1. SEO Fundamentals Learn Technical SEO

Learn or expand your technical SEO knowledge. On this page, you’ll find the best free reliable technical SEO resources: from guides to tools and even tips! Take a look below.

On this page

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

 

The Ultimate Guide to Technical SEO

Guide from Christina Perricone / Hubspot

 

What Is Technical SEO? Basics and 10 Best Practices

Guide from Tushar Pol / Semrush

 

Technical SEO Guides Hub

Guide from ContentKing

 

An In-Depth Guide to Technical SEO

Guide from Tom Whatley / CXL

 

Technical SEO Library

Guide from Lumar

Technical SEO course with Bastian Grimm

Course from Bastian Grimm / SEMrush

 

What’s technical SEO? 8 technical aspects everyone should know

Guide from Yoast

 

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

 

SEO Server Header Checker Tool: Server Headers is your one stop tool to quickly extract useful SEO data from a URL

Web Based from Ryan Jones

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 Weeblr

 

Spark SEO by seoClarity

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

Tips When Learning & Doing Technical SEO

This guide is your gateway to the behind-the-scenes world of technical SEO, offering advice gleaned from seasoned SEO professionals well-versed in the technical aspects of this field.

“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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!”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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!”
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“Create your own site and don’t be afraid to break things. And of course use your GDS templates.”
Anne Hennegar
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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FAQs When Learning Technical SEO
What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website content to be effectively crawled and indexed by search engines. It’s called “technical” because it doesn’t have to do with the content of the website or its promotion. The main goal of technical SEO is to optimize the site’s Web structure. 

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.  

 

Why is technical SEO important?

Technical SEO is crucial because it forms the foundation of your website’s visibility to search engines. It encompasses various aspects such as site architecture, speed, mobile compatibility, and secure protocols, among others, which together ensure that search engines can effectively crawl, index, and interpret your website content.

What does technical SEO include?

Technical SEO refers to the range of practices implemented to enhance a website’s technical configuration toward search engines. Key elements of technical SEO include crawlability, indexability, page speed, HTTPs, structured data, and more. 

The SEO Learning Roadmap

Take a look at the SEO learning roadmap below, featuring the different areas, from the basics of SEO, to the most common activities and phases of the SEO Process:

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1 SEO Fundamentals

Start learning SEO with the fundamental concepts and areas, why they're important, and the basics to execute them: keyword research, content optimization analysis, technical optimization and link building.
Once you know the main SEO concepts, it's time to put them in practice by learning to develop an SEO process, from establishing a strategy and setting goals to management, measurement, and reporting.
Learn to implement the most important SEO configurations in the top Web platforms in the market, along with considerations to take into account.