Technical SEO Questions, Answered Without the Jargon

This page is a reference index, not an exhaustive guide. Each answer below is intentionally concise — enough to understand the concept and decide whether you need to go deeper.

Questions are grouped into four categories matching the core technical SEO disciplines:

• Crawling — how search engines discover your pages
• Indexation — which pages get stored and eligible to rank
• Site Speed — performance signals Google measures and users feel
• Structured Data — markup that helps Google understand your content's meaning

If a short answer isn't enough, each section links to the relevant deep-dive guide in this cluster. If you want a tool that audits all four categories automatically, the technical SEO tools overview covers what's available and how they compare.

Who this page is for: developers and SEO practitioners who want quick orientation on an unfamiliar concept, content teams trying to understand why a page isn't ranking, and marketing managers preparing briefs for technical audits.

What is crawl budget and does it matter for my site?

Crawl budget is the number of URLs Googlebot will crawl on your site within a given timeframe. For most small-to-medium sites (under 10,000 pages), it's rarely the limiting factor. It becomes important when you have large e-commerce catalogs, heavy JavaScript rendering, or thousands of low-value URLs consuming crawler attention that should go to your money pages.

What does robots.txt actually do?

Robots.txt tells crawlers which paths they're allowed to access. It does not prevent pages from being indexed — if other sites link to a disallowed page, Google can still index it. Use robots.txt to block crawling of admin areas, duplicate parameter URLs, and internal search results. Use noindex meta tags when you want to prevent indexation specifically.

How do I know if Googlebot is having trouble crawling my site?

Google Search Console's Coverage report and the URL Inspection tool are the starting point. Look for crawl anomalies in the Crawl Stats report (under Settings). A sudden drop in crawled pages, high server response errors (5xx), or redirect chains flagged in a crawler tool like Screaming Frog are reliable signals that something is blocking Googlebot's path.

Does JavaScript affect crawling?

Yes. Googlebot renders JavaScript, but rendering is deferred and resource-constrained. Content that only appears after JavaScript executes may be crawled days or weeks after the initial page discovery. For critical content — navigation, body text, internal links — server-side or static rendering is more reliable than client-side JavaScript alone.

What's the difference between crawled and indexed?

Crawled means Googlebot visited and downloaded the page. Indexed means Google stored the page in its index and considers it eligible to appear in search results. A page can be crawled repeatedly without ever being indexed if Google determines it has thin content, is a near-duplicate, or has a noindex directive present.

Why is my page crawled but not indexed?

The most common reasons include: thin or duplicate content, a noindex tag (sometimes added accidentally by CMS plugins), a canonical pointing to a different URL, or Google simply deciding the page isn't useful enough to store. Check the URL in Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool — it will tell you the last crawl date and the specific reason for non-indexation.

What do canonical tags do?

A canonical tag (rel="canonical") tells Google which version of a URL should receive indexation credit when multiple URLs serve the same or similar content. They're not directives — Google treats them as strong hints and may override them if it disagrees with your choice. Consistent internal linking to the canonical URL reinforces the signal.

Can I force Google to index a page faster?

You can request indexing via the URL Inspection tool in Search Console, which typically surfaces the page for recrawling within days. Building internal links from already-indexed pages and earning external links accelerates the process more reliably than any direct submission method. There's no designed to timeframe — new sites in low-authority domains often wait weeks.

What are Core Web Vitals and why do they matter?

Core Web Vitals are three user-experience metrics Google uses as ranking signals: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures load speed of the main content element, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability, and Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures responsiveness to user input. INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) as an official signal in March 2024. Failing these thresholds won't tank a high-authority page, but they create a disadvantage when competing against pages of similar quality.

What tools measure site speed accurately?

Google's PageSpeed Insights runs both lab data (simulated) and field data (real user measurements from the Chrome UX Report). Lighthouse, available in Chrome DevTools, provides detailed diagnostic breakdowns. WebPageTest offers more granular waterfall analysis. For ongoing monitoring rather than one-off audits, tools that track field data trends over time give a more accurate picture than single lab tests.

What typically causes poor LCP scores?

In our experience working on site performance, the most frequent culprits are unoptimized hero images (large file sizes, no lazy loading deferral for above-the-fold elements), render-blocking CSS or JavaScript delaying the browser's paint, slow server response times (TTFB above 600ms), and missing resource hints like preload for critical assets. Each issue has a distinct fix — a waterfall chart in WebPageTest makes it straightforward to identify which is dominant.

Does page speed affect crawl budget?

Yes, indirectly. Slow server response times increase the time Googlebot spends waiting per URL, which reduces how many pages it can crawl in a session. This matters most on large sites. Improving TTFB (Time to First Byte) benefits both users and crawl efficiency simultaneously.

What is structured data and what does it actually do?

Structured data is machine-readable markup (most commonly JSON-LD format) that describes the content of a page to search engines. It doesn't change what users see — it tells Google what type of content is present: an article, a product, a FAQ, an event, a recipe. Google uses this to power rich results (enhanced SERP displays) and to better understand content relationships.

Does structured data improve rankings?

Not directly. Google has consistently stated that structured data is not a ranking factor. What it does is make your content eligible for rich result formats — star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, breadcrumbs, sitelinks — which can improve click-through rates from the same ranking position. Higher CTR can compound into ranking improvement indirectly, but the markup itself isn't a ranking signal.

What structured data types matter most for most sites?

The answer depends on content type, but the most broadly applicable schemas are: Organization (establishes entity identity), BreadcrumbList (improves SERP display of site hierarchy), Article or BlogPosting (for editorial content), and FAQPage (for pages like this one). E-commerce sites should prioritize Product and Review markup. Local businesses need LocalBusiness schema.

How do I validate my structured data?

Use Google's Rich Results Test (rich-results.google.com) for checking eligibility for enhanced SERP features, and Schema.org's validator for general markup correctness. Google Search Console's Enhancements section shows structured data errors and warnings across the entire site — this is the right tool for ongoing monitoring after initial implementation.

Can structured data cause penalties?

Structured data that misrepresents content — marking up content as reviews when no reviews exist, or using FAQ schema on content that isn't actually a Q&A format — violates Google's spam policies and can trigger manual actions. The rule is simple: markup should accurately describe what users actually see on the page.

If a short answer above raised more questions than it answered, these guides go deeper on each discipline:

• Crawling and crawl budget: The technical SEO audit guide covers how to diagnose crawl inefficiencies, identify URL bloat, and prioritize which pages deserve crawl attention.
• Indexation problems: The definition and fundamentals page explains the full indexation pipeline — from discovery through rendering to storage — and how each stage can break.
• Site speed and Core Web Vitals: The checklist page covers a prioritized sequence of speed optimizations, ordered by typical impact-to-effort ratio.
• Structured data implementation: The hub page links to schema-specific guides for the most common content types.

For practitioners who want tooling that surfaces answers to all four categories automatically — flagging crawl errors, indexation gaps, speed regressions, and schema validation issues in a single workflow — the technical SEO tools overview explains what the leading options cover and where each has gaps.

This FAQ page is intentionally a routing layer, not a replacement for hands-on diagnostic work. The questions here represent orientation points; the linked guides are where the actionable detail lives.