important pages.

🗺️ Sitemaps and Robots.txt

  • XML Sitemap: A roadmap of your site for search engines. Submit it in Google Search Console.
  • robots.txt: Controls which parts of your site are crawlable. Avoid accidentally blocking important pages.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /

⚡ Core Web Vitals and Site Speed

Google uses Core Web Vitals as ranking signals. These include:

  • LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Page load time
  • FID (First Input Delay): Time to interact
  • CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Visual stability

Improve speed by:

  • Compressing images
  • Enabling lazy loading
  • Using a CDN
  • Minimizing JavaScript/CSS

Test with PageSpeed Insights.

📱 Mobile-First Indexing

Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking.

Make sure:

  • Your design is responsive
  • Fonts are readable on small screens
  • Buttons and links are easily tappable
  • Content is consistent between desktop and mobile

Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

🔄 Canonical Tags and Duplicate Content

If your site has similar or duplicate pages, use the canonical tag to tell Google which version to prioritize.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/primary-page/" />

Prevents dilution of ranking signals and indexing confusion.

🌍 hreflang for Multilingual Sites

Use hreflang tags if your site serves multiple languages or regions. This helps Google show the correct version based on a user’s language and location.

Example:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ca" href="https://example.com/en-ca/" />

🧼 Other Technical Best Practices

  • Use HTTPS (SSL) — a must for security and rankings
  • Fix broken links and 404 errors
  • Avoid excessive redirect chains
  • Set preferred domain (with or without www)

Summary

Technical SEO is about optimizing your site behind the scenes so search engines can crawl and index it effectively. A well-structured, fast, and mobile-friendly website gives your content the best chance to rank and convert.