Technical SEO explained without the jargon
You have written the pages, added the keywords, and Google still has you somewhere past the point anyone scrolls. Usually that is not a content problem — it is that Google cannot properly read, crawl or trust the site underneath.
What technical SEO actually is
Everything that helps search engines understand, index and trust your website. Speed, mobile usability, URL structure, security, and the code behind the scenes that supports everything you have written.
The comparison people use is wiring in a house. Nobody sees it, nobody admires it, and nothing works properly without it.
Technical SEO against on-page SEO
People conflate these constantly. They are different jobs and they fail in different ways.
| Technical SEO | On-page SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Concerns | Site infrastructure | Content and keywords |
| Typical work | Speed, security, crawlability | Titles, headings, internal links |
| Affects | Whether Google can read the page | Whether Google thinks the page is relevant |
| Fails like this | The page never appears at all | The page appears for the wrong things |
| Do it | First | Second |
Both matter. But there is no point optimising a title tag on a page Google has decided not to index.
Seven things worth checking
- 1 · SpeedA slow site frustrates people and costs rankings. Compress images, enable caching, use a lightweight theme, and check it on Google PageSpeed Insights. Images are almost always the biggest single cause.
- 2 · MobileMost UK traffic is mobile, and Google indexes the mobile version of your site rather than the desktop one. If it does not work properly on a phone, that is the version being judged.
- 3 · HTTPSA legal and ranking requirement. Without it browsers flag your site as insecure, which visitors see before anything you wrote. Most hosts include a certificate free.
- 4 · Clean URLs
/services/window-cleaningrather than/index.php?page=61. Readable to people, meaningful to Google, and easier to link to. - 5 · No broken linksThey confuse visitors, waste crawl budget and strand the authority flowing through your site. Check with our free checker or Screaming Frog.
- 6 · Sitemap and robots.txtThe sitemap tells Google what exists. Robots.txt tells it what to ignore. Submit the first in Search Console and make sure the second is not accidentally blocking pages you want ranked.
- 7 · Structured dataMarkup that adds context — that this is a business, in this town, offering these services, with these reviews. It does not change your ranking directly, but it changes how your result looks.
Accessibility is a legal requirement, not a nice-to-have
UK websites must meet accessibility standards under the Equality Act 2010, and the technical work overlaps almost entirely with good SEO. Most agencies never mention it.
- Alt text on imagesRequired for screen readers, and it is also how Google understands what an image shows.
- Keyboard navigationEvery function usable without a mouse.
- Sufficient contrastText readable against its background — 4.5:1 for normal text under WCAG.
- Proper heading hierarchyH1 then H2 then H3, in order. Screen readers navigate by it, and so does Google.
- Labelled form fieldsSo both a screen reader and a search engine know what each field is for.
What you need, and what you do not
| Tool | What it does | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Crawl errors, indexing status, what Google actually sees | Free |
| PageSpeed Insights | Core Web Vitals with specific recommendations | Free |
| Screaming Frog | Deep site crawl, up to 500 URLs | Free to 500 |
| GTmetrix | Speed and page performance in detail | Free tier |
| Ahrefs / SEMrush | Backlinks, keyword tracking, full site audits | From £79/mo |
Search Console is the only one you genuinely need. It is free, it comes from Google, and it tells you exactly which pages were crawled and refused. Most small businesses never open it, and it answers most of the questions people pay agencies to answer.
Technical SEO is usually not your problem
On most small business sites the foundations are adequate. Not perfect — adequate. The real constraint is normally that nobody has written the pages people search for, or nobody links to the site.
Where technical work genuinely changes things: after a migration, when duplicate pages compete with each other, on an ecommerce catalogue generating thousands of junk URLs, or on a site slow enough that people leave before it loads.
Frequently asked
- What is schema markup?Code that adds context. It does not say “this is a page” but “this is a business offering plumbing in Sheffield with these reviews”. It improves how your result appears rather than where it ranks.
- What is the difference between technical and on-page SEO?Technical is whether Google can read the page. On-page is whether Google thinks it is relevant. Both matter; technical comes first.
- Does site speed really matter?Yes, but the bigger effect is on visitors rather than rankings. People leave slow pages before they load, and that behaviour then feeds back into rankings.
- Do I need to understand the code?No. You need to know which problems exist and whether they are worth fixing. Whoever maintains your site can do the rest.
- Can I do this myself?Most of it. Compressing images, enabling caching and removing unused plugins need no technical knowledge at all.
Check your own site
- SEO Health Score CheckerScores a page across fifteen-plus technical checks in seconds.
- Broken Link CheckerCrawls for dead links and the crawl budget they waste.
- Competitor ComparisonYour technical setup against whoever is outranking you.
- Technical SEO servicesIf you would rather someone else did it. From £35 an hour.
Want to know if technical is your constraint?
The free audit covers the technical side alongside content, local signals and tracking — and tells you which is actually costing you. If technical is fine, we will say so.