First, two words you'll hear everywhere
SEO stands for search engine optimization — simply, helping Google understand your site and show it when people search. "Technical SEO" is the behind-the-scenes part of that: making sure Google's software can reach, read, and trust your pages at all. It sounds intimidating; it's really a short health checklist.
The essentials
- Crawlability — search engines and AI can reach and read your pages ("crawling" is how their software visits the web). Watch for accidental blocks, and keep a working sitemap (the file that lists your pages for them).
- HTTPS — the padlock in the browser's address bar, meaning your site is served securely. A baseline trust signal.
- Mobile-friendly — the site works and reads well on phones, where most visitors are.
- Speed — pages load fast. Slow sites show up lower on Google ("rank" lower, in SEO-speak) and lose impatient visitors.
- Clean titles & meta descriptions — the headline and short preview text Google shows for your page. One clear title per page that states what it's about.
- One H1 (the page's main headline), with logical smaller headings beneath — structure both people and machines can follow.
- Structured data — labels in your page's code (called "schema") that state facts like your hours and address in a way machines can read.
How to find your gaps
Run an audit (GrowMyWebsite's free audit checks all of the above) and fix the failures first, then the warnings. Re-run it after changes — technical SEO is something you verify, not assume.