Module 5: Technical SEO Essentials

Core Web Vitals & Page Experience

Core Web Vitals are a set of speed and stability metrics that are a direct ranking signal in Google's Page Experience system. Sites failing these metrics are penalised — regardless of content quality. Passing them is a necessary but not sufficient condition for ranking.

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Should be under 2.5 seconds — measures load speed of the main content
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Should be under 200ms — measures UI responsiveness
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Should be under 0.1 — measures visual stability
• FID deprecated in 2024: INP replaced First Input Delay as the interactivity metric

Site Architecture & Internal Linking

Site architecture determines how PageRank flows through your site. A flat architecture (important pages within 3 clicks of the homepage) concentrates authority on your most valuable pages. A deep, siloed structure dilutes it.

• Flat architecture: Reduces click depth — Google crawls and indexes pages more efficiently
• Silo structure: Group related content by topic — reinforces topical authority signals
• Internal link anchor text: Use descriptive, keyword-rich anchors — not 'click here'
• Orphaned pages: Every page needs at least one internal link — orphaned pages rarely rank

Schema Markup & Structured Data

Schema markup communicates your content's meaning to search engines in an unambiguous structured format. It enables rich results — star ratings, FAQs, recipes, events, courses, and products — which dramatically improve click-through rates from the SERP.

• Article schema: Adds author, date, and publisher to news and blog content
• FAQ schema: Eligible for expanded FAQ results directly in the SERP
• Course schema: Enables course rich results with rating, price, and description
• HowTo schema: Step-by-step instructions can display as rich results on desktop

Crawl Budget & Indexation Management

Crawl budget is the number of URLs Googlebot crawls on your site within a given time. Large sites with thin content waste crawl budget on low-value pages, leaving important pages under-crawled. Strategic crawl management improves indexation of priority content.

• Block low-value URLs: Use robots.txt and noindex for paginated pages, filtered URLs, and admin pages
• Fix redirect chains: Each redirect wastes crawl budget — consolidate to single 301s
• XML sitemaps: Only include canonical, indexable URLs — never include noindex pages
• Log file analysis: The definitive way to see which pages Google actually crawls

JavaScript SEO

JavaScript-heavy sites create indexation challenges because Googlebot must render JavaScript to see content. Rendering is expensive — Google defers it, meaning JS-rendered content may be indexed days or weeks after discovery.

• Server-side rendering (SSR): Content in the initial HTML — best for SEO
• Static site generation (SSG): Pre-rendered HTML at build time — excellent for SEO
• Client-side rendering (CSR): Content only in JS — worst for SEO, avoid for key pages
• Hybrid: Use SSR/SSG for key content, CSR for interactive elements that don't need ranking

Technical SEO Audit Process

A systematic technical audit identifies issues before they become ranking problems. Run audits quarterly — or after any major site change, platform migration, or algorithm update that coincides with a traffic drop.

• Crawl the site: Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to identify broken links, redirect issues, and missing tags
• Check Search Console: Coverage report flags indexation errors, crawl anomalies, and manual actions
• Core Web Vitals report: GSC and PageSpeed Insights identify failing URLs
• Log file analysis: Advanced audit — shows actual Googlebot crawl patterns vs. expectations

AI Prompts for This Module

Use these prompts directly in ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to apply the concepts from this module to your own site.

Generate a prioritised technical SEO audit checklist for [type of site — e.g., ecommerce, blog, SaaS]. Organise by impact level (critical/high/medium/low) and for each item include: what to check, how to check it (tool or method), and what to do if you find an issue.

Generate the correct JSON-LD schema markup for a [schema type — e.g., Course, FAQPage, HowTo, Article] with the following details: [paste your page details]. Format it as valid JSON-LD, ready to paste into the  section. Include all recommended properties for rich result eligibility.