Technical SEO is a crucial aspect of website optimization, yet it is often overlooked because it operates behind the scenes, unlike content or marketing strategies. However, without a solid technical foundation, even the best content may struggle to gain visibility in search engine results.
This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the key technical SEO optimizations, explaining how search engines crawl, index, and classify a website. It also covers the essential elements that lay the foundation to achieve the best results in terms of organic traffic and ensure optimal performance.
Contents
- What is Technical SEO and how does It differ from other SEO aspects?
- Crawling and indexing: the process that determines a site's visibility
- Optimizing robots.txt and XML sitemaps to guide search engines
- Security and HTTPS
- Redirect Management
- Site structure and architecture
- Page speed and Core Web Vitals
- Mobile-first indexing and mobile optimization
- Hreflang management
- Canonical: avoiding duplicate content
- Structured data
- Conclusions
What is Technical SEO and how does It differ from other SEO aspects?
Technical SEO encompasses all the optimizations that enable search engines to effectively crawl, understand, and index a website. It focuses on aspects such as site speed, page structure, robots.txt file, XML sitemaps, and HTTPS security.
To better understand its role, it's useful to compare it with other key SEO components:
- On-Page SEO → Focuses on optimizing the content of a page, including keywords, meta tags, image optimization, and heading structures.
- Off-Page SEO → Covers external factors like backlink building and online reputation management.
- Technical SEO → Ensures that search engines can properly crawl and index the site, optimizing site structure, loading speed, and crawl management.
Crawling and indexing: the process that determines a site's visibility
For a website to appear in search results, it must first be crawled and indexed by search engines. These two steps are essential—without proper crawling, pages cannot be indexed and will never be visible in search rankings.
Crawling
Crawling is the process where Googlebot and other search engine crawlers navigate the web, looking for new pages or updates. Crawlers follow internal and external links to discover content and update their index accordingly.
If a website is not well-structured, crawlers may struggle to find all its pages or take too long to scan them. Common obstacles that can hinder the crawling process include:
- Orphan pages → Pages without internal links might remain undiscovered by search engines.
- Robots.txt restrictions → A misconfigured robots.txt file can unintentionally block important sections from being crawled.
- Server errors (5xx) → Frequent server issues may cause Googlebot to reduce its crawling frequency.
- Complex redirects or redirect loops → Can slow down or prevent crawlers from accessing certain pages.
Indexing
After crawling a page, the search engine determines whether and how it should be indexed. Indexing is the process where Google analyzes the page’s content and stores it in its database, making it eligible to appear in search results.
For a page to be properly indexed, it must meet some fundamental criteria:
- Be accessible to crawlers → It should not be blocked by a robots.txt file or a noindex tag.
- Return an HTTP 200 status code → This indicates that the page is available and functioning correctly.
- Be canonical → Only the canonical version (rel="canonical") will be indexed, while duplicate or non-canonical versions will be excluded from search results.
Example of an indexing report from Google Search Console.
Optimizing robots.txt and XML sitemaps to guide search engines
Two essential tools for improving a website’s crawling and indexing are the robots.txt file and the XML sitemap, both of which help search engines explore the site more efficiently.
Robots.txt file
The robots.txt file is a simple text file located in the root directory of a website (e.g., yourdomain.com/robots.txt) and is used to tell search engines which parts of the site should or should not be crawled. However, misconfigurations can accidentally block entire sections of a site, preventing search engines from accessing important pages.
Example of Nike's website robots.txt
To ensure an effective setup, it's important to follow these best practices:
- Avoid blocking important pages → Do not restrict access to key sections such as product pages, blog posts, or service pages.
- Block only unnecessary pages → Prevent search engines from crawling areas that do not contribute to SEO, such as login pages, shopping carts, user accounts, or internal search results.
- Optimize crawl budget → Restrict access to URLs with unnecessary parameters (?filter=, ?sort=) to avoid duplication and resource waste.
- Allow access to CSS and JavaScript → Google needs to read style and script files to properly render and interpret the site’s structure.
Sitemap XML
The XML sitemap is a file that provides search engines with a structured list of a website’s most important pages, making it easier for them to discover and crawl content. While it does not guarantee indexing, it helps crawlers quickly identify relevant pages.
Example of an XML sitemap is the one used for the Italian homepage of New Holland Agriculture, where details such as the last modified date, crawl frequency, and priority.
Security and HTTPS
Ensuring website security is a fundamental requirement for search engine ranking. Google considers HTTPS a ranking factor, and modern browsers label HTTP sites as "Not Secure", which can reduce user trust, impact traffic, and lower conversion rates.
HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) is the secure version of HTTP, using encryption to protect data exchanged between the website and the user. This minimizes the risk of cyberattacks and ensures that sensitive information, such as login credentials or payment details, remains protected.
Implementing HTTPS is no longer just a recommendation—it is essential for maintaining security, improving SEO, and providing users with a safe and trustworthy browsing experience.
If you want to ensure that your website is fully optimized for search engines and performing at its best, contact us for a personalized SEO consultation.
Redirect Management
As mentioned in the crawling section, redirects are essential to ensure that both search engines and users are correctly directed when a page changes URL or is removed. Poor redirect management can hinder indexing, slow down crawling, and result in a loss of SEO value.
To avoid wasting crawl budget and maintain efficient crawling, redirects should be properly managed by minimizing redirect chains and updating internal links to point directly to the correct page version.
