When people think about SEO, they often picture keywords, blog posts, and building links. While these are all vital parts of a good strategy, there’s a whole world of SEO that happens behind the scenes, and it’s called technical SEO.
Imagine your website is a car. The content is what’s inside—the seats, the radio, the sat nav. But technical SEO is the engine, the chassis, and the wheels. If the car isn’t built properly, it doesn’t matter how comfortable or entertaining the interior is—it simply won’t drive. Technical SEO is the foundation that allows your website to be found, understood, and ranked by search engines like Google.
In this beginner’s guide, we’ll answer the question, “what is technical SEO?” and break down the most important aspects you need to know. We’ll also provide a technical SEO checklist to help you make sure your website is on the right track.
Why is Technical SEO So Important?
You could have the most beautifully written content in the world, but if search engines can’t properly access and understand your website, your content may never appear in search results. Technical SEO is about creating a website that is as easy as possible for search engine crawlers (also known as ‘bots’) to explore and index.
If you don’t address technical SEO issues, you could be holding your website back from its full potential. Common problems include slow page speed, broken links, or a confusing website structure, all of which can lead to a poor user experience and hurt your search rankings.
Think of it as a set of rules that you need to follow to make sure your website is well-behaved and ready for prime time.
Key Elements of a Strong Technical Foundation
Let’s dive into the most important parts of technical SEO. Even if you’re not a web developer, understanding these concepts will help you communicate with a designer or agency and make sure your website is built for success.
1. Site Speed and Core Web Vitals
In a world where everyone expects things to happen instantly, a slow website is a huge turn-off. Google knows this, which is why page speed is a ranking factor.
Core Web Vitals is a set of specific factors that Google considers important in a website’s overall user experience. They measure things like how fast the main content of a page loads (Largest Contentful Paint), how quickly a page becomes interactive (First Input Delay), and how stable the page layout is as it loads (Cumulative Layout Shift). A good technical setup will ensure your website meets these standards, providing a fast and stable experience for your visitors.
2. Mobile-Friendliness
These days, the majority of searches happen on mobile devices. Google uses a “mobile-first” approach to indexing, which means it looks at the mobile version of your site first when deciding where to rank you. A site that isn’t mobile-friendly will likely struggle to rank well in search results.
Technical SEO ensures your website is responsive, meaning it adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes and devices. It’s not enough for your website to just work on a phone; it needs to be easy to use and look great, too.
3. Website Structure and Navigation
A well-organised website is easy for both users and search engines to navigate. A clear, logical site structure helps search engines understand the relationship between your pages and what your website is all about.
This includes things like having a simple URL structure, using internal links to connect related pages, and making sure your navigation menu is clear and easy to follow. A messy site structure can confuse search engine crawlers, which may miss some of your pages completely.
4. Crawlability and Indexability
This is the very heart of technical SEO.
- Crawlability: This refers to the ability of search engine bots to ‘crawl’ or read your website’s pages. A well-built website doesn’t have broken links or other obstacles that stop these bots from getting around.
- Indexability: This is about whether or not your pages can be added to Google’s index, which is essentially its huge database of websites. If a page isn’t indexed, it can’t appear in search results. A key part of this is a file called
robots.txt, which tells search engines which parts of your site to crawl and which to leave alone. You also need an XML sitemap, which we talked about in our other guide, to show search engines all the pages you want them to know about.
5. HTTPS Security
Security is a major concern for everyone online, and Google takes it very seriously. Websites that use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) are encrypted, which protects user data. Google has confirmed that having a secure website is a ranking signal. A good technical setup ensures your website has an SSL certificate, which is what enables HTTPS, providing a secure and trustworthy experience for your visitors.
6. Dealing with Duplicate Content
Having the same or very similar content on multiple pages can confuse search engines and dilute your website’s authority. This is a common technical SEO issue for e-commerce sites with product pages in different categories or for websites that use different URLs for the same page (e.g., www.yourwebsite.com and yourwebsite.com).
A technical SEO expert will use something called a canonical tag to tell search engines which version of the page is the original. This is a simple but powerful way to manage duplicate content and ensure your authority isn’t split between different pages.
Your Technical SEO Checklist for Beginners
To help you get started, here’s a simple checklist of things you can look at for your own website.
- Is my website mobile-friendly? Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to check.
- Is my website fast? Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to get a score and see areas for improvement.
- Is my website secure? Look for a padlock icon in your browser’s address bar. If it’s not there, you need to set up an SSL certificate.
- Do I have an XML sitemap? This is usually a file called
sitemap.xmlthat lives at the root of your website. - Am I using HTTPS? Check to make sure your website’s URL starts with
https://. - Are my URLs simple and descriptive? They should be easy for both people and search engines to understand.
- Are there any broken links on my site? You can use various online tools to check for these.
This checklist is a great starting point for identifying potential problems. However, a full-scale technical SEO audit is often required to truly understand and fix every issue.
How Suki Marketing Can Help
The world of technical SEO is complex and constantly evolving. Staying on top of all the best practices can be a full-time job, which is why many businesses choose to work with technical SEO experts.
At Suki Marketing, we specialise in getting under the bonnet of your website to ensure it’s built for success. We can perform a full technical SEO audit service to identify and fix any issues that might be holding your website back. We’ll work with you to create a solid foundation, allowing your content and other SEO efforts to thrive.
Get in touch with us today to find out how our technical SEO experts can help you diagnose and fix any issues and build a website that is not only beautiful but also performs brilliantly in search engines.
