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You may have already been doing a lot of keyword research, writing amazing content, and building backlinks. However, great content still needs to be crawled and indexed by search engines. In this guide, we’re going to discuss technical SEO, what factors contribute to it, how to actually audit your website, and how to fix any issues that you find.
What Is Technical SEO and How Does It Work?
Technical SEO refers to the work done to improve a website’s infrastructure to ensure that search engines can easily crawl, parse, index, and serve webpages. It does not primarily involve changes to a webpage’s content. For instance, while Google may be able to find your homepage, it may have trouble finding your product page because internal links to it might be missing.
- SEO Area
- Main Focus
- Example
- Technical SEO
- Website accessibility/infrastructure
- Fixing crawl errors
- On-page SEO
- Content and page relevance
- Optimizing titles and headings
- Off-page SEO
- External authority
- Earning relevant backlinks
Additionally, technical SEO differs from other types of SEO:
Furthermore, an on-page SEO guide is extremely helpful for understanding what optimizations work together with technical SEO. Technical SEO complements great content and valuable backlinks by ensuring that search engines can actually see and understand your website.
Why Is Technical SEO Important for Google Rankings?
Technical SEO is important to Google (and therefore your website’s rankings) because it enables their systems to crawl and index webpages. After all, a technically unsound website will struggle to show up in search results, no matter how good its content is. For instance, you might have a fantastic “How to Make Lasagna” guide, but if it accidentally has a noindex tag, Google won’t be able to see it at all.
Besides crawlability and indexability, technical SEO also involves considerations for performance, mobile-friendliness, security, and website architecture. Additionally, Google also announced that their systems can render JavaScript, which means that technically sound websites utilizing JavaScript will continue to rank well.
As a rule of thumb, mobile and desktop traffic are almost split worldwide: 50.13% of web usage is mobile vs 49.87% for desktop in August 2026.
What Are the Main Components of Technical SEO?
The main components of technical SEO include:
• Crawling
• Indexing
• Sitemaps
• Robots.txt
• Canonicalization
• Redirects
• HTTPS
• Architecture
• Internal linking
• Structured data
• JavaScript SEO
• Mobile usability
• Core Web Vitals
How Do You Improve Website Crawling and Indexability?
Crawlability refers to a website’s ability to be crawled by search engine bots, and indexability refers to a page’s ability to be indexed by search engines. For instance, a page might be crawlable but not indexable if it has a noindex meta tag. Additionally, pages often have a 200 OK status, but they might not appear in search results if they are blocked by robots.txt.
First, ensure that the URLs of your important pages are actually crawlable and indexable using Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool.
How Do XML Sitemaps and Robots.txt Affect Technical SEO?
XML sitemaps play an important role in technical SEO by acting as a guide for search engines to discover your content; however, robots.txt files provide directives for search engines about which URLs should not be crawled. The two documents serve different, but important, purposes and should not be conflated.
For instance, if your sitemap contained /services/seo/, your robots.txt file should NOT attempt to block that URL.
A Disallow rule in robots.txt tells compliant crawlers not to crawl a particular URL or set of URLs. However, simply Disallowing a URL in robots.txt does not necessarily prevent it from appearing in search results.
What Are Canonical Tags and Why Are They Important for SEO?
A canonical tag is used to tell search engines which URL to associate with a particular piece of content. When URLs have similar or identical content, a canonical tag prevents them from being treated as separate entities by search engines.
Although canonical tags are extremely useful, keep in mind that they are simply suggestions. Google will always use their own discretion when determining which URL to treat as the canonical, or preferred URL.
How Do Core Web Vitals Affect Technical SEO?
Core web vitals are important aspects of a website’s real-world performance that Google deems important enough to be factored into their algorithm. Core Web Vitals consist of Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift. The former two deal with performance, while the latter deals with visual stability.
A good example would be a page that moves content around while a user is attempting to click on a button. This is a poor experience, and will result in a poor Core Web Vital score even if the text on the page itself is great.
HTTPS is now the new standard across the web, and the 2025 HTTP Archive Web Almanac found that HTTPS was used on 91.7% of desktop pages and 91.5% of mobile pages in their data sample.
Why Do Site Architecture and Internal Linking Matter?
Website architecture refers to the way in which a website’s pages are organized. A good architecture is intuitive and helps both search engines and users find important pages. For instance, an e-commerce website’s architecture may resemble something like Home > Category > Subcategory > Product, and should utilize helpful internal links.
Similarly, internal links are critical in helping search engines discover new pages. Pages that do not have any internal links pointing to them are essentially useless to a search engine crawler.
How Do You Perform a Technical SEO Audit?
A technical SEO audit entails examining a website’s architecture, crawlability, indexability, performance, security, URLs, and technical SEO signals. The purpose of a technical SEO audit is to discover and prioritize any issues that could hinder a website’s ability to gain exposure in search results.
Step 1: Crawl the Website
This will allow you to spot technical SEO issues across all URLs in your website. Screaming Frog is a good crawler that can detect broken links, redirects, duplicate titles, canonical issues, and status code errors.
Step 2: Check Indexing and Search Console
Google Search Console is an invaluable resource that will help you understand how Google views your website. You can use Google Search Console to diagnose indexing issues and to see if Google can actually see important URLs. You can use the Individual URL Inspection function to take a closer look at any URLs that Google Search Console has flagged as problematic.
Step 3: Review Robots.txt and XML Sitemap
Your website’s robots.txt file and XML Sitemap play an important role in technical SEO. Make sure that important pages are not blocked by robots.txt. Make sure that your sitemap URLs are valid, canonical, indexable, and crawlable.
