SEO & MetadataComplete Guide14 min readPublished 24 February 2026
SEO for Business Owners: The Technical Foundations That Get You Found on Google
Alexander Rule
Founder, Northrule SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the set of technical and content practices that help Google find, understand, trust, and rank your website. It is not magic, it is not a dark art, and it is not something you can ignore if your business depends on customers finding you online. The technical foundations covered in this guide are the infrastructure that makes everything else — content marketing, paid advertising, social media — work harder.
Before spending money on blog posts, Google Ads, or social media campaigns, you need the technical foundations in place. A sitemap that tells Google which pages exist. Meta titles that convince people to click. Canonical tags that prevent duplicate content from cannibalising your rankings. Schema markup that makes your search listings stand out. Internal links that guide both Google and customers to your most important pages.
These are not optional extras. They are the minimum requirements for competing in search results.
BrightEdge research found that 68% of all online experiences start with a search engine. Of those, 75% of users never scroll past the first page of results. If your website is not visible on page one for the search terms your customers use, you are invisible to the majority of your potential market.
Technical SEO is what determines whether Google can even consider your pages for ranking. If your sitemap is missing pages, Google does not know they exist. If your robots.txt blocks important sections, Google cannot crawl them. If your meta titles are duplicated, Google cannot distinguish your pages. If your site is slow, Google penalises your rankings through Core Web Vitals.
Your website platform and tech stack set the baseline — some platforms handle technical SEO better than others. But regardless of platform, the foundations covered here need to be configured correctly.
An XML sitemap is a file that lists every page on your website you want Google to find. Think of it as handing Google a map of your shop so they do not miss any aisles.
You can check if you have one by typing yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml into your browser. If a structured list of URLs appears, you have a sitemap. If you get a 404 error, you do not — and Google is relying on links alone to discover your pages.
The commercial risk is straightforward: if your best product pages or service pages are not in your sitemap, Google may never discover them. Pages that are not indexed cannot appear in search results. That is zero organic traffic to pages that could be generating revenue.
Our guide on XML sitemaps covers how to create one, what to include, what to exclude, and how to submit it to Google through Search Console.
Robots.txt is a small text file at the root of your website that tells search engines which parts of your site they are allowed to crawl and which parts to ignore. Check yours at yourdomain.com/robots.txt.
This file has extraordinary power for its size. A single misplaced line can hide your entire website from Google. Common mistakes include leaving a staging site's "disallow all" directive in place after launch, accidentally blocking CSS and JavaScript files (which prevents Google from rendering your pages properly), and blocking product categories or filtering pages that should be indexed.
Our guide on robots.txt explained covers how to read your file, common mistakes that cost businesses traffic, and how to fix them.
Meta titles and descriptions are your free advert on Google's search results page. They are the text people see — and read — before deciding whether to click through to your website.
A compelling meta title and description can increase your click-through rate by 20–30% without any change in ranking position. That is 20–30% more visitors from the same search visibility, at zero cost.
The rules are specific: titles should be 50–60 characters, front-loaded with your primary keyword, and written to compel a click. Descriptions should be 150–160 characters and expand on the title with a clear value proposition. Duplicate titles across pages confuse Google and dilute your rankings.
Our guide on meta titles and descriptions covers character limits, keyword placement, writing for click-through rate, and before-and-after examples.
A canonical tag tells Google which version of a page is the "main" one when multiple versions exist. This is extremely common — more common than most business owners realise.
Your site probably has duplicate content right now: http:// and https:// versions, www and non-www versions, product pages with URL parameters from filters and sorting, and pages accessible through multiple URL paths. Without canonical tags, Google splits your ranking authority across all these versions. None of them rank as well as they should.
Think of it this way: having two identical shop fronts on the same street means customers split between them, and neither one looks busy. Canonical tags tell Google which door is the real entrance.
Our guide on canonical tags explained covers self-referencing canonicals, common errors, and how to check your implementation.
Since July 2019, Google uses mobile-first indexing. That means Google evaluates your mobile website — not your desktop version — when determining your rankings. If your mobile experience is poor, your rankings suffer across all devices.
Over 60% of web traffic is mobile. For some industries — particularly local services, retail, and hospitality — mobile traffic exceeds 80%. A website that is not properly optimised for mobile is losing the majority of its potential visitors.
