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Chapter 5: Technical SEO

Improve your site's performance with technical SEO. Learn how to optimize site structure, Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, sitemaps, canonical tags, and more to ensure your content is discoverable and competitive in search.

Chapter 5: Technical SEO
Photo by Merakist / Unsplash

Technical SEO focuses on how your website is built and delivered to search engines. It ensures your site is crawlable, indexable, fast, mobile-friendly, and error-free. Even great content won’t rank well without solid technical foundations.

🏗️ Site Architecture and Crawlability

  • Use a clear hierarchy: Homepage → Categories → Posts
  • Limit the number of clicks from homepage to content (ideally under 3)
  • Use breadcrumbs to improve navigation
  • Maintain a logical and consistent URL structure

Tip: Use internal linking to support important pages.

🗺️ Sitemaps and Robots.txt

  • XML Sitemap: A roadmap of your site for search engines. Submit it in Google Search Console.
  • robots.txt: Controls which parts of your site are crawlable. Avoid accidentally blocking important pages.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /

⚡ Core Web Vitals and Site Speed

Google uses Core Web Vitals as ranking signals. These include:

  • LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Page load time
  • FID (First Input Delay): Time to interact
  • CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Visual stability

Improve speed by:

  • Compressing images
  • Enabling lazy loading
  • Using a CDN
  • Minimizing JavaScript/CSS

Test with PageSpeed Insights.

📱 Mobile-First Indexing

Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking.

Make sure:

  • Your design is responsive
  • Fonts are readable on small screens
  • Buttons and links are easily tappable
  • Content is consistent between desktop and mobile

Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

🔄 Canonical Tags and Duplicate Content

If your site has similar or duplicate pages, use the canonical tag to tell Google which version to prioritize.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/primary-page/" />

Prevents dilution of ranking signals and indexing confusion.

🌍 hreflang for Multilingual Sites

Use hreflang tags if your site serves multiple languages or regions. This helps Google show the correct version based on a user’s language and location.

Example:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ca" href="https://example.com/en-ca/" />

🧼 Other Technical Best Practices

  • Use HTTPS (SSL) — a must for security and rankings
  • Fix broken links and 404 errors
  • Avoid excessive redirect chains
  • Set preferred domain (with or without www)

Summary

Technical SEO is about optimizing your site behind the scenes so search engines can crawl and index it effectively. A well-structured, fast, and mobile-friendly website gives your content the best chance to rank and convert.