Technical SEO Best Practices (AKA How to Stop Hiding from Google)

First: What Is Technical SEO?

Think of technical SEO as your site’s infrastructure. It’s not the content or keywords (that’s on-page), and it’s not the backlinks (that’s off-page). It’s the stuff under the hood that lets search engines access, crawl, interpret, and index your site.

If your site isn’t technically sound, you’re basically whispering into the void.

Crawlability & Indexing: Step One of Being Found

Before your content can rank, it needs to be found. Here’s how to make sure that happens:

• Create and submit a sitemap to Google Search Console (and Bing if you’re feeling generous).
• Use a clean robots.txt file to tell search engines what they can and can’t crawl. No accidental “Disallow: /everything”.
• Fix crawl errors (404s, redirect loops, etc.) before they become a maze no bot can escape from.

AI-powered search tools also rely on crawling and indexing—but they’re even pickier. If your site structure is confusing, they’ll bounce to your competitor without blinking.

Site Speed: Don’t Make People Wait

You’ve got about 2 seconds before users—and Google—lose patience. Use PageSpeed Insights to check how fast (or slow) your site loads.

To optimize:

• Compress your images (seriously, oversized .pngs are the silent killer).
• Minify CSS and JavaScript.
• Use lazy loading for offscreen content.
• Choose fast, reliable hosting.

Bonus: a fast site is not only good for SEO, it’s also good UX. And Google loves good UX.

Mobile-First, Always

Google’s been indexing mobile-first since checks notes forever ago. Your site needs to:

• Be fully responsive
• Load fast on mobile
• Have click-friendly buttons and readable fonts

Use Google’s Lighthouse tool to double-check.

Also, with voice search and AI assistants on the rise, mobile optimization is indirectly helping you play nice with tools like Siri, Alexa, and AI chatbots that pull info on the go.

HTTPS & Security: No Excuses

HTTPS is a ranking factor. It also builds trust. If your site still flashes “Not Secure” in the browser bar… we need to talk.

Get an SSL certificate—it’s free with most hosts.

Structured Data: Speak Search Engine

Structured data (aka Schema Markup) is how you give context to your content. You can explore Schema.org to see all the different types you can implement

Use it for:

• Articles
• Products
• FAQs
• Events
• Reviews

This helps you win rich snippets in search (those extra bells and whistles that make your listing pop). And as AI search grows, structured data is becoming even more critical—it’s how your content gets understood, not just read.

Canonicals, Duplicates & Index Bloat

Google hates confusion. Canonical tags help signal which version of a page is the “main one.” This is especially important if you’ve got:

• Similar product pages
• Filtered category views
• Blog tags and archive pages everywhere

Also: don’t index junk. Noindex thin pages, thank-you pages, and anything that doesn’t offer value on its own.

AI x Technical SEO

Here’s where it gets fun.

AI search engines (like Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT’s web tools) are starting to act more like research assistants than traditional search engines. They index, reference, and cross-check data at scale.

If your site is technically sound:

• It gets indexed faster
• It’s easier for AI to understand and quote
• You increase your chances of being used as a source in AI-generated responses

That’s next-level visibility—and it starts with a solid technical foundation.

TL;DR – What You Should Do

Here’s your technical SEO punch list:

✅ Make your site crawlable and indexable
✅ Improve site speed (especially on mobile)
✅ Use HTTPS
✅ Add structured data
✅ Fix broken links & redirect errors
✅ Avoid duplicate content
✅ Think like a search engine and a user
✅ Future-proof for AI indexing

Before You Go

Technical SEO isn’t glamorous, but it’s non-negotiable. It’s what separates sites that exist from sites that get discovered.

If you’re serious about fixing the leaks in your site’s foundation, our team has been in the trenches with this stuff. You can start with the SEO services page, or dig into some lighter fare on our blog—either way, you’ll leave a little smarter.

And if you’re already sweating your Core Web Vitals? We see you. Let’s talk.