What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the work that lets search engines crawl, render and index your site reliably and quickly: robots directives, sitemaps, status codes, redirects, page speed, mobile rendering, HTTPS and response headers. It does not include content or backlinks.

How often should I run a technical audit?

Monthly for a stable site, and after every template change, platform upgrade or migration. Most technical regressions arrive with a deployment rather than appearing on their own.

Do I need an XML sitemap if my site is small?

It still helps. A sitemap gives crawlers a definitive list of canonical URLs and speeds up discovery of new pages, which matters most when a site has few external links pointing at it.

Is page speed a ranking factor?

Yes, through the page experience signals, but it is a tiebreaker rather than a primary factor. Speed matters most for conversion: slow mobile pages lose visitors before the content loads.

What status code should I use for a moved page?

A 301 for permanent moves, pointing directly at the final URL. Use 302 only for genuinely temporary changes, and avoid chaining several redirects together.

Technical SEO: get crawled, indexed and fast

Last reviewed and updated September 2, 2026

Technical SEO decides whether your content ever gets a chance to rank. This guide runs the checks in dependency order — crawlability, indexation, redirects, speed, mobile and HTTPS — then sets up monitoring so regressions do not go unnoticed.

Every stage links to the free tool that performs the check, and to the live dashboard audit when you want a single score for a URL.

1Make sure crawlers can reach every page

Start with what the bot sees, not what your browser renders. A blocked directory in robots.txt, a nav built entirely in client-side JavaScript, or a login wall will hide pages that look fine to you.

Publish an XML sitemap listing only canonical, indexable, 200-status URLs, and reference it from robots.txt so every crawler finds it without configuration.

Tools for this check

Robots.txt GeneratorCompose crawl directives per user-agent, add sitemap references and download a valid robots.txt.Live

XML Sitemap GeneratorTurn a pasted list of URLs into a valid sitemap.xml with changefreq, priority and lastmod.Live

Tools marked Live open a working workspace that runs entirely in your browser — start with Robots.txt Generator and XML Sitemap Generator.

Go deeper

Submit a website to Bing Webmaster Tools — Verify ownership and hand over your sitemap.

2Confirm the pages are actually indexed

Crawled is not indexed. A page can be fetched and then dropped because it duplicates another URL, carries a stray noindex, or offers too little unique value.

Check your important URLs individually, and keep a short list of pages that should never be indexed — internal search results, thin tag archives, staging copies.

Tools for this check

These checks need a data provider connected. For a live measurement right now, run the SEO dashboard audit against the same URL.

3Fix redirects, chains and broken links

Every redirect leaks a little signal and adds latency; chains multiply both. Point old URLs directly at their final destination with a single 301, and never redirect everything to the homepage.

Broken internal links waste crawl budget and frustrate readers. Sweep them after any migration or content pruning.

Tools for this check

These checks need a data provider connected. For a live measurement right now, run the SEO dashboard audit against the same URL.

4Speed and Core Web Vitals

Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift are measured on real visits, so lab scores are only a proxy. Still, the usual culprits are consistent: oversized images, blocking third-party scripts and fonts that reflow the page.

Fix the heaviest asset first. On most sites that is a single hero image, and compressing it moves the score more than any amount of code tuning.

Tools for this check

Image CompressorRe-encode JPG, PNG or WebP files at a quality you choose and compare before/after file size.Live

HTML MinifierCollapse whitespace and comments from markup while keeping pre and textarea content intact.Live

CSS MinifierStrip comments and redundant whitespace from stylesheets.Live

Tools marked Live open a working workspace that runs entirely in your browser — start with Image Compressor and HTML Minifier.

Go deeper

Image optimisation for page speed — The compression and sizing order that actually moves LCP.

5Mobile rendering, HTTPS and headers

Google indexes the mobile rendering of your site. If content, headings or links are hidden on small screens, treat them as missing entirely.

A valid certificate covering every hostname, HTTP redirecting to HTTPS once, and sane cache and security headers round out the hygiene list.

Tools for this check

These checks need a data provider connected. For a live measurement right now, run the SEO dashboard audit against the same URL.

6Monitor so regressions surface early

Technical SEO decays with every deployment. Re-run the same checks on a schedule and after each release, and keep the results so you can see a trend rather than a single number.

Uptime and DNS belong in the same routine: a site that is unreachable when the crawler visits loses rankings without any content changing.

Tools for this check

These checks need a data provider connected. For a live measurement right now, run the SEO dashboard audit against the same URL.

Go deeper

SEO dashboard — Audit a URL live, track keyword positions and verify backlinks.
SEO checklist — The pre-publish version of these checks.

Related tools

The technical toolkit, in the order a first audit usually needs them.

XML Sitemap GeneratorTurn a pasted list of URLs into a valid sitemap.xml with changefreq, priority and lastmod.Live

Frequently asked questions

From the blog

New SEO trend analysis and tool reviews are published every month.

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Keep going

SEO guideHow the whole discipline fits together.On-page SEO guideTitles, headings, markup and internal links.SEO dashboardLive page score, rank checks and backlink verification.Free SEO toolsThe toolbox, organised by the job you need done.