Technical SEO: how do you improve it?

Written by: Ryan Walsh

Date: 30/01/2025

This is a comprehensive guide to technical SEO.

In this comprehensive guide, we will talk about the following:

• Googlebot, crawling and indexation
• XML sitemaps
• What a sitemap is and why your business should have an XML sitemap
• Duplicate content
• How duplicate content marketing can hold your website back
• Structured data
• What is structured data, and what is schema.org

  And much, much more, so stay tuned!

 

Table of contents:

Technical SEO, and we discuss the basics you need to get right to get your business on page one of Google
Why it’s essential to have a good site structure
Googlebot

 

Thin and Duplicate Content

How spammy content marketing and duplicated content marketing can hold your website back

Why load speed is so essential when offering a good user experience

Let’s get the basics covered first. Before we go any further, you might think that technical SEO is like fine-tuning a website, but it’s crucial to get it right. Without Googlebot being able to index your pages, they stand no chance of appearing in Google’s results.

So, technical SEO is crucial in fixing indexation issues and implementing an XML site map.

 

 

What exactly does “technical SEO” mean?

A website is a bit like a maze, a giant maze of pages, blog posts, etc.

Now, it’s Googlebots’ job to crawl and index these pages. Page pages can’t get indexed without Google and the other bots used by various search engines.

If you’re scratching your head, thinking, well, what does indexation even mean?

Well, indexation means reading the page. This is so Google can determine its higher quality.

Googlebot will, therefore, work out the following:
– What is the E-EAT score of that page?
– Is it original work, or is it duplicated?
– How many backlinks lead to that page?
– Well written.
– Who’s the author?
– Are those outbound links?
– Are there internal links to follow?
– What is the on-page SEO like?

So, Googlebot is a bit like an auditor. It reads the page, it reads the ranking factors, and then Google’s algorithm ranks the page in its index accordingly.

 

Why Is Technical SEO Important?

Think of technical SEO as an umbrella term.

So, when improving a business’s technical SEO, ensure that Googlebot can crawl and index the page—that’s just the start.

It’s like handing the keys over to somebody so they can access a house when they want. Allowing a page or the entire company website to be indexed is the same.

It allows the website to get crawled and to get indexed.
Yet there’s so much more work to do. Have you got your espresso machine on standby?

 

Good, let’s begin:

XML sitemaps

A sitemap is like an internal layout of a building. Imagine a vast building. There would typically be a map in the reception to show who’s where, on what floor, and where in the building.

Well, a sitemap is like a building layout for your website. It details the pages and blog posts in a long shopping list so that Googlebot can more easily index them.

Site architecture

So, you would surprised by how many businesses set up and then hand the entire web design process over to the web designers.
Some designers may return with a masterpiece, such as a well-designed website detailing all services.

However, web designers and businesses occasionally poorly design websites, so the SEO agency is fighting with one hand behind their back before you even step inside the ring.

In a nutshell, each leading service or product group needs to have a good page layout and web design in terms of architecture.
So let’s say you are a hotshot lawyer; ensure you have each leading service on its page. This is important. Otherwise, what will the SEO consultants be optimising? Exactly fresh air, so the primary pages must be in place first and foremost.

 

URL structure

Now, here’s the thing: don’t change your URL structure if your website has been live for some time.

This is a massive mistake that so many businesses make, especially when having a redesign.

Here’s the thing: all those pages and blog posts will have incoming links, and the existing URLs may have built up some good domain authority.

Delete and change those links, and you lose the domain authority. So you might think, my website is on page 2 of Google; what on earth does it matter?

Change the URL structure overnight, and you might be on page 10 of Google. So please don’t change the URL structure until you sit down with a bit of cake and coffee and discuss it with an SEO expert first.

So, often, a brand new website redesign is made, the URL structure is not copied over, and bang, the website moves from page 1 to page 10, and many people are left with a look on their faces, like what happened there?

 

Structured data

On a website, say the home page, there might be more than a thousand words.

So, how does Google know what the website is about on Earth?

Is it selling dog collars, or is it selling rockets?

You can inform Googlebot and, therefore, Google’s algorithm what the page is about by adding a form of structured language.

This is not as complicated as it sounds. Some fantastic tools are out there, such as Google’s Data Highlighter, which you can use to highlight text to clarify the products or services the business sells.

For example, you can mark up the NAP information and the product rating, which increases the chance of the companies appearing as featured snippets on Google.

