If you’re looking to learn or expand your Technical SEO knowledge, you’ve come to the right place! On this page you’ll find the best free reliable technical SEO resources: from guides, to tools and even tips! Take a look below.
Free Technical SEO Guides
Overview of crawling and indexing topics
Guide from Google
The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO
Guide from Patrick Stox / Ahrefs
What is Technical SEO? 11 Best Practices
Guide from Joshua Hardwick / Ahrefs
What Is Technical SEO? Your Ultimate Guide To Getting Started
Guide from Kevin Indig / SEMrush
Technical SEO Guides Hub
Guide from ContentKing
The Ultimate Guide to Technical SEO
Guide from Christina Perricone / Hubspot
Technical SEO Library
Guide from Deepcrawl
Technical SEO Audit (165+ Steps And Free Audit Template)
Guide from Olga Zarzeczna
Technical SEO course with Bastian Grimm
Course from Bastian Grimm / SEMrush
Large site owner’s guide to managing your crawl budget
Guide from Google
Free On-Page SEO Tools
Google Search Console Coverage, URL Inspection & Crawl Stats Reports
Web Based from Google
Bing Webmaster Tools Site Scan and SEO Report
Web Based from Bing
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Desktop Based from Screaming Frog
Greenflare: The Open Source SEO Crawler
Desktop Based from Greenflare
SEOlyzer: Crawler & log analysis for all SEO
Web Based from SEOlyzer
httpstatus.io: Easily check status codes, response headers, and redirect chains
Web Based from Sander Heilbron
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Web Based from Ahrefs
Siteliner: Explore your website, revealing key issues
Web Based from Siteliner
Checkbot: SEO, Web Speed & Security Tester
Browser Extension from Checkbot
SEO Minion: On-Page SEO, Broken Link Checker, Hreflang Checker & more
Browser Extension from SEO minion
Detailed SEO Extension
Browser Extension from Detailed
SEO Pro Extension
Browser Extension from Marketing Syrup
SEOInfo
Browser Extension from Weeblr
Spark Content Optimizer
Browser Extension from SEOClarity
Link Redirect Trace
Browser Extension from LinkResearchTools
Yoast SEO
WordPress Plugin from Yoast
Rank Math SEO
WordPress Plugin from Rank Math
FAQs When Learning Technical SEO
Is it necessary to be a developer to learn Technical SEO?
It’s certainly not a requirement to be a Web developer to become a Technical SEO. What’s important is that you understand how Websites are built, and can “read” HTML/CSS & the fundamentals of JavaScript, so you can identify site crawlability and indexability issues and opportunities, analyze, troubleshoot and collaborate with Web Developers to establish cost-effective solutions to achieve the desired goals. You have resources to learn HTML/CSS & JavaScript here.
Is it possible to achieve SEO goals with Technical SEO only?
Most Websites don’t rank due to just a single issue or area of issues -like technical ones-, but to a combination of them from different areas: technical, content, etc. This is why, it’s recommended to develop a full SEO audit to identify problems and challenges arising from the different areas to establish integral, prioritized SEO recommendations and aligned strategy, taking into consideration technical, content, backlinks, etc.
Tips When Learning & Doing Technical SEO
“Practice makes perfect! There’s no better way to learn Tech SEO than to get under the hood and manually audit websites to understand (1) how issues arise and (2) how to fix them. Auditing tools also explain each tech issue pretty well (Sitebulb
links to pages for each item). Additionally, don’t be afraid to search for “how to fix x issue” – every new issue is a new opportunity to discover a new resource that can help upgrade out your skills. The amount of times I learned something from StackOverflow is in the hundreds.”
“SEOs and Developers use the same terminology but it’s often the case that the two see it from a different perspective. Learn the dev perspective as early as you can and that will help you have more productive interactions with the people that can get technical SEO implemented.”
“Get under the hood on as many different sites as possible. Seeing the variety of setups, choices other SEOs have made, and unique challenges, has helped me skill up fast. If I focused only on the sites I manage, my skills would be restricted to those particular ecosystems.”
By Anne Berlin
“For technical SEO: You don’t have to be a developer, but:
* Learn basics of HTML & CSS
* Learn about important HTML & SEO tags
* Read about crawling, indexing process
* Learn abt robots.txt & its instructions
* Learn how to identify rendering & page speed issues”
“Soft skills is one of the basics for SEO in general, but learning to talk to developers is a soft skill that IMO is best learned early on. I’d include it as part of technical SEO basics.”
“While tech SEO support your overall results, it’s important to consider that technial aspects are different based on the kind of site. An e-commerce with a few million pages should be analysed differently from a blog with a few hundreds, not only because of the number of pages but the scope of the site change significantly and important elements for a small sites can be secondary for a bigger one.”
“A flat site structure with a click-depth of less than 4 works best for good technical SEO. It helps with:
– Effective crawling
– Good flow of link authority
– Easy to navigate
– Easy to scale when required
And it helps with overall site UX as well!”
“Collaborate with different stakeholders, understand what work has/hasn’t been done before and WHY? Gives idea on team capability. After doing the audit/s, prioritize impact/difficulty with dev team, connect dots between issues, not to fix something by breaking something else.”
“When writing tickets for developers, try to include sample code if it’s HTML or JSON-LD, and make the acceptance criteria as clear and detailed as possible – do not expect anyone to digest Google documentation you might have linked to in the way you’d do as an SEO. And ask to be included in refinement meetings – this ensures your tickets are understood and executed in the best way. If you manage to find an ally in the development team, you can ask for help, eg. how to test during deployments, or how to improve your tickets and that way improve bit by bit over time.”
“When writing schema markups – don’t follow the herd. try and test, go crazy, don’t be scare of errors and warnings. keep adjusting, try different structures, it’s not just about the types, it’s also the structure and connections, keep testing!”
By Shay Ohayon
“Create your own site and don’t be afraid to break things. And of course use your GDS templates.”
By Anne Hennegar
“Learn how to learn. We work in an industry where we are constantly on new territory. This means that you need to learn the most effective way for you to develop learn new optimisations. Whether it’s videos, forums, courses, events or hands on tutorials, learning how to up-skill yourself is an incredible asset.”
“Really study and learn the differences between JS crawling and rendering, as well as when to use server side delivery vs. client side delivery vs. hybrid delivery. Understand how Google crawls sites first, renders later and how important it is to fully present all of the critical signals upon crawl.”
By Jenny Halasz
“Don’t be afraid to ask questions! I learned so much from working with developers, learning their processes, and requesting clarification on more technical subjects. Don’t be afraid about being met with eye-rolls – most are happy to share their expertise with others as long as you’re patient and willing to understand their work. (If they do decline, then move on – they wouldn’t be much help anyway!). I’d also recommend asking them for any helpful documentation and guides (e.g. on Confluence) so that you can learn in your own time and post questions there. All in all, it’s so valuable to build those strong connections with your developers, so definitely try to soak up as much knowledge as you can but learn their processes too for better collaboration.”
By Izzi Smith
“Try to learn the best possible understanding of how the web and search engine crawlers work. It’s so much easier to provide recommendations to developers if you gain these basic skills and gives you context of the wider picture.”
By Leonie Mann
“As someone who is trying to dip their toes into technical SEO, I’ll add finding tech SEOs that inspire and motivate you. Reading about their tests, audits and even quick tips are great ways to keep yourself curious.”
By Lindsbail