Technical SEO is part of on-page SEO and involves many factors, but at a high level it exists to ensure your website is easy for search engines to crawl, loads efficiently and works well on all devices, and is structured to enable users to efficiently find what they\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These technical elements should not be entered into lightly as you can easily tank your website rankings if you make an incorrect technical change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some key aspects of technical SEO can include:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If the pages on your website are not efficiently accessible to search engines, and don\u2019t provide a great experience for your users, they\u2019ll struggle to rank highly. Plus, once someone does find your website, if they are presented with a confusing site architecture, they won\u2019t be able to find what they need and will ultimately leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your website doesn\u2019t work and look great on all devices, or it\u2019s slow to load, this also provides a poor experience to users. And more importantly, both these issues are confirmed Google ranking factors. However, as with any modern SEO strategies you shouldn\u2019t simply focus on what the search engines want but focus on creating the best website for your users \u2013 one will follow the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The very first step to technical SEO is ensuring that search engines can crawl all the content on your website. Crawling is the way search engines find websites and begin to understand what their content is about. If they can\u2019t crawl, or find that it\u2019s taking too long to crawl, they simply won\u2019t rank your content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Crawling occurs when search engines find and follow links around your website. By linking to new content from pages you know search engines already know about you can ensure they find it efficiently. For example, this article is listed on our Digital Academy<\/a> page, which is included in the website navigation. We know search engines know about the Digital Academy so every time they visit our website, they will see any new content listed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s some ways you can help search engines to crawl your website:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Your website structure \/ architecture is the term used to describe how your web pages are linked together. An effective structure is one that\u2019s setup to help search engines and users to find your content efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A typical website structure will have a home page, which includes a navigation menu that links through to different parts. Then subpages are linked to from those. All pages should be found through just a few clicks from the home page. A structure like this will mean your website is organised into a logical hierarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A \u201ctechnical\u201d sitemap will be in an XML file format which contains a list of all the pages you want search engines to find, and more importantly where to find them. Once you have an XML sitemap ready you need to submit it to Google using Google Search Console<\/a>. If you have a WordPress website commonly used plugins such as AIOSEO<\/a> and Yoast<\/a> have a free tool for generating XML sitemaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once search engines have crawled your pages they will then attempt to understand the content. At this point they will \u201cindex\u201d the content, and pages must be indexed before they will rank in the search results. The content will be stored in databases, so this is why any updates you make to pages will take time for search engines to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The easiest way to check if a website has been indexed is by simply searching for it on Google. A quick hack is to perform a search like the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n site:www.tallmarketing.co.uk<\/p>\n\n\n\n See below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n By searching for that exact text on Google it will show you all the pages on this website that have been indexed. Simply replace the Tall Marketing website address with your own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Often they\u2019ll be pages not your website you want to intentionally not be indexed. This is common on eCommerce websites for example where you can hide away the checkout or account pages \u2013 here\u2019s some other reasons why you might not want a page to be indexed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n To use the \u201cnoindex\u201d tag, you need to insert the following line of code within the HTML head section of the page you want to exclude from indexing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n meta name=\u201drobots\u201d content=\u201dnoindex\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This tag tells search engine bots that they should not include the page in their index. As a result, the page will not show up in search engine results pages (SERPs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s worth noting that the \u201cnoindex\u201d tag does not prevent the page from being crawled by search engines or accessed by users. It only tells search engines not to include it in search results. If you want to prevent search engines from accessing the page altogether, you can use the \u201cdisallow\u201d directive in the robots.txt file or implement other methods like password protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Why is technical SEO important?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s talk about website crawling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Have an SEO friendly website structure:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Submit your sitemap to Google<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s look at indexing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kirkwood.im\/tmdev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2024-09-04-211000.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe use of Noindex<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Master technical SEO best practice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Use HTTPS<\/h3>\n\n\n\n