What technical SEO actually matters for a small website?

Technical SEO guides are often written for huge sites and intimidate small business owners. For a small site, a short list covers almost everything that matters.

It must be crawlable and indexable

Make sure no stray setting blocks search engines, that you have a sitemap, and that your important pages are actually in the index. Everything else is moot if the pages cannot be found.

It must be fast on a phone

Compress images, avoid heavy scripts, and choose decent hosting. Most visitors are on mobile, and a slow page loses both visitors and ranking.

It must have clean, descriptive URLs and titles

Each page needs a unique, descriptive title tag and meta description, and a readable URL. These are simple to get right and genuinely help.

It should use basic structured data

Marking up your business details, reviews, and articles helps search engines and assistants understand the page. A little goes a long way for a small site.

It must not have broken links or duplicate pages

Fix broken links, avoid publishing the same content on several URLs, and set a canonical URL. Tidy beats clever.