Technical SEO: A Complete Guide to Crawlability and Indexing
Sitemaps, robots.txt, canonicals, hreflang, and Core Web Vitals — everything you need to make your site search-engine friendly.
Technical SEO is the foundation. You can write the best content in the world, but if Google can't crawl, render, or trust your site, it won't rank. Here's the full audit I run on every new client site.
Crawlability
Make sure your robots.txt allows the right paths and your XML sitemap is up to date and submitted to Google Search Console. Check log files for unexpected 404s or redirect chains.
Indexing
Use canonical tags to consolidate duplicate URLs (think trailing slashes, UTM parameters, query strings). Set noindex on thin or staging pages.
Rendering
If you're using a JavaScript framework, verify Google can render your pages. The URL Inspection tool in Search Console shows you the rendered HTML.
Site Speed
Compress images, lazy-load below-the-fold media, defer non-critical JavaScript. Aim for LCP under 2.5s on mobile.
Structured Data
Add JSON-LD for the page type — Article, Product, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage. Validate in Google's Rich Results Test.
Internationalization
If you serve multiple languages or regions, hreflang tags prevent the wrong version showing up in search.
Monitoring
Set up Search Console alerts for indexing drops, manual actions, and Core Web Vitals issues. Catch problems before they tank traffic.
