Technical SEO

Prerequisites: SEO fundamentals, Loading performance

Beyond titles and descriptions, technical SEO is about making a whole site easy to crawl, render, and understand.

Crawlable links

Search engines follow <a href> links. They don't click buttons or run onclick handlers:

<!-- Avoid: not a crawlable link -->
<span class="link" data-url="/menu">Menu</span>

<!-- Better -->
<a href="/menu">Menu</a>

Paginated lists should use real links to ?page=2, not only an "infinite scroll" script.

Rendering

Google renders JavaScript, but it takes more time and resources, and other crawlers and link previews often don't run it at all. Content, links, titles, and meta tags present in the server-rendered HTML are the most reliable. That's why frameworks offer server-side rendering and static generation.

Sitemaps

An XML sitemap lists the URLs you want indexed:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://cornerbakery.example/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-09-01</lastmod>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://cornerbakery.example/guides/storing-sourdough</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-08-14</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Reference it in robots.txt (Sitemap: https://cornerbakery.example/sitemap.xml) and submit it in the search engines' webmaster tools. Our Sitemap Validator checks the format.

Status codes and redirects

Missing pages must return 404 (or 410), not a "not found" page with status 200 (a "soft 404").
Moved pages: a 301 redirect to the new URL, not a meta refresh.
Keep URLs stable, lowercase, and readable.

Duplicate content and languages

Use rel="canonical" for duplicates and hreflang for translations (both covered in Level 2) — and make sure they agree: a page's canonical should point to itself in its own language, not to the English version.

Images and video

Descriptive file names (rye-loaf.jpg) and alt text.
Images in img elements rather than CSS backgrounds when they're content.
VideoObject structured data and a thumbnail for videos.

Page experience

Core Web Vitals, HTTPS, a mobile-friendly viewport, and no intrusive interstitials all feed into how pages are ranked and experienced. Our Broken Link Checker and Redirect Checker catch common problems.