 

Thin content

It’s important not to write thin content; you might think, as a business, we have free hours to write an article.

However, content marketing must have a good and high Google E-EAT score.

If you publish content thin, content marketing could damage your business’s search engine optimisation.

Duplicate content

Duplicate content is a massive no, no.

The number of web designers copying and pasting product descriptions, causing duplication issues, is like fighting with one hand behind your back to improve the business’s organic ranking.

Why is this so?

Well, you will be up against competition on page one of Google with well-written, high-quality content marketing.

It won’t be duplicated.

And what happens to a website with a lot of duplicated content marketing? Well, it can get a significant, fat Google penalty.

This means that the website has not just moved down Google’s ranks; it could sometimes receive an algorithmic penalty, meaning it has been removed entirely from Google. This is often called de-indexing a website and removing it from Google.

 

Site structure

It’s so important to get the site structure right—it’s like getting the foundations of a building right. This allows all the additional link-building, content marketing, and on-page SEO to occur later.

Why is getting the site structure right so important?

It’s a bit like opening a department store.

You set out your products the right way to maximise sales.

You want customers to flow through the store and easily find what they want.
This is the same for your company website. You will want to list all the right products and services, make it easy for shoppers to find the right product, and allow Googlebot to index it.

Then, from a page that has been created, you start to improve it; you can improve the SEO for individual pages in the following ways:

– Build quality backlinks to the page
– Improve the page speed
– Improve the U.X
– Lower the bounce rate
– Improve the on-page SEO
– Add internal links to spread the link juice to other pages
– Add alt text

 

Fixing indexation issues

So, one of the first tasks a good SEO agency should do is spot any pages on Google that the search engine spiders are having trouble crawling.

Generate a page indexing report.

You can set up a Google Search Console account. If you have a WordPress website, you can use free plugins to help you do this.
Then, you can create a page indexing report.

This report allows you to understand if pages can get indexed or not.
A lot of agencies also use Screaming Frog.

Many marketing agencies use an SEO tool called Screaming Frog. It’s very good at crawling and indexing any website of any size and can flag any indexation issues.

 

Use internal links

An internal link is a link that leads from one page on your website to another page.

It can help a customer visit another page they may be interested in reading or view another product they may also want to purchase.

From an SEO perspective, having internal links helps spread link equity.

So, for example, let’s say a powerful link from the BBC is incoming to a blog post. You can then use internal links to carry the link juice to another page.

 

Duplicate content will damage your business’s SEO

Thin and Duplicate Content

We always describe duplicate content as dead weight. It’s like throwing an anchor overboard; things come to a stop very quickly.
This is the same with adding duplicate content marketing; it will damage your business search engine optimisation.

It can cause, in some cases, a Google penalty.

So what’s needed instead?

Well, high-quality content marketing that’s well written, unique and has a high Google E-EAT score.

 

PageSpeed

Make it fast

Your business’s website must load in the blink of an eye.

Your website must be fast. It must be quick. Otherwise, the bounce rate will increase.

How do you make a website faster?

There are a lot of different ways that a business can make their company website faster.

We would use a quality tool like GTmetrix to examine page speed. Then, it might be worth reviewing your website hosting: Is it fast? Could it be faster? Then, a conversation needs to be had with web developers and SEO consultants to see if the business would benefit from switching hosting companies.

However, before you switch hosting companies, make sure that you get advice from a respected SEO company that can advise you on whether you should.

 

What if there are pages that we don’t want indexed?

Every website has a crawl budget, which is the amount of time a search engine, like Google, can spend crawling and indexing it.
However, there will be some pages which you may not want indexed.

For example, there’s no point in having Googlebot daily crawling and indexing the WordPress login page.
This is not a page that your customers will use; it’s just for staff so that they can log in and add blog posts, for example.

So often, there will be pages you don’t want indexed, such as the WordPress login page. Then, you ask your SEO company to add a no-index request to that page. It then stops Googlebot from crawling and indexing that page.

Therefore, you save your crawl budget, and Googlebot could use that crawl budget to, say, instead crawl a brand new blog post that your business does want to be indexed.

 

How do I check for duplicated content marketing?

Having duplicated content marketing can massively hold a business’s SEO back.

You could use CopyScape or, let’s say, Grammarly to check for duplicated text.

Come to us for a free quote.

We are based in Cardiff, South Wales.

Ryan Walsh is the owner of an SEO agency and has over 10 years of experience advising businesses in Wales on how to generate more sales.
Contact us today for a free quote.