Make sure Google can actually crawl, access, and understand your website — because great content means nothing if Google can't reach it.
Technical SEO is the foundation everything else rests on. If Google can't crawl your site, your keywords and content don't matter. Think of it like building a house — technical SEO is the plumbing and electrical. You don't see it, but without it, nothing works.
Most small business websites have basic technical issues that hold them back. Broken links, slow loading times, mobile problems. Today you'll audit and fix them.
Google's Core Web Vitals measure how fast and stable your pages feel. These directly impact rankings. The three metrics are:
How to check: Use PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). Enter your URL and get your score (aim for 90+). It shows you the exact issues.
Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site to determine rankings for all users — even desktop users. If your mobile site is missing content or features, you'll lose rankings.
What to check:
Test with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool or just view your site on a phone.
All websites should use HTTPS (the "S" = Secure). If your site shows "Not Secure" warning, it directly hurts rankings and scares users away.
Good news: Most hosting providers offer free SSL certificates via Let's Encrypt. If you're on WordPress, Shopify, Wix, etc., it's usually free and automatic. Check your browser — you should see a padlock icon next to your URL.
A sitemap.xml file tells Google all the pages on your site. It's like giving Google a map instead of making them find pages one by one.
The robots.txt file (at yourdomain.com/robots.txt) tells crawlers which pages to crawl and which to skip. Common use: block admin pages, login pages, or duplicate pages from being crawled.
Be careful: Never accidentally block important pages. Many sites accidentally block /blog or /products in robots.txt and wonder why they don't rank.
Duplicate content is a problem. If the same page exists at multiple URLs (e.g., yourdomain.com/page and yourdomain.com/page/), Google gets confused.
Use a canonical tag to tell Google which version is the "official" one:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://yourdomain.com/preferred-url">
Put this in the <head> of duplicate pages. Google will consolidate ranking signals to the canonical URL.
Broken links hurt user experience and waste Google's crawl budget. Find them using Google Search Console:
Schema markup is code that tells Google detailed information about your content. This can trigger "rich results" in search results — like star ratings, FAQ snippets, or event information.
Example: A recipe page with schema markup shows stars, cooking time, and ingredients in the search result. Users can preview before clicking. Higher click-through rate = better rankings.
Types of schema: Article, Product, Recipe, FAQ, LocalBusiness, JobPosting, Event, etc.
Use Schema.org to learn the format. Most platforms (WordPress, Shopify) have plugins that auto-generate schema.
Just because you built a page doesn't mean Google indexed it. Check what's indexed:
site:yourdomain.com into GoogleCommon reasons for non-indexation: robots.txt blocking, noindex tag, nofollow links, new site (give Google time to crawl).
Google has a limited budget for crawling your site. Large sites with thousands of pages need to be strategic. Tips:
Paste any Google Search Console error for an instant fix guide
Get a ready-to-use robots.txt file for your site
Get a custom audit checklist tailored to your site type
Use these 3 free tools on your website today:
Then use Prompt #3 to get a full technical audit checklist tailored to your site type.
Technical SEO mistakes are particularly painful because they're invisible - your content looks fine to you, but Google is quietly blocked or confused. These are the most common ones beginners make.
A misplaced
Disallow: / in robots.txt blocks Google from crawling your entire site. This is one
of the most catastrophic beginner errors and it can happen silently during a CMS update or plugin
install. Always use Google Search Console to verify your key pages are crawlable.
Without a sitemap, Google finds your pages by following links. New pages with few or no internal links pointing to them may never get discovered. Submitting your sitemap.xml in Google Search Console is a 5-minute task that tells Google exactly what you have and ensures nothing gets missed.
Google confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal in 2014. Sites still on HTTP in 2026 show a "Not Secure" warning in Chrome, which tanks click-through rates from search results in addition to hurting rankings. Free SSL certificates via Let's Encrypt are available on virtually every host.
Most beginners only check PageSpeed after their rankings drop. By then the damage is done. Run PageSpeed Insights on your key pages today and fix the top 2-3 recommendations immediately. A 5-second load time on mobile actively suppresses your rankings against faster competitors.
E-commerce sites are
especially prone to this: the same product page accessible at /products/shoes and
/products/shoes?color=red looks like duplicate content to Google. Without canonical
tags, you split your ranking authority across URLs and Google may pick the wrong version to index.
Most CMS platforms handle this automatically - verify yours does.
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