If you have been doing our own SEO, you must have come across the term “Technical Seo”. So what is Technical SEO? According to SEMRush, “Technical SEO is about improving your website to make it easier for search engines to find, understand, and store your content.”
In this blog we are going to go through what technical SEO is and some of its most common practices.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical seo is a set of technical actions that make your website more understandable for the search engines. If done right, technical SEO gives your website an edge to be crawled and indexed. By now you must have already guessed how important it is.
This clearly means that without proper technical SEO your website will have little to no chance of being discovered and served in the SEPR. No matter what quality of content and backlinks you have, without technical SEO, it is simply not possible to rank well.
The Core Pillars of Technical SEO
There are 5 main pillars when it comes to technical SEO and each one is just as important as the other one. These are:
- Website Speed and Performance Optimization
- Mobile-Friendliness and Responsive Design
- Site Architecture and URL Structure
- Site Security
- Core Web Vitals
- Structured Data and Schema Markup
- Duplicate Content and Canonicalization
Now let’s go through each one.
Website Speed and Performance Optimization
Website performance optimization is a critical aspect of technical SEO, as it directly impacts user experience and search engine rankings. Page load speed plays a pivotal role in determining how well your site performs, with studies showing that users tend to abandon websites that take longer than three seconds to load. Slow-loading sites not only frustrate visitors but also receive lower rankings from search engines like Google, which considers speed a key ranking factor, especially for mobile searches. Tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom can help measure your site’s current speed and identify areas for improvement. These platforms provide actionable recommendations to address issues like unoptimized images, excessive JavaScript, or slow server response times, ensuring your website meets modern performance standards.
Optimizing images and leveraging caching techniques are two effective ways to enhance your site’s speed. Large, uncompressed images can significantly slow down page load times, so it’s essential to compress them using tools like TinyPNG or Squoosh and adopt modern formats like WebP for better efficiency. Implementing lazy loading ensures images only load when they appear in the user’s viewport, reducing initial load times. Additionally, browser caching stores static files like CSS and JavaScript on a user’s device, allowing repeat visitors to load your site faster. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) further improve performance by distributing your site’s content across multiple servers worldwide, ensuring quicker delivery regardless of the user’s location. Minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML by removing unnecessary characters also helps reduce file sizes and speeds up loading times.
Reducing server response time, measured as Time to First Byte (TTFB), is another crucial factor in website performance optimization. A high TTFB can delay page rendering, negatively affecting both user experience and SEO. To minimize this, choose a reliable hosting provider with fast servers, and consider upgrading to VPS or dedicated hosting if needed. Using a fast DNS provider like Cloudflare or enabling Gzip compression can further reduce latency and improve data transfer speeds.
Mobile-Friendliness and Responsive Design
In 2025, mobile-friendliness is no longer just a recommendation—it’s a necessity. With Google’s mobile-first indexing, the search engine primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing. This means that if your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you risk losing visibility in search results. A mobile-friendly site ensures that users on smartphones and tablets have a seamless experience, with content that’s easy to read, navigate, and interact with. Responsive design plays a crucial role here, as it allows your site to adapt to different screen sizes and orientations without compromising functionality or aesthetics.
Beyond aesthetics, mobile-friendliness also impacts user engagement and conversion rates. A site that loads quickly, has readable text without zooming, and features easily clickable buttons provides a better user experience, reducing bounce rates and encouraging visitors to stay longer. Mobile users are often on the go, so they expect fast, intuitive interactions. If your site fails to meet these expectations, you risk losing potential customers. Additionally, Google considers mobile usability as a ranking factor, so a poorly optimized site can harm your SEO performance. Tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can help you evaluate how well your site performs on mobile devices and identify areas for improvement, such as font sizes, touch elements, or viewport configurations.
Site Architecture and URL Structure
Site architecture and URL structure are foundational elements of technical SEO that directly influence how search engines crawl and index your website, as well as how users navigate it. A well-organized site structure ensures that both search engine bots and visitors can easily find and access your content. In 2025, with the increasing complexity of websites and the growing importance of user experience, having a logical and scalable architecture is more critical than ever. Your site’s hierarchy should be designed to distribute link equity effectively, ensuring that important pages receive adequate authority.
This can be achieved by creating a clear navigation path, using breadcrumb menus, and implementing internal linking strategies that guide users and search engines to key sections of your site. A flat structure, where most pages are accessible within a few clicks from the homepage, is ideal for improving crawlability and reducing the chances of orphaned pages that search engines might overlook.
URL structure is another crucial aspect of site architecture that impacts both SEO and usability. Clean, descriptive URLs not only help search engines understand the content of a page but also make it easier for users to remember and share links. For example, a URL like www.example.com/category/product-name is far more informative and user-friendly than a string of random characters or parameters. Including relevant keywords in your URLs can also provide a slight SEO boost, as it signals to search engines what the page is about.
Site Security
Security and HTTPS have become non-negotiable components of technical SEO in 2025, as they directly impact both user trust and search engine rankings. HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) is the secure version of HTTP, where communication between a user’s browser and your website is encrypted using SSL/TLS protocols. This encryption ensures that sensitive data, such as login credentials, payment information, or personal details, is protected from hackers and third-party interference. In an era where online privacy and security are top priorities for users, having an HTTPS-enabled website not only builds trust but also signals to search engines that your site is safe and reliable.
