Technical SEO encompasses all website optimizations that help search engines (and AI systems) crawl, index, and understand your site effectively. It's the foundation that allows content to be discovered and ranked.
Core technical SEO elements:
- Site speed and performance
- Mobile-friendliness
- Crawlability and indexation
- URL structure
- HTTPS security
- XML sitemaps
- Robots.txt configuration
- Canonical tags
- Hreflang for international
Technical SEO for AI visibility:
- Ensures AI can access your content
- Helps AI systems understand site structure
- Supports RAG systems in retrieving content
- Provides signals of site quality
- Enables accurate content extraction
Technical SEO audit checklist:
- Core Web Vitals performance
- Mobile usability
- Index coverage in Search Console
- Structured data implementation
- Internal linking structure
- Page load speed
Strong technical SEO is prerequisite for both traditional rankings and AI visibility.