Mobile SEO covers responsive design (non-negotiable), tap target sizes, font readability, viewport configuration, avoiding intrusive pop-ups, and mobile page speed. These overlap significantly with Core Web Vitals on mobile — the metrics Google uses to evaluate page experience.
Our guide on mobile SEO for small business covers every mobile optimisation factor that affects your rankings.
Schema markup is structured data you add to your pages that helps Google understand your content. It does not directly improve your rankings, but it dramatically improves how your listing looks in search results — star ratings, prices, FAQ dropdowns, business hours, and more.
These enhanced listings are called rich results, and they can increase click-through rates by 20–30%. In a crowded search results page, a listing with star ratings and prices stands out against plain text listings.
The most relevant schema types for business websites are Organisation, Product, Article, FAQ, HowTo, and LocalBusiness. Each tells Google specific information about your content in a machine-readable format.
Our guide on schema markup for small business introduces each type and explains how to implement them. For a deeper dive into each schema type, see our comprehensive structured data guide.
Internal links are the connections between pages on your own website. Every internal link is a signal to Google that the linked page matters — it passes authority, helps Google discover pages, and guides visitors from informational content to commercial pages.
Poor internal linking is one of the most common SEO failures. Pages with no internal links pointing to them (orphan pages) are invisible to Google. Important product or service pages buried three clicks deep get less ranking authority than pages linked from everywhere.
The commercial value is direct: proper internal linking guides visitors from a blog post about a topic to your service page that solves their problem. It guides Google to prioritise your money-making pages in rankings. And it keeps visitors on your site longer — reducing bounce rate and increasing the chance of conversion.
Our guide on internal linking strategy covers anchor text best practices, orphan page detection, deep linking, and how to audit your current internal link structure. Internal linking is also a core component of your website structure.
A broken link points to a page that no longer exists — a 404 error. A redirect chain sends visitors through multiple hops before reaching the final page (A→B→C→D). Both are common, and both cost you traffic and conversions.
Every broken link is a customer who reached a dead end on your site. Every redirect chain adds load time. Google treats excessive 404 errors as a signal of poor site maintenance, and redirect chains dilute the link authority being passed.
Common causes: deleted products with existing links, changed URLs without redirects, misspelled links in content, and 302 (temporary) redirects used where 301 (permanent) redirects are needed. Temporary redirects do not pass full link authority — if you meant to redirect permanently, using a 302 is quietly wasting your SEO value.
Our guide on fixing broken links and redirects covers how to find them, the difference between 301 and 302 redirects, and how to fix redirect chains.
Images are often the single biggest performance issue on business websites. Product photos, hero images, and blog graphics that are uncompressed, oversized, or served in outdated formats slow your pages and hurt your rankings.
Images account for 50–70% of total page weight on most sites. A single unoptimised hero image can add 2–3MB to your homepage — enough to push your Largest Contentful Paint past Google's 2.5-second threshold and into failing territory.
But image optimisation is not just about speed. Proper alt text helps Google understand your images, improves accessibility, and drives traffic from Google Image Search. Product images with descriptive alt text appear in Google Shopping and Image results — a traffic channel many businesses overlook.
Our guide on image optimisation for websites covers file formats (WebP vs JPEG vs PNG), compression tools, responsive images, lazy loading, and alt text best practices.
Technical SEO is not a checklist of isolated tasks — the foundations work together:
Miss one foundation and the rest work less effectively. Get them all right and each one amplifies the others.
This technical layer connects to every other aspect of your online presence. Core Web Vitals measure your speed and user experience. Search Console monitors your SEO health. Site structure organises your content. Lead capture converts the traffic your SEO generates.
Check your sitemap — Visit yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. If it does not exist, create one. If it does, check whether your most important pages are listed.
Check your robots.txt — Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Look for any "Disallow" lines that might be blocking important pages or directories.
Check your meta titles — Google your brand name. Look at the titles and descriptions that appear. Are they compelling? Are they unique per page? Do they describe what the page offers?
Test your mobile experience — Open your site on your phone. Is the text readable without zooming? Are buttons easy to tap? Does the layout work on a small screen?
Run a PageSpeed test — Go to pagespeed.web.dev and test your homepage on mobile. Note your Core Web Vitals scores and any image-related warnings.
Technical SEO is the foundation. Without it, your content cannot rank, your pages cannot be found, and your marketing spend delivers less return than it should. With it, every piece of content you publish, every link you earn, and every ad you run works harder.
The guides in this series cover each foundation in the depth it deserves. Start with whatever you identified in the checks above — or work through them all for a complete technical audit.
