Technical SEO

Traditionally, the phrase Technical SEO refers to optimizing your site for crawling and indexing, but can also include any technical process meant to improve search visibility.

Technical SEO is a broad and exciting field, covering everything from sitemaps, meta tags, JavaScript indexing, linking, keyword research, and more.

If you’re new to SEO, we recommend starting with the chapter on Technical SEO in our Beginner’s Guide. Below are the latest posts on technical SEO, and we’ve included a few top articles here.

On-Site SEO : What are the technical on-page factors that influence your rankings? Our free learning center will get you started in the right direction.

The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet : This handy—and printable—cheat sheet is invaluable for anyone building websites. Contains several useful references that cover a ton of technical SEO best practices.

MozBar : This free Chrome extension is an advanced SEO toolbar that helps you to examine and diagnose several technical SEO issues.

The Technical SEO Renaissance : Is it true that technical SEO isn't necessary, because Google is smart enough to figure your website out? Mike King puts this rumor to rest, and shows you what to focus on.

Technical SEO: The One Hour Guide to SEO : Want a quick introduction to the basics of technical SEO? Our guru Rand has you covered—all in about 10 minutes.

Most Recent Articles on Technical SEO

The Looming Battle for .search
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The Looming Battle for .search

After I wrote the first draft of this post I was reluctant to submit it. I was saying to myself "This is overstating the importance of domains. Google doesnt really care about this stuff."A day later in the news. "Google offers 6 figures for knol.com"Google cares about names. As does Apple. As does any company that knows the web. So let's talk about the looming battle fo...

XML Sitemaps: Guidelines on Their Use
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XML Sitemaps: Guidelines on Their Use

Over the past couple of days I have been putting together some internal guidelines on various aspects of our jobs. This should ensure that we are giving consistent information to our various clients. Most of these guidelines have been fairly straightforward with nothing in them to write home about. However, one of the hardest guidelines to write has been the one talking about xml sitemaps. ...

Simple Fix: The Easiest Page Views You'll Ever Get
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Simple Fix: The Easiest Page Views You'll Ever Get

One of the highest trafficked pages on your site may be your "404 Error - Page Not Found," as it with many small to mid-sized sites, and chances are, this page also has the highest Exit/Bounce Rates.. Outdated inbound links and misspelled URLs (from less-than-careful webmasters) will send viewers to your site - but they'll land on your Page Not Found page - not on the page you'v...

An SEOmoz PRO Tip (For Everyone) & Feedback About the PRO UI
Rand Fishkin

An SEOmoz PRO Tip (For Everyone) & Feedback About the PRO UI

Lots and lots of people sign up for SEOmoz's PRO membership, and I have to tell you that on a personal level, every single one makes me feel honored, humble and yes, even a bit guilty about reading comic books last night instead of working on new tools/q+a/tips/etc. One of the big frustrations PRO members have, though, is that they can't find (or don't even know about) a lot of the cool st...

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Why Apple Isn't UK Enough for Google
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Why Apple Isn't UK Enough for Google

Did you know apple.com doesn't rank in google.co.uk with the "pages from the uk" flag checked? On further inspection this is because Apple uses Akamai which dynamically changes the dns settings to ensure the best user experience. Given that Googlebot always crawls from the US this means that the dns always returns a US based ip address, even though there are Akamai servers serving apples website in the UK.

The World Series Spidering Problem
Will Critchlow

The World Series Spidering Problem

The issue I want to talk about is geo-delivery i.e. delivering different content to different visitors depending on their geographic location. When you don't know more information about the visitor (from sign-up information, cookie, etc.), the only way of doing this is through determining their location from their IP address. Whenever you start talking about selectively delivering content based on IP address, the topic of cloaking inevitably comes up.