Technical SEO covers the behind-the-scenes optimizations that help search engines crawl, index, and render your website effectively. Think of it as the foundation your house is built on — without it, nothing else works properly.
Why Technical SEO Matters
You could have the best content in the world, but if Google can't find it, can't understand it, or your site loads too slowly, you won't rank. Technical SEO ensures there are no barriers between your content and search engine crawlers.
Core Areas of Technical SEO
1. Site Speed & Core Web Vitals
Google uses Core Web Vitals as ranking factors. The three metrics are:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): How fast the main content loads — target under 2.5 seconds
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): How quickly the page responds to user interaction — target under 200ms
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): How much the layout shifts during loading — target under 0.1
Use SEB PageScore to measure your Core Web Vitals for every page on your site.
2. Mobile-Friendliness
Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking. Your site must be fully responsive, with readable text, tappable buttons, and no horizontal scrolling on mobile devices.
3. Crawlability
Ensure search engines can discover and access all important pages:
- Submit an XML sitemap to Google Search Console
- Use a logical site architecture with clear internal linking
- Don't accidentally block important pages with robots.txt
- Fix broken links and redirect chains
4. Indexation
Control which pages get indexed:
- Use canonical tags to prevent duplicate content issues
- Apply noindex to pages that shouldn't appear in search (admin pages, tag pages with thin content)
- Monitor your index coverage in Google Search Console
5. Structured Data (Schema)
Schema markup helps search engines understand your content's context. Implement:
- Organization schema on your homepage
- Article schema on blog posts
- FAQ schema on Q&A pages
- Product schema on product pages
6. HTTPS & Security
All pages should be served over HTTPS. Ensure no mixed content (HTTP resources on HTTPS pages) and redirect all HTTP URLs to HTTPS.
Automating Technical Audits
Manual technical audits are time-consuming. SEB Sentinel automates the process — crawling your entire site, identifying issues, prioritizing them by impact, and tracking fixes over time. Schedule monthly crawls to catch new issues before they affect rankings.
Key takeaway: Technical SEO is the foundation. Fix speed, mobile, and crawlability first — these impact every page on your site.