SEO-Guidelines-Smartcrawl/seo-strategy/technical-seo.md

Technical SEO

Technical foundations that must be in place for any SEO effort to succeed. These affect how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks your site.

Core Web Vitals

Google's page experience signals. Content relevance is still more important, but poor performance can hold you back.

Metrics

Metric	Target	What It Measures
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)	Under 2.5s	How fast the main content loads
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)	Under 200ms	How responsive the page is to input
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)	Under 0.1	How much the layout shifts during load

How to Improve

LCP:

• Optimize images (WebP/AVIF, proper sizing, lazy loading for below-fold)
• Reduce server response time (caching, CDN)
• Preload critical resources (fonts, hero images)
• Minimize render-blocking CSS/JS

INP:

• Minimize JavaScript execution time
• Break up long tasks
• Optimize event handlers
• Defer non-critical JavaScript

CLS:

• Set explicit width/height on images and embeds
• Don't insert content above existing content dynamically
• Use font-display: swap or preload web fonts
• Reserve space for ads/embeds

WordPress Specifics

• Use server-level caching (EA-Nginx proxy cache is already configured on our server)
• Optimize images on upload (Smush or similar)
• Minimize plugin count — each plugin adds overhead
• Use Hummingbird or LiteSpeed Cache for asset optimization
• Purge Nginx cache after changes: rm -rf /var/cache/ea-nginx/proxy/<account>/*

Mobile-First Indexing

Google uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking. There is no separate desktop index.

Requirements

• All desktop content is also visible on mobile
• Viewport meta tag present: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
• Font size minimum 16px body text
• Tap targets minimum 48x48px with 8px spacing
• No horizontal scrolling
• Content hidden in accordions/tabs is fine (as long as it's in the HTML)

Testing

• Google's Mobile-Friendly Test
• Search Console > Mobile Usability report
• Chrome DevTools device emulator

Crawlability and Indexability

XML Sitemap

• Submit to Google Search Console
• SmartCrawl generates this automatically
• Verify at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
• Include all important pages, exclude thin/duplicate content

Robots.txt

Recommended content:

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Do NOT block CSS/JS files — Google needs them for mobile-first rendering.

Crawl Budget

For small sites (<500 pages), crawl budget is rarely an issue. For larger sites:

• Don't waste budget on filter pages, parameter URLs, or thin pagination
• Use noindex on pages with no SEO value
• Keep the sitemap clean (only valuable URLs)

Index Status

Check Search Console > Pages report for:

Status	Meaning	Action
Indexed	Page is in Google	Good
Discovered — not indexed	Google knows about it but hasn't indexed it	Improve content quality, add internal links
Crawled — not indexed	Google crawled it but chose not to index	Content isn't valuable enough — improve or noindex
Excluded by noindex	You set noindex	Intentional? If not, fix it

What to Noindex

• Thank you / confirmation pages
• Internal search results
• Tag archives with thin content
• Author archives on single-author sites
• Admin/login pages
• Paginated archives
• Media attachment pages

Canonical URLs

Self-Referencing Canonicals

Every page should have: <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/current-page/">

SmartCrawl handles this automatically for most cases.

Choose One Format

Pick one and redirect all variations to it:

Decision	Options
www vs non-www	example.com or www.example.com
HTTP vs HTTPS	Always HTTPS
Trailing slash	/page/ or /page — pick one

Redirect the other variations via .htaccess or server config (not SmartCrawl — this is a server-level concern).

Structured Data

See Schema Markup for SmartCrawl implementation.

Priority Order

Schema Type	Rich Result	Priority
LocalBusiness	Knowledge panel, maps	Every local business
FAQ	Expandable Q&A in SERPs	Pages with Q&A content
BreadcrumbList	Breadcrumb trail in SERPs	All pages (via Breadcrumbs module)
Event	Date/time/location in SERPs	Event listings
Course	Course listing	Educational offerings
Article	Article metadata	Blog posts
Product	Price, availability, rating	WooCommerce products
Review / AggregateRating	Stars in results	Review pages (genuine reviews only)

Validation

Always validate after deployment:

1. Google Rich Results Test
2. Schema.org Validator
3. Google Search Console > Enhancements (ongoing monitoring)

HTTPS

• Required. No exceptions. Google uses HTTPS as a ranking signal.
• All HTTP URLs should 301 redirect to HTTPS
• Mixed content (HTTP resources on HTTPS pages) must be fixed
• SSL certificates are managed via cPanel on our server

Page Speed Quick Wins

Action	Impact	Effort
Enable server-level caching	High	Already done (EA-Nginx)
Optimize images (WebP, compression)	High	Low
Lazy load below-fold images	Medium	Low
Minimize active plugins	Medium	Low
Preload critical fonts	Medium	Low
Defer non-critical JavaScript	Medium	Medium
Use a CDN	Medium	Medium
Inline critical CSS	Low	High

Technical SEO Audit Checklist

• Site loads over HTTPS (no mixed content)
• XML sitemap exists and is submitted to Search Console
• Robots.txt is correct (not blocking important resources)
• All pages have self-referencing canonical tags
• One URL format (www/non-www, slash/no-slash) with redirects for the rest
• No orphan pages (every page has internal links)
• Core Web Vitals pass (LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1)
• Mobile-friendly test passes
• No 404 errors on important pages (check Search Console)
• Structured data validates without errors
• No duplicate title tags or meta descriptions
• Images have alt text and are optimized