Technical SEO

The technical side of SEO may seem challenging at first, but this step by step guide helps you master it.

What is technical SEO?

SEO consists of three pillars:

Technical: can search engines crawl your site and make sense of it?
Relevance: does the page cover the search intent of users? Does it answer people's questions?
Authority: is a site trustworthy, and does it have enough links pointing to it?

This section is about technical SEO, and covers the following topics:

When to Use Meta Robots NoIndex Tags

Even though Google’s bots constantly crawl the internet, that doesn’t mean they have to crawl and index every page on your website.
XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps are a powerful tool in your SEO toolbox. This article explains everything you need to know about sitemaps
Robots.txt file

Use a robots.txt file to instruct search engine crawlers which pages to crawl, and which to ignore. A small mistake in a robots.txt file can have big effects.
Structured Data

Structured Data can greatly improve your visibility and click-through rate in search engines. This article shows you how to use Structured Data.
Head, Heading and Header tags

Heading tags are markers used in HTML to help structure your website from an SEO point of view and to help visitors and search engines read your content
What are Breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumb greatly enhance the way users find their way around your website by telling them where they are. Breadcrumbs also help your SEO, especially if enhanced with Structured Data.
On-Page SEO Check

Set up your on-page SEO properly and get the results you deserve! Our free on-page SEO checker covers all the basics for you. And if you’re new – read on! I’ll explain how to use the suggestions correctly.
Canonical URLs and SEO

Canonical URLs are an essential tool for SEOs to control which pages are indexed and avoid duplicate content. This article explains when and how to use canonicals
Pagination and SEO

Pagination is a good way to let visitors and search engines browse your content. This article explains how you can implement pagination in an SEO-friendly way.
What is a 404 Error?

What is a 404 error page? How do you Implement 404 for better user experience? What are the SEO Impacts of a 404 error?
HTTP Status Codes and SEO

HTTP status code tells a search engine what the result of their request is. That sounds complex, but it's simple and important for SEO.
Broken Links

Broken links can hurt the user experience of your site and may negatively affect SEO. This article explains how you find, fix and monitor broken links
Trailing slashes and SEO

Trailing slashes, used incorrectly, can damage your SEO activities. This article explains how to make the right set-up and avoid SEO damage.
Website Security and HTTPS

How does website security relate to SEO, and what do you need to do to make your site more secure and search-engine-friendly?
Viewport Meta Tag

Viewport is the user’s visible area of a web page. This is the part you can see from your device or monitor.
Redirects and SEO

301, 302, 307... It’s time to demystify all the main redirect types in SEO! Learn everything you need to know in our redirect guide.
What is Wildcard redirect?

Wildcard redirects allow you to redirect all of the URLs in a folder on your site. Learn how forwarding domains, masking, URL forwarding, and wildcard redirects work.
What Are Favicons?

You might not have heard of a favicon (short for favorites icon) before, but it's a little image that appears in the address bar on your browser. A favicon is the tiny icon you see next to the web address on your browser's address bar.
SEO for developers

Have you been asked to improve the SEO of a website, but don’t know where to start? This guide explains the basics of SEO from a technical perspective.

Why should I prioritize Technical SEO?

It's about the laying the foundations

Technical SEO is a broad topic, but allowing Google to crawl and index a site is a big part of it. If a site can't be properly crawled and indexed, all your other SEO activities are useless. You can create the best content, and get as much links as you can, but your site still won't show up in Google. So before anything else, you need to make sure the technical foundations are solid.

There's usually some low hanging fruit

We often see technical SEO reports contain some sort of low hanging fruit: fixes that can be implemented at low cost, with lots of benefits. By finding and fixing some of these issues, you boost your website's visibilitywithout paying a high price.

It's a long-term strategy

Improvements you make to the technical state of your website are long-term improvements. It's unlikely that new hypes come up that require you to make more changes in 2 years. People want a fast website now, and they'll want it in 2 years time from now. So anything you do to make your website faster, keeps paying dividends in the long term. The same holds for crawl optimizations, security, and a proper website structure. Fix it ones, and it'll work for years to come.