SEO glossary · T

Technical SEO

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the part of SEO that makes sure search engines can crawl, render, understand and index a website, and that the site gives visitors a fast, secure experience. It deals with the site’s code, server and structure rather than its content or links.

What technical SEO covers

  • Crawling: robots.txt, XML sitemaps, internal links and crawl errors.
  • Indexing: canonical tags, noindex rules, duplicate content and status codes.
  • Rendering: making sure content loaded with JavaScript is visible to search engines.
  • Site structure: clear URLs, navigation, breadcrumbs and a logical hierarchy.
  • Speed and Core Web Vitals: fast loading and a stable, responsive page.
  • Mobile: a site that works well on phones, since Google indexes the mobile version.
  • Security: HTTPS across the whole site.
  • Structured data: schema markup that helps search engines understand the content.
  • International sites: hreflang tags for language and country versions.

How to find technical problems

Start with the Pages, Core Web Vitals and Crawl Stats reports in Google Search Console, then crawl the site with a tool such as Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. Fix whatever stops important pages from being indexed first.

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