When most people think about SEO, they think about keywords and content. That is a legitimate part of it, but there is a layer underneath that, which is about how your website is technically structured and configured. If this layer is broken, content and keywords will only take you so far. If it is solid, everything else you do for SEO becomes more effective.
Site speed and Core Web Vitals
Google uses a set of measurements called Core Web Vitals to assess the user experience of your pages. The key ones are Largest Contentful Paint (how quickly the main content loads), Interaction to Next Paint (how responsive the page is to user input), and Cumulative Layout Shift (how much the page jumps around while loading).
These matter because Google factors them into rankings, and because a slow, unstable page loses visitors. You can check your site's performance using Google's PageSpeed Insights tool, which is free and gives you a score out of 100 along with specific recommendations.
Common causes of poor scores include large unoptimised images, too many scripts loading simultaneously, heavy page builder plugins (a particular WordPress issue), and cheap hosting that cannot serve pages quickly. Fixing these issues can meaningfully improve both your rankings and your conversion rate.
Crawlability and indexing
For your pages to appear in Google results, Google's crawler needs to be able to find them and add them to its index. Several things can prevent this. A robots.txt file that inadvertently blocks crawlers. A noindex tag placed on pages during development and never removed. Orphan pages that no other page on the site links to. Duplicate content across multiple URLs.
Google Search Console is the tool for understanding how Google sees your site. It shows you which pages are indexed, which are not and why, and any crawl errors it has encountered. If you have not connected your site to Search Console, doing so is a straightforward first step that gives you real data about how Google is experiencing your site.
Site structure and internal linking
How your pages link to each other matters. A logical site structure where your most important pages are accessible within a click or two from the homepage signals to Google which pages are significant. Internal links pass what is sometimes called link equity between pages: a link from a well-performing page to a newer one helps the newer one get found and ranked more quickly.
Think of your site as having a hierarchy. Your homepage sits at the top. Key service or category pages sit one level below. Individual blog posts or product pages sit below those. Internal links should generally flow down this hierarchy and also sideways between related pages at the same level.
HTTPS and security
If your site still runs on HTTP rather than HTTPS, this is an urgent fix. HTTPS encrypts the connection between your site and visitors, and Google has used it as a ranking signal since 2014. Most browsers now display a "Not Secure" warning on HTTP sites, which damages visitor confidence significantly. Your hosting provider should be able to enable an SSL certificate, often at no additional cost via Let's Encrypt.
Structured data and schema markup
This is covered in more detail in a separate post, but briefly: structured data is code you add to your pages that tells Google explicitly what your content is about. It can enable rich results in search (star ratings, FAQs, breadcrumbs appearing directly in the search listing), which improves click-through rates without necessarily changing your ranking position.
Mobile-first indexing
Google now primarily uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking, not the desktop version. If your mobile experience is significantly different from or worse than your desktop experience, that affects how Google treats your site. Check your site on a range of actual devices, not just by resizing a browser window.
XML sitemaps
A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your site and gives Google information about how frequently they are updated. Submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console helps ensure your pages are crawled promptly, particularly useful when you publish new content or add new pages.
What to prioritise
If you are starting from scratch on technical SEO, this is a reasonable order of priority: HTTPS first, then Search Console setup and error resolution, then page speed improvements, then site structure review, then structured data. Each step compounds the others.
At Ramdex, technical SEO is part of how we build sites, not an optional add-on. If you want an audit of your current site's technical health, get in touch at info@ramdex.co.uk or message us on WhatsApp at +44 7931 272489.