Technical SEO- What is it? How can we improve it?

A definitive guide to technical SEO

Author: Ryan Walsh
Date: 14/03/2025

In this guide, we will discuss the following:

• What is Googlebot?
• Why does Google use it to crawl and index the web?
• What is an XML sitemap?
• Why you should avoid duplication problems (Google Penguin)
• Why we recommend using structured data (Schema mark-up)
• Page Speed
• Mobile usability

 

Let’s cover the basics first:

First things first, what exactly is technical SEO?

Countless marketing companies write a vast number of long articles about how to build backlinks and how to write content marketing. However, an area that gets much less talked about is “technical SEO” because it can get “technical” and, therefore, can get somewhat confusing.

However, it’s not that complex; technical SEO is just about ensuring your website can be read by Googlebot when crawling and indexing a website. It’s also about improving the U.X (user experience), such as page speed. So make sure the website is supersonic.

There are other factors, such as website architecture, which is a sophisticated way of saying how the pages are all connected, and the design of main menus works. Are they simple to use? Have you got flat architecture?

 

Indexation is crucial (Googlebot)

One of the most crucial parts of technical SEO is making sure Googlebot can crawl and index the page and the entire website.
Without this, Googlebot, or the other search engine bots used by Bing, cannot read the page.

If the page can’t crawled, it can’t be indexed; it won’t appear on search engines such as Bing or Google.

Therefore, if you want that page or, let’s say, that post to appear, it must be indexed.

A good agency has to consider the website’s design in terms of whether the JavaScript gets indexed, as Javascript can sometimes cause indexation issues.

Is there an XML sitemap that helps index all the pages or posts?

Have you, for example, set a “no-index” request for pages you don’t want indexed? So that you can preserve some of your crawl budget that can be used for the blog posts and pages you want Googlebot to index.

Keeping your crawl budget for those pages you want to be indexed is essential. If you waste your business’s crawl budget, this could mean that some of the pages you want to be indexed don’t appear in the SERP’s. The reason is that Googlebot may have been busy crawling and indexing the CMS login screen, which wastes your business’s crawl budget, as you wouldn’t want this to appear in the SERPs.

What’s the website’s site architecture like? Has each leading service got its page?

Are there “content thin” pages that perhaps a copywriter could work to enhance and improve so that Google will index them?
If there are thin content pages, these most likely won’t get indexed. After the Google E-EAT update and the Google Helpful Content Update, it is more important than ever to have well-written pages. Therefore, if you have content thin pages, don’t delete them, but improve them.

Add more text and an FAQ to improve the page. Then head on over to Google Search Console, after the improvements have been made to the page, and ask for the page

 

What about 404 pages? How can these be minimised?

If you have a lot of 404 pages, then this should be fixed. Use a quality tool such as Screaming Frog.

Screaming Frog can crawl your entire website, it may take a few minutes, then report

301 redirects? Are these implemented correctly?

There is so much to consider and think about in improving a business’s technical SEO, that’s for sure. However, the starting point is to ensure the pages can be crawled and indexed.

 

What’s the website’s design like?

A good agency will ask questions such as, What is the site structure like? Has the navigation been well designed on mobile and the desktop version of the website?

How are the pages on your website organised? Is the main menu layout logical?

What is a “flat site structure”?

Many agencies would agree that you can use your crawl budget much better if you have a well-designed, flat page structure.
A flat structure makes it easier for Google and the other search engines to crawl the website.

Orphan pages

Orphan pages are simply pages, or indeed blog posts, with no internal links pointing towards those pages. This can cause various SEO issues, such as the pages not getting indexed and link juice not spreading to those pages.
The site structure should be a piece of cake if you have a relatively small business. For example, a solicitor’s website will have a homepage, about us, contact us, and seven service pages. Therefore, not too much thought should go into the layout; make sure that Googlebot can index the pages you want to be indexed.

 

Consistent URL structure

Breadcrumb navigation improves the U.X.

Breadcrumb navigation is a good idea, whether for a small business or a large PLC business. It helps shoppers to go back to a previous page, helping them to choose the page they want to be on.