If you want a professional assessment of your technical SEO — covering every foundation in this guide plus the advanced factors most businesses miss — talk to us about an SEO audit. We crawl your site, identify every issue, and give you a prioritised fix list.
For a straightforward conversation about your SEO, get in touch.
Technical SEO is the set of behind-the-scenes practices that help search engines find, understand, and rank your website. It includes your XML sitemap, robots.txt file, meta titles and descriptions, canonical tags, schema markup, internal linking, image optimisation, and mobile-friendliness. Without these foundations, even the best content struggles to rank.
If you want customers to find you through Google, yes. 68% of online experiences start with a search engine, and 75% of users never scroll past the first page of results. If your business is not visible on page one for your key search terms, your competitors are getting that traffic instead.
Technical SEO fixes — sitemaps, meta tags, broken links, image optimisation — can show results within 4–8 weeks as Google recrawls and re-evaluates your pages. Content-driven SEO (new pages, blog posts, link building) typically takes 3–6 months to produce measurable ranking improvements. SEO is a compounding investment, not an overnight fix.
Content relevance and quality remain the most important ranking factors — your page needs to genuinely answer the searcher's question. After that, backlinks from authoritative websites signal trust. Technical SEO (site speed, mobile-friendliness, structured data) acts as a multiplier — it ensures Google can find and understand your content so those other factors can do their job.
Many technical SEO foundations can be implemented without a specialist — submitting a sitemap, writing meta titles, compressing images, and fixing broken links are all manageable tasks. More complex areas like schema markup, server configuration, and advanced internal linking strategy benefit from professional support. Start with the basics and engage a specialist for the technical depth.
Technical SEO is the infrastructure — making sure Google can find, crawl, and understand your pages. Content SEO is what you put on those pages — the words, images, and information that match what people are searching for. Both are essential. Technical SEO without good content ranks nothing. Good content without technical SEO may never be found.
Start with Google Search Console — it is free and shows which pages Google has indexed, any errors it has found, and how your pages perform in search results. Google PageSpeed Insights checks your speed and Core Web Vitals. For a comprehensive audit, tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs crawl your entire site and identify technical issues.
When multiple versions of the same page exist, Google splits your ranking authority between them. Canonical tags tell Google which version is the real one. This guide explains what they are, why you need them, and how to check.
6 min readEvery broken link is a customer who hit a dead end. Every redirect chain adds load time. This guide covers how to find 404 errors, fix redirect chains, and stop losing traffic to link rot.
6 min readImages account for 50–70% of total page weight. Unoptimised product photos slow your site, hurt your Core Web Vitals, and reduce conversions. This guide covers formats, compression, lazy loading, responsive images, and alt text.
6 min readEvery internal link tells Google a page matters. Proper internal linking guides visitors to commercial pages and distributes ranking authority. This guide covers anchor text, orphan pages, deep linking, and auditing.
7 min readYour meta title and description are the text people see in Google before deciding to click. Improving them can increase click-through rates by 20–30% at zero cost. This guide covers the rules, limits, and examples.
7 min readGoogle ranks your site based on the mobile version. Over 60% of traffic is mobile. If your mobile experience is poor, your rankings suffer on all devices. This guide covers every mobile SEO factor.
7 min readRobots.txt tells search engines which pages they can crawl. A single misplaced line can hide your entire website from Google. This guide explains how to read your robots.txt, common mistakes, and how to fix them.
5 min readSchema markup tells Google about your content in machine-readable format. It enables rich results — star ratings, prices, FAQs — that increase click-through rates by 20–30%. This guide covers the types that matter for business.
7 min readAn XML sitemap is a file listing every page you want Google to find. If your best pages are not in it, they may never appear in search results. This guide covers how to check yours, what to include, and how to submit it.
5 min readSubscribe to get our latest guides, tutorials, and success stories delivered to your inbox
When multiple versions of the same page exist, Google splits your ranking authority between them. Canonical tags tell Google which version is the real one. This guide explains what they are, why you need them, and how to check.
Read More →Every broken link is a customer who hit a dead end. Every redirect chain adds load time. This guide covers how to find 404 errors, fix redirect chains, and stop losing traffic to link rot.
Read More →Images account for 50–70% of total page weight. Unoptimised product photos slow your site, hurt your Core Web Vitals, and reduce conversions. This guide covers formats, compression, lazy loading, responsive images, and alt text.
Read More →