What is technical SEO?
What we will go through
- What technical SEO covers
- The technical basics every site needs
- How to spot problems early
Short answer
Technical SEO is the work of making your website easy for Google and other search engines to crawl, index, and load. It covers site speed, mobile-friendliness, HTTPS security, sitemaps, robots.txt, broken links, and clean URLs. If technical SEO is broken, even great content may never show up in search results.
Why technical SEO comes first
Remember crawl, index, rank from Lesson 0.2. Technical SEO protects the first two steps.
Think of your website as a store in a mall. Content is the products on the shelves. Technical SEO is the entrance, the lights, and the aisles. If the door is locked, nobody sees the products.
The technical basics every site needs
| Area | What it means | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Crawlability | Bots can reach your pages through links | Pages that cannot be crawled cannot be found |
| Indexability | Pages are allowed and able to be indexed | Only indexed pages can rank |
| Site speed | Pages load quickly | Slow pages frustrate visitors, especially on mobile data |
| Mobile-friendly | Pages work well on phones | Most Filipinos browse on phones, and Google mainly uses the mobile version of a page |
| HTTPS | The site uses a secure connection (the lock icon) | Protects visitors and is a trust signal |
| XML sitemap | A list of your important pages | Helps search engines find pages (Lesson 4.4) |
| robots.txt | A file with crawl rules | One wrong line can block your site (Lesson 4.4) |
| No broken links | Links lead to working pages | Broken links waste visits and crawling (Lesson 4.3) |
| Clean URLs | Short, readable addresses | Easier for people and search engines to understand |
Core Web Vitals in plain words
Google measures page experience with three Core Web Vitals:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How fast the main content appears. Aim for under 2.5 seconds.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): How fast the page responds when you tap or click. Aim for under 200 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): How much the page jumps around while loading. Aim for under 0.1.
You can check these for free in Google PageSpeed Insights or the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console.
How to spot problems early
- Check the Page indexing report in Google Search Console every month
- Check Bing Webmaster Tools for crawl errors
- Open your site on your own phone using mobile data
- Run a free site scan to find broken links and missing tags (Lesson 4.5)
Technical SEO checklist
Quick quiz
Common mistakes
- Testing only on a fast office computer. Test on a phone with mobile data.
- Huge images. Compress photos before uploading.
- Leaving a test site’s noindex or robots.txt block on after launch.
- Ignoring Search Console warnings. They are free alerts. Read them.
Your action
Complete the technical SEO checklist above.
Key terms
- Technical SEO
- Improving a site’s structure and setup so search engines can crawl and index it.
- Crawlability
- How easily bots can reach your pages.
- Indexability
- Whether a page can be added to a search index.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google’s three page experience measures: LCP, INP, and CLS.
- HTTPS
- A secure connection between a site and its visitors.
- Mobile-first indexing
- Google mainly uses the mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking.
Questions beginners ask
Do I need to code to do technical SEO?
Not for the basics. Website builders and plugins handle most of it. Some fixes may need a developer.
Is site speed a big ranking factor?
It is one signal among many. Speed matters most because slow pages lose visitors.
Related lessons
Want someone to handle SEO for your business while you learn? The team at Remar Digital can help.