This could improve dwell times because if shoppers can find the products or services they want to read about with less effort, they will likely stay on the website longer.

If you make it hard for them to select a product or a service they want, the bounce rate will most likely shoot up, which means you’re sending a clear signal to Google’s algorithms that a poor U.X is being offered.

So, you should do everything you can to improve the U.X. One of the main ways of improving the user experience of a page or website is to improve the menu design and add breadcrumbs.

 

Connect a Google Search Console account.

We recommend that your business set up a Google Search Console account and connect this to your company website. If you have a WordPress website, there are actually free WP plugins that help you step-by-step how to do that. It’s a piece of cake to do.

Then you will have valuable information, such as where your website ranks for keywords and backlinks, and you can also generate a “page indexing report”.

Your company’s Google Search Console account can generate a page indexing report. When this report is generated, you will be able to know which pages can’t get indexed.

 

Add an XML sitemap

So, you know when you go to the supermarket, without a shopping list, you often forget what you need to buy, right?

That’s why having a list’s always a good idea; this is the same with your company website. A list can list all the pages and posts you want indexed by Googlebot. This list is called an XML sitemap.

Therefore, Google uses XML sitemaps to find all the URLs on that website, such as the blog posts and main pages.
Add your site map to the Google Search Console.

You can add a sitemap to Google Search Console. Plus, once you have written a blog post, such as what you are reading here, to speed up indexing, you can submit the URL to Google Search Console and ask them to add the URL to a queue, in which Googlebot will crawl and index the page.

This can help speed up indexation.

Rectify any thin and duplication issues.

It’s essential to fix and rectify any duplication issues. Whether the duplication issues are internal or from copying external pages, they need to be fixed. Duplication issues can also sometimes lead to Google manual actions, as well as Google algorithmic penalties; this is why it’s so important they are fixed.

A word on duplication issues:

What can sometimes happen is, we have seen at this agency, businesses copy and paste, say, a chunk of text which describes the product.

This is often from a manufacturer’s website, yet this can mean that if you don’t offer an original product description or a review of the product, you’ve just copied it from elsewhere, which will damage your SEO.

On your website, you will want original yet high-quality content marketing.

How fast your company website is is essential.

Pagespeed, that’s how fast your company website is, can directly affect where your business is ranked.

For example, the businesses in the top 3 SERP positions on Google typically have lightning-fast websites.

Yet, this is just one part of the SEO process.

Improving load speeds

Talk to your SEO company about minifying CSS; you may also want to add lazy loading.

Lazy loading is perfect if you have a lot of products on one page or are writing super-long blog posts like this!

Also, your business may benefit from cache and CDNs.

Lighthouse and mobile usability

Many SEO businesses use Lighthouse; it’s an excellent tool and can highlight any mobile usability issues. What the tool can also provide is tips on how to improve the mobile design, to improve the U.X

So, for example, is the text too small and difficult to read? Also, the buttons, let’s say in the down menu, maybe too close together. Therefore, fixing these problems can help improve the design.

 

Adding internal links

Another way that a business can improve its technical SEO is to add internal links. Adding internal links the right way, that is, to help a shopper find different products and helpful blog posts more easily, can help the business in the following ways:

– Help to sometimes significantly improve the dwell time
– It could sometimes help to reduce bounce rates
– Helps spread link equity from good backlinks to other pages

 

Link equity and internal links

So, let’s say you get a compelling and top-quality link, and let’s say that the backlink comes from Nike, and you run a chain of gyms.
A good agency will then use the incoming link to, say, a blog post and make sure that the link equity spreads to other main pages. You can do this by adding internal links from the page that has received the good-quality link to other internal pages.

SEO agencies state that by using internal links with well-written anchor text, you can help to get link equity to flow through to other linked pages. This means that not just one page but multiple pages could improve their organic SEO.

 

How we can help:

Based in Cardiff, South Wales, this agency can help get your company onto page one of Google. For local SEO, this can take around 6 months, depending on the competition your business faces.

For a quote, why not contact our team today?