- 301 redirects → Should be used for permanent URL changes, transferring the full SEO value from the old page to the new one.
- 302 redirects → Should only be used for temporary changes, as they do not always pass full SEO equity and may lead search engines to keep the old URL indexed.
Site structure and architecture
A well-structured website not only improves user navigation but also helps search engines understand how pages are connected and makes crawling more efficient. A clear site structure reduces the risk of pages being overlooked, increasing their chances of being indexed and appearing in search results.
Hierarchical structure and optimized URLs
Every website should follow a logical hierarchical structure, where pages are interconnected in a way that facilitates both navigation and crawling. The recommended structure is tree-like, with the homepage as the starting point and other pages organized into categories and subcategories.
URLs should be clear and consistent, avoiding unnecessary dynamic parameters (e.g., ?id=123) and following a readable format, such as: www.website.com/category/product.
Internal linking and orphan pages
Internal links play a crucial role in guiding crawlers and effectively distributing SEO value across the site. Each page should be linked to one or more pages within the website to ensure it is easily discoverable and can gain better relevance in search results.
A well-optimized internal linking strategy should:
- Avoid orphan pages → Pages which are not linked from anywhere on the site and may remain undiscovered by search engines.
- Ensure a balanced distribution of links → Reventing some pages from receiving too many internal links while others remain isolated.
- Use relevant anchor text → Providing clear context about the linked page’s content.
Regularly monitoring internal link structures is essential. Tools like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, or Screaming Frog can help identify potential issues, such as broken or redundant links, ensuring that the website remains well-optimized for both users and search engines.
Page speed and Core Web Vitals
Website speed is not just about user experience; it has a direct impact on SEO, affecting how Googlebot crawls and indexes pages. If a site is slow, search engine crawlers may take longer to explore it, limiting the number of pages they analyze and reducing the chances of proper indexing.
Google uses Core Web Vitals to assess a website’s performance, focusing on three key factors: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
How to improve site speed and technical performance?
Improving website performance is not just about following best practices; it requires technical expertise and targeted optimizations. At this stage, technical SEO focuses on advanced improvements that may require developer intervention.
Some of the most effective ways to enhance site speed include:
- Resource optimization → Reduce image file sizes and use modern formats like WebP.
- Caching and content distribution → Enable browser caching and use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to deliver content faster.
- Server-side optimization → Choose a high-performance hosting provider, implement HTTP/2 or HTTP/3, and reduce server response time (TTFB - Time To First Byte).
Mobile-first indexing and mobile optimization
Google has adopted Mobile-First Indexing, meaning that the mobile version of a website is the primary one used for crawling and indexing. This shift reflects user behavior, as the majority of searches now happen on mobile devices.
A well-optimized mobile site requires responsive design, consistency between desktop and mobile content, and fast loading speeds. Additionally, effective management of lazy loading and external resources enhances both accessibility and crawlability.
Hreflang management
The hreflang attribute is essential for websites that have versions of the same page in different languages or regional variations of a language. For example, if a site has an English version for users in the United States and another for the United Kingdom, hreflang helps Google display the correct page to the right audience. It is also valuable for multilingual websites where users can access translated content.
Example of hreflang implementation for New Holland Agriculture websites.
If you're interested in this topic, check out our article on website migration, where we provide a detailed guide on managing and implementing hreflang for international websites.
Canonical: avoiding duplicate content
The rel="canonical" tag is a fundamental element of technical SEO, used to indicate to search engines which version of a page should be considered the primary one when multiple URLs contain similar or duplicate content. Without a properly configured canonical tag, Google may treat secondary versions as separate pages, diluting SEO value and causing indexing issues.
Structured data
Structured data is another key aspect of technical SEO, allowing search engines to better understand page content and enhance its appearance in search results. When implemented correctly, structured data can enable rich snippets, carousels, FAQs, and other features that improve visibility and Click-Through Rate (CTR).
The image shows a Google search result for "Parmigiana di melanzane", where some pages feature rich results thanks to structured data.
One of the most effective tools for implementing structured data is Schema.org, a standardized library that helps search engines interpret webpage content more accurately. By using Schema.org, websites can provide detailed information about their content, enabling Google and other search engines to display more informative and interactive results, as seen in the example of Parmigiana di Melanzane.
The use of Schema.org is not limited to recipes; it can be applied to various content types to enhance search visibility:
- Products and e-commerce → Displaying prices, availability, and reviews.
- Events → Highlighting date, location, and participation details.
- Articles and news → Improving visibility in Google News with author and publication date information.
- FAQ and How-to → Providing structured answers directly in search results.
Reviews → Displaying star ratings to increase CTR.
Conclusions
Technical SEO is the foundation on which a website’s success in search engines is built. Its defining characteristic is measurability—every optimization has a tangible and verifiable impact. If a page is not indexed, if loading speed is slow, or if the site is not mobile-friendly, these issues can be easily identified and analyzed using search engine tools or specialized platforms with precise metrics.
Addressing these aspects requires specific technical expertise, allowing for the optimization of site structure to ensure better crawling, indexing, and overall performance. A technically solid website not only ranks better in search results but also enhances user experience by reducing load times, improving navigation, and ensuring seamless content access.
If you want to ensure that your website is fully optimized for search engines and performing at its best, contact us for a personalized SEO consultation.
