Published by NewsPR Today | July 2025
Think keywords are all that matter in SEO? Think again. You could write the world’s best blog post or craft the slickest landing page, but if your site is a technical mess, Google might never even see it.
That’s the harsh truth. And no, this isn’t just an issue for developers or IT departments. If you own a business, run a blog, or manage a marketing site, technical SEO is your business too.
Here’s what it means—and how to fix the problems you didn’t know you had.
Why Technical SEO Matters More Than Ever
We all talk about content and keywords, but before your content can even rank, search engines need to crawl and understand it. This is where technical SEO steps in.
Think of Google like a delivery driver trying to find a specific house. You might have amazing furniture inside (aka content), but if your address is missing, your house is behind a locked gate, and the street name keeps changing, Google’s not going to find you.
And with AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s own AI Overviews pulling snippets from indexed content, visibility isn’t just about search anymore. If your pages can’t be crawled, they’ll never be quoted.
What Is Crawl Efficiency—and Why Should You Care?
Crawl efficiency is simply how well search engines can get to and process your important content.
If your site is full of outdated pages, messy redirects, infinite filters, or auto-generated junk, Google ends up wasting time crawling stuff you don’t even want people to see. That means it spends less time on your high-value pages—the ones that bring you traffic and revenue.
Cleaning up crawl waste is like clearing the clutter from a hallway so people (and search engines) can reach the room that matters.
5 Smart Fixes That Move the Needle
1. Structure Your Site with Intent (Not Flatness)
You may have heard the myth that “flat” sites (with every page close to the homepage) are better. But that’s not always true.
Instead, aim for smart nesting—organising your content into meaningful folders and categories.
Example:
Instead of dumping every blog post into /blog/, try /blog/seo/structured-data-guide. This tells Google (and you) exactly what the page is about.
Why it works:
- Easier to track performance by topic
- Simplifies redirects during site updates
- Helps search engines understand context
Tip: Don’t bury key pages five clicks deep. But also don’t flatten everything into chaos.
2. Clean Out Crawl Junk
Every site has “digital dust”—pages that exist but shouldn’t. These clog up Google’s time and your crawl budget.
Common offenders:
- Internal search result pages
- Tag archives with no value
- URLs generated by calendar filters or product sorters
- UTM-littered duplicates
- Dev or staging environments accidentally exposed
Fix it:
Use tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or Google Search Console to find which pages are being crawled. Then block unnecessary ones using robots.txt, canonical tags, or by removing them entirely.
3. Tidy Up Your Redirects
Redirects are like road detours. Useful, but too many slow things down.
If a user (or Googlebot) has to jump through three URLs to reach the final page, that’s wasted time and diluted SEO value.
Example:
/blog/seo-2021 → /blog/seo-basics → /seo/guide/
Bad. Too many steps.Fix that with a direct line:
/blog/seo-2021 → /seo/guide/
Quick tip: Audit your redirects every quarter. Update your internal links too—don’t keep linking to old URLs just because they technically still work.
Related Article:
- Is Google’s AI Killing Your Plumbing Leads? Proven SEO Strategies Plumbers Need Now
- Google’s AI Overview Algorithm: Simple SEO Strategy Guide for Concrete Services
4. Avoid JavaScript-Only Navigation
Yes, Google can render JavaScript—but not always right away. And AI tools? They usually can’t at all.
If your important links are hidden behind pop-ups or modals or require users to search or scroll endlessly, search engines (and AI models) might never find them.
Fix it:
- Use traditional HTML links for key pages
- Make your navigation crawlable and static
- Avoid loading important content only after someone clicks
Real-world impact: If your support docs or product manuals are only available after a user types in a search bar, AI models might just pull answers from Reddit instead. Not ideal.
5. Fix Pagination & URL Parameters
E-commerce and content-heavy sites often suffer from messy pagination or URL parameters that confuse crawlers.
Problem example:
?page=2, ?sort=asc, ?color=blue — Google might see each variation as a separate page, even if the content is nearly identical.
What to do:
- Use clean pagination (like /page/2/, not ?page=2)
- Avoid canonicals pointing every page to the first one
- Use noindex or robots.txt to block unnecessary variations
- Declare parameter rules in Google Search Console—if you know what you’re doing
- Paginated content should add value, not just clone the first page.
Crawl Health = Business Health
Think of crawl waste as technical debt. The more junk you have, the more time, energy, and budget gets wasted.
Clean it up, and you’re not just helping Google—you’re helping your users, your site speed, and your ability to measure what’s working.
What Should You Prioritise This Quarter?
If you’re short on time, here’s where to start:
- Review crawl logs—Identify where Googlebot is spending time
- Clean internal linking—make sure key pages are easy to find
- Block crawl traps—close off useless or duplicate paths
- Test your site rendering—what does Google see?
- Fix redirect chains, especially on money pages
None of this requires fancy tools or massive budgets—just smart attention.
Final Thought: Keywords Mean Nothing If You’re Invisible
You can pour your heart into content, hire the best copywriters, and optimise for all the right keywords—but if search engines can’t reach your pages, it’s like building a store with no door.
Technical SEO doesn’t have to be scary or overly technical. It’s about helping Google (and AI) understand, trust, and prioritise your site.
Fix the foundation. Then focus on content, authority, and experience.
