Full Definition
Technical SEO deals with the behind-the-scenes mechanics of your website. Think of it as the foundation your content sits on. Even the best content will underperform if Google can't properly find, crawl, and understand your pages. Key technical SEO areas include: **Crawlability**: Google uses software 'bots' to visit your website. If your robots.txt file accidentally blocks these bots, or your site has broken internal links, Google may miss entire sections of your site. **Site speed**: Page speed is a confirmed ranking factor. Slow sites frustrate users and get pushed down. Core Web Vitals — Google's specific speed metrics — are part of its ranking system. **Mobile-friendliness**: Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily looks at your mobile site when deciding rankings. If your desktop site looks great but your mobile version is broken, you rank on the mobile version's quality. **Structured data (Schema)**: Code added to your pages that tells Google explicitly what kind of content it contains — a product, a recipe, an FAQ, a local business. This can unlock rich results in search. **HTTPS**: Sites without an SSL certificate (the padlock in the browser bar) are marked as 'Not Secure' and receive a mild ranking penalty. **Duplicate content**: If the same content appears at multiple URLs on your site, Google has to guess which version to rank. Canonical tags fix this. Actionable tip: Run your site through Google Search Console's Coverage report. Any pages listed as 'Excluded' or 'Error' are pages Google cannot rank — that's your priority fix list.