Search engines like Google have long prioritized HTTPS as a ranking factor, and its importance continues to grow. Websites without HTTPS are often flagged as “Not Secure” in browsers, which can deter visitors and increase bounce rates. Additionally, insecure websites may be penalized in search rankings, making it harder for them to compete against HTTPS-enabled competitors.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are a set of specific metrics introduced by Google to measure and evaluate the user experience on a website. These metrics focus on three key aspects of web performance: loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. They are part of Google’s broader initiative to prioritize user-centric factors in determining search rankings, making them a critical component of technical SEO in 2025. Each Core Web Vital provides insight into how real users perceive the performance of a webpage, ensuring that websites are not only fast but also functional and visually stable.
The first Core Web Vital is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). It measures how quickly the main content of a page—such as an image, video, or block of text—loads and becomes visible to users. A good LCP score is 2.5 seconds or less, as this ensures that users can access the most important content without delay.
The second metric is First Input Delay (FID) and it evaluates a page’s interactivity by measuring the time it takes for a user to interact with the site—for example, clicking a button or selecting a menu—and receiving a response. An FID score of 100 milliseconds or less is considered optimal, as it ensures the site feels responsive and engaging.
The third metric is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) , which assesses visual stability by quantifying unexpected layout shifts during the page load process. A CLS score of 0.1 or lower indicates that elements on the page, such as buttons or images, remain stable and don’t move unexpectedly, preventing user frustration.
Tools for Monitoring Core Web Vitals
To effectively monitor and improve Core Web Vitals, leverage tools like Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report, Lighthouse, or the CrUX Dashboard. These platforms provide insights into real-world user experiences on your site and highlight areas for improvement. For instance, if your LCP score is poor, focus on optimizing server response times or compressing large images.
Structured Data and Schema Markup
Structured data, often implemented using schema markup, is a powerful tool in technical SEO. It helps search engines better understand the content on your website and can enhance your visibility in search engine results through rich snippets. Common types of schema include FAQ, Product, Review, and Article markup. By using JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data), you can easily add structured data to your site. Tools like Google’s Rich Results Test can help you validate your schema markup and ensure it’s correctly implemented.
Duplicate Content and Canonicalization
Duplicate content can significantly dilute your SEO efforts by confusing search engines about which version of a page to rank. This issue often arises in scenarios such as similar product descriptions, paginated pages, syndicated content, or even URL variations (e.g., www.example.com vs. example.com). When search engines encounter multiple versions of the same content, they may struggle to determine which one is the most relevant for a given query. This not only splits ranking signals like backlinks and page authority but can also lead to penalties if the duplication appears manipulative.
To address this, canonical tags play a critical role in consolidating ranking signals by specifying the preferred version of a page. A canonical tag is a snippet of HTML code added to the <head> section of duplicate pages, pointing to the “master” or primary version of the content.
In addition to using canonical tags, there are several strategies to manage duplicate content effectively:
- 301 Redirects: If certain pages are outdated or no longer needed, use 301 redirects to permanently forward users and search engines to the preferred version of the page.
- Rewriting Content: For pages with slight variations, consider rewriting the content to make it unique while still serving the same purpose.
- Parameter Handling: Use tools like Google Search Console to specify how search engines should handle URL parameters. For example, you can indicate that certain parameters (like session IDs or sorting filters) should be ignored during crawling.
Regularly auditing your site for duplicate content is essential to maintaining a strong SEO foundation. Tools like Screaming Frog , Siteliner , or Copyscape can help identify instances of duplication, allowing you to take corrective action. By addressing duplicate content issues and ensuring proper canonicalization, you not only improve your site’s crawl efficiency but also enhance its ability to rank higher in search engine results.
What is an XML Site Map?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages of your website in a structured format, making it easier for search engines to discover and index your content. Think of it as a roadmap for search engine crawlers, guiding them to the most critical sections of your site. Unlike HTML sitemaps, which are designed for human visitors, XML sitemaps are specifically created for search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. They include metadata about each URL, such as when the page was last updated, how often it changes, and its priority relative to other pages on your site.
The primary purpose of an XML sitemap is to ensure that search engines can find and index all your important pages, especially if your site has a large number of pages, complex navigation, or new content that might not be easily discovered through internal linking.
Why is Sitemap Important?
A sitemap is important because it acts as a bridge between your website and search engines, ensuring that all your valuable content is discovered, crawled, and indexed efficiently. Without a sitemap, search engine bots may miss key pages, especially if your site has complex structures that aren’t easily accessible from the main navigation. This can lead to incomplete indexing, which ultimately hurts your visibility in search engine results. By providing a clear roadmap of your site’s structure, a sitemap ensuresure, poor internal linking, or pag that even deep or less frequently updated pages are included in search engine databases, improving your chances of ranking for relevant queries.
Sitemaps also play a critical role in helping search engines understand the priority and freshness of your content. For instance, an XML sitemap can include metadata such as when a page was last updated, how often it changes, and its relative importance compared to other pages on your site. This information helps search engines allocate their crawl budget more effectively, focusing on pages that are new, frequently updated, or deemed more important.
Conclusion
In conclusion, technical SEO is indispensable for achieving success in 2025. It ensures that your website is not only discoverable by search engines but also provides a seamless experience for users. By focusing on key areas like website speed, mobile-friendliness, site architecture, and security, you create a strong foundation for your SEO strategy. Don’t forget to regularly audit your site using tools like Google Search Console and GTmetrix to identify and address potential issues. With proper technical SEO, your website will be well-positioned to rank higher, engage users, and drive long-term growth.
