What Google requires at minimum
Google's Search Essentials list three technical requirements for a page to be eligible. Googlebot needs access, the page has to work and return a success status, and it needs indexable content. Everything else in technical SEO makes those basics fast, clean and reliable.
The main areas of technical SEO
| Area | What we check |
|---|---|
| Crawling | robots.txt rules, internal links and server errors |
| Indexing | noindex tags, canonicals and the Page indexing report |
| Rendering | Content that only appears after JavaScript runs |
| Speed | Core Web Vitals on phones and desktops |
| Security | HTTPS everywhere, with no mixed content |
| Structure | Clean URLs, redirects, sitemaps and structured data |
Watch out for JavaScript-heavy sites
Google can render JavaScript, but it adds a step and things can break. Content that loads only after a click, links built without real link elements and pages that need scripts to show text are common problems. Google's JavaScript SEO guide recommends serving important content and links in the HTML.
We build client sites as static HTML for this reason. Google and AI crawlers get the full page in the first response.
Where to start on an existing site
- Check the Page indexing report for blocked or excluded pages.
- Crawl the site with Screaming Frog for errors and redirect chains.
- Test your main templates in PageSpeed Insights.
- Confirm one version of each page, on HTTPS.
- Submit an accurate sitemap and fix what it reveals.
Technical fixes rarely bring leads alone. They let your content and local signals work. See why pages are not indexed, or let our technical SEO team audit your site.