Technical SEO forms the foundation of your site's search visibility. Without it, even the best content may never reach its audience. This guide covers the critical technical elements that determine whether search engines can find, understand, and rank your pages.
Understanding Core Web Vitals
Google's Core Web Vitals measure real-world user experience through three key metrics. Meeting these thresholds is essential for both rankings and user satisfaction.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
LCP measures how long it takes for the largest content element to become visible. Target: under 2.5 seconds. Common issues include slow server response, render-blocking resources, and unoptimized images.
How to improve LCP:
- Optimize and compress images with modern formats (WebP, AVIF)
- Implement lazy loading for below-fold images
- Use a CDN for faster global delivery
- Minimize render-blocking CSS and JavaScript
- Preload critical resources
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)
INP replaced FID in 2024, measuring responsiveness throughout the entire page lifecycle. Target: under 200 milliseconds. This metric captures how quickly your site responds to user interactions.
How to improve INP:
- Break up long JavaScript tasks
- Use web workers for heavy computations
- Optimize event handlers and callbacks
- Implement code splitting and dynamic imports
- Reduce main thread blocking
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
CLS measures visual stability—how much the page layout shifts during loading. Target: under 0.1. Layout shifts frustrate users and can cause accidental clicks.
How to improve CLS:
- Always include width and height attributes on images and videos
- Reserve space for ads and embeds
- Avoid inserting content above existing content
- Use CSS transform for animations instead of properties that trigger layout
- Preload custom fonts with font-display: swap
Site Speed Optimization
Beyond Core Web Vitals, overall site speed impacts user experience and conversions. Studies show that a 1-second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by 7%.
"Speed is not just a technical metric—it's a competitive advantage. Every 100ms improvement can increase conversion rates by 1%."
Server-Side Optimizations
Your server response time sets the baseline for all other performance metrics. Optimize database queries, implement caching layers, and consider edge computing for global audiences.
Frontend Performance
Modern frameworks offer excellent performance when configured correctly. Use static generation where possible, implement incremental static regeneration, and minimize client-side JavaScript.
Crawlability & Indexation
Search engines must be able to discover and understand your content. Technical barriers can prevent even excellent content from ranking.
Crawlability checklist:
- Submit XML sitemaps to Google Search Console
- Ensure robots.txt doesn't block important pages
- Fix broken links and redirect chains
- Implement proper canonical tags
- Use structured data markup (JSON-LD)
- Ensure JavaScript content is crawlable
- Monitor crawl budget for large sites
Tools for Technical SEO Audits
Regular audits catch issues before they impact rankings. Use Google Search Console for indexation data, PageSpeed Insights for Core Web Vitals, Screaming Frog for site crawls, and Chrome DevTools for debugging.
At Group Taiga, we build websites with technical SEO baked in from the start. Our development process includes performance budgets, automated testing, and continuous monitoring. Need a technical SEO audit? Let's optimize your site together.
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