SEO Technical SEO Syllabus

Technical SEO syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for Technical SEO in SEO, not a summary of it.

1. 1

   Crawling and Indexing Control

   4 topics

   • Robots.txt Configuration
   • XML Sitemaps
   • Crawl Budget Optimization
   • Noindex, Nofollow, and Meta Robots Directives
2. 2

   Site Architecture and Crawlability

   4 topics

   • Flat vs Deep Site Structures
   • Pagination and Faceted Navigation
   • Orphan Pages and Crawl Depth
   • Log File Analysis
3. 3

   Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

   4 topics

   • Core Web Vitals
   • Page Speed Optimization Techniques
   • Caching, CDN, and Compression
   • PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse
4. 4

   Mobile and Rendering

   4 topics

   • Mobile-First Indexing
   • Responsive Design and Mobile Usability
   • JavaScript SEO and Rendering
   • Dynamic Rendering and Server-Side Rendering
5. 5

   Structured Data and Schema

   4 topics

   • Schema.org Vocabulary
   • Structured Data Formats
   • Common Schema Types (FAQ, Product, Article, Review)
   • Rich Results Testing and Validation
6. 6

   HTTPS, Security, and International SEO

   4 topics

   • HTTPS and SSL Certificates
   • Redirects (301, 302) and Redirect Chains
   • Canonicalization and Duplicate Content
   • International SEO

Technical SEO flashcards for SEO

22 of 51 cards from the Technical SEO deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. What is the primary purpose of a robots.txt file, and where must it be located?

   It instructs crawlers which URLs they may or may not request (crawl management, not indexing control). It must be placed at the root of the host, e.g. https://example.com/robots.txt, and applies only to that protocol, host, and port.

2. In robots.txt, what is the difference between the Disallow and Allow directives, and how are conflicts resolved?

   Disallow blocks a path from crawling; Allow permits it. When rules conflict, Google follows the most specific (longest matching path) rule; if equally specific, the least restrictive (Allow) wins.

3. Does a Disallow rule in robots.txt guarantee a page will not appear in search results?

   No. Robots.txt only blocks crawling. A blocked URL can still be indexed (often without a description) if other pages link to it. To keep a page out of the index, use a noindex meta tag or header, which requires the page to be crawlable.

4. What wildcard characters does Google support in robots.txt path matching, and what do they mean?

   $ matches the end of a URL, and * matches any sequence of characters. Example: Disallow: /*.pdf$ blocks all URLs ending in .pdf.

5. What is the recommended way to reference an XML sitemap so all crawlers can find it?

   Add a Sitemap: directive with the full absolute URL in robots.txt (e.g. Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml), and/or submit it directly in Google Search Console.

6. What are the size and URL-count limits for a single XML sitemap file?

   A single sitemap may contain at most 50,000 URLs and must not exceed 50 MB uncompressed. Larger sites split into multiple sitemaps referenced by a sitemap index file (also capped at 50,000 sitemaps).

7. List the four child elements of a <url> entry in an XML sitemap and which one is required.

   <loc> (the URL, required), <lastmod> (last modification date), <changefreq> (expected change frequency), and <priority> (0.0-1.0 relative importance). Google largely ignores changefreq and priority and relies on lastmod.

8. Define crawl budget and name its two governing components as described by Google.

   Crawl budget is the number of URLs a search engine will crawl on a site in a given period. It is governed by crawl capacity limit (how much crawling the site can handle without harming server performance) and crawl demand (how much Google wants to crawl based on popularity and staleness).

9. Name four common techniques to optimize crawl budget on a large site.

   1) Remove or consolidate duplicate/low-value URLs; 2) block non-essential URLs (e.g., infinite faceted parameters) via robots.txt; 3) improve server speed so more URLs can be fetched; 4) keep sitemaps and internal links pointing to canonical, high-value pages and return proper 404/410 for removed pages.

10. For which type of site does Google say crawl budget is generally NOT a concern?

    Sites with fewer than a few thousand URLs (small to medium sites) are usually crawled efficiently and do not need to worry about crawl budget. It mainly matters for large sites (100k+ URLs) or sites with many rapidly changing pages.

11. Contrast the effect of a noindex meta robots directive versus a robots.txt Disallow on whether a page is crawled.

    noindex requires the page to be crawled so the crawler can see the tag, then it is dropped from the index. robots.txt Disallow prevents crawling entirely, so a noindex tag on a disallowed page is never seen and cannot take effect.

12. What does the meta robots directive 'nofollow' instruct a crawler to do, and how does it differ from the rel="nofollow" link attribute?

    Page-level meta robots nofollow tells the crawler not to follow ANY links on that page. The rel="nofollow" attribute applies to a single specific link, signaling the crawler not to pass link equity or follow just that one link.

13. Write the HTML meta tag that keeps a page out of the index while still allowing its links to be followed.

    <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">

14. What is the difference between the 'noindex' and 'none' values of the meta robots tag?

    'noindex' blocks indexing but links may still be followed. 'none' is shorthand equivalent to 'noindex, nofollow' — it blocks both indexing and link following.

15. How can you apply robots directives to a non-HTML resource like a PDF where you cannot add a meta tag?

    Use the X-Robots-Tag HTTP response header, e.g. X-Robots-Tag: noindex, which can carry any directive (noindex, nofollow, noarchive, etc.) at the server response level for any file type.

16. Compare a flat site structure with a deep site structure and state which is generally preferred for SEO.

    A flat structure keeps most pages a few clicks from the homepage (shallow click depth); a deep structure buries pages many clicks down. Flat structures are generally preferred because important pages get crawled more often and receive more link equity, reducing crawl depth.

17. Define click depth (crawl depth) and give the commonly cited threshold beyond which pages risk poor indexing.

    Click depth is the minimum number of clicks from the homepage to reach a page. Pages deeper than about 3-4 clicks tend to be crawled less frequently and are at greater risk of poor or no indexing.

18. What is faceted navigation, and why is it a technical SEO risk?

    Faceted navigation lets users filter listings by attributes (color, size, price). It is a risk because combining filters generates a combinatorial explosion of near-duplicate URLs, wasting crawl budget and causing duplicate-content and index-bloat problems.

19. Name three methods to control the crawling/indexing of faceted-navigation URLs.

    1) rel="canonical" pointing filtered URLs to the main category page; 2) noindex on low-value filter combinations; 3) robots.txt disallow of specific filter parameters, and/or using nofollow on filter links or serving them as non-crawlable (e.g., POST/JS) navigation.

20. What is rel="next"/rel="prev" pagination, and what is Google's current stance on it?

    rel="next" and rel="prev" were link markup indicating a paginated sequence. Google announced in 2019 it no longer uses these signals; it now treats paginated pages as individual pages, so each should be indexable with unique content and self-referencing canonicals (not canonicalized to page 1).

21. What is an orphan page, and why is it problematic?

    An orphan page is a page with no internal links pointing to it. It is problematic because crawlers discover pages mainly by following links, so orphan pages may never be crawled/indexed (unless found via sitemap or external link) and receive no internal link equity.

22. What is log file analysis in technical SEO, and what key insights does it provide?

    It is the examination of raw server access logs to see exactly which URLs bots requested, when, how often, and with what status codes. It reveals real crawl behavior: crawl budget allocation, most/least crawled pages, crawl of error pages, and orphan pages that bots find but aren't linked.

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