Step 4: Check HTTP Status Codes
Status codes are crucial for technical SEO as they tell crawlers what to do with a given URL. For instance, the 200 OK status code means that a request was successful. 3xx status codes refer to redirects, 4xx status codes refer to client errors, and 5xx status codes refer to server errors.
When a redirect is necessary, it is always better to redirect a URL to its relevant destination instead of sending all URLs to the homepage. For instance, if you no longer sell black t-shirts, make sure to redirect /tshirts/black/ to /tshirts/white/, NOT to /.
Step 5: Review Canonicals and Redirects
Redirects and canonical tags should always point to the URLs that you want search engines and users to see. Chains, loops, and conflicting redirects and canonicals should be avoided.
Step 6: Test Performance and Mobile Usability
Performance testing will tell you if there are any underlying technical SEO issues affecting a website’s speed, and by extension, its ability to rank in search results. PageSpeed Insights is a good tool for testing performance as it provides both lab and field data for individual URLs.
Step 7: Prioritize the Problems
Technical SEO issues should be prioritized based on search impact, business importance, and difficulty of implementation. You should not simply try to address every technical SEO issue at once. Instead, focus on issues that will have the biggest impact.
One good way of prioritizing technical SEO issues is by using this framework:
Rank PriorityReason
CriticalImportant pages are blocked, deindexed, or showing errors.
HighBroken internal linking, incorrect redirects, or canonical issues.
MediumPerformance and structural issues such as page speed or improper pagination.
LowMinor issues or warnings that do not greatly impact crawling or indexing.
What Are the Most Common Technical SEO Issues?
The most common issues usually involve broken links, redirect chains, accidental noindex directives, duplicate URLs, blocked resources, incorrect canonical tags, improper sitemap configuration, poor page speed, and orphan pages.
How Can You Fix Common Technical Problems?
It goes without saying that broken links should be fixed, redirected, or removed. For example, an internal link to /old-service/ should either be replaced with an internal link to a new, relevant service, or the old service’s URL should be redirected to the new service’s URL instead of simply showing a 404 error.
Redirect chains should be cut whenever possible. A much better option would be to redirect /old-redirect/ to /new-url/ directly instead of forcing users and crawlers to take a long redirect chain.
For duplicate URLs, it is a matter of consolidating content. Google recommends using technical SEO signals to determine a preferred URL. As such, it is important to redirect, remove, or disavow unwanted URLs, update robots.txt or sitemaps, and use canonical tags to declare a preferred URL.
Accidental noindex directives should be removed if you want a page to appear in search results. Pages often become noindexed accidentally during website redesigns, migrations, and CMS updates.
Pages that are completely orphaned should be linked to from other accessible pages. For example, a link to an important article about SEO should be added to other relevant articles about SEO.
Which Tools Are Best for a Technical SEO Audit?
The best technical SEO tool will depend on your individual needs. If you need Google-focused data, Google Search Console will be invaluable. If you need performance data, Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a good resource. Screaming Frog is great for crawling, and Semrush, Ahrefs, and Google’s Rich Results Test are good for structured data validation. Chrome DevTools are great for inspecting a page’s resources.
Google also recommends that you validate your structured data using their Structured Data Testing Tool and that you review your most important pages with URL Inspection before requesting a recrawl.
What Should You Do After a Technical SEO Audit?
After a technical SEO audit, it is a matter of prioritizing issues and addressing them systematically before re-auditing to see if the changes had a noticeable effect. A technical SEO audit should always be followed by concrete action: otherwise, it is just an academic exercise. First, it is important to document all of the website’s technical SEO issues. Next, prioritize critical indexing and crawling issues and address them first.
For example, fixing 100 pages that were noindexed should be much higher priority than fixing a few HTML warnings. Finally, it is important to remember that technical SEO should become a recurring task. Websites are constantly updated by developers, SEOs, marketers, and content creators. Additionally, website architecture, content, URL structure, plugins, and code are also changed frequently.
For large-scale websites, an ongoing technical SEO maintenance plan should be established. If a major redirect campaign is launched or a website migration takes place, redirects should be monitored at all times, and Google recommends keeping redirects up for as long as possible (ideally at least one year).
Conclusion
Technical SEO sets the foundation for a website’s ability to be crawled, indexed, and understood by search engines. Crawling, indexing, sitemaps, robots.txt, canonical URLs, redirects, website architecture, structured data, performance, and mobile usability are all crucial factors that should be taken into consideration. In the end, technical SEO is not a one-time task: websites, content, URLs, code, and plugins are always being updated. If your website has great content, but it is not showing up in search results due to technical issues, start by performing a technical SEO audit and prioritize the most critical issues.
Frequently Asked Questions About Technical SEO
1. What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the process of improving a website’s technical foundation so search engines can crawl, understand, and index its important pages effectively.
2. Why is technical SEO important for a website?
Technical SEO helps search engines access and process your website correctly. It can also improve factors such as crawlability, indexability, site performance, mobile usability, and overall search visibility.
3. What are the main technical SEO factors?
The main technical SEO factors include crawlability, indexability, XML sitemaps, robots.txt, canonical tags, redirects, HTTPS, site architecture, internal linking, structured data, JavaScript SEO, mobile SEO, and Core Web Vitals.
4. How often should I perform a technical SEO audit?
A technical SEO audit should be performed regularly, such as every few months, and after major website changes, migrations, redesigns, or significant URL and code changes.
5. Which tools can I use for a technical SEO audit?
Useful technical SEO tools include Google Search Console, Google PageSpeed Insights, Screaming Frog, Semrush, Ahrefs, Rich Results Test, and Chrome DevTools. Each tool helps identify different technical issues.
