Technical SEO is the process of ensuring search engines can efficiently crawl, index, and understand your site. Start with the fundamentals: implement HTTPS across your entire domain, create and submit an XML sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and configure your robots.txt file to allow crawling of important pages while blocking admin areas and duplicate content. Core Web Vitals matter for rankings now. Run Lighthouse audits and aim for LCP under 2.5 seconds, FID under 100ms, and CLS under 0.1. Compress images using WebP format, enable gzip or Brotli compression for text resources, minimize JavaScript execution time, and leverage browser caching with proper cache-control headers. Canadian hosting often performs better for Canadian audiences—we host client sites on servers in Toronto or Montreal when local speed is critical. Crawl your site monthly with Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. Fix broken links, eliminate redirect chains (keep them to one hop maximum), resolve duplicate content with canonical tags, and ensure your URL structure is logical and shallow. No page should be more than three clicks from your homepage. Check your server logs to see what Googlebot actually crawls versus what you think it crawls—you'll often find surprises. Structured data gives you an edge in rich results. Implement Schema.org markup for articles, products, local businesses, FAQs, and reviews depending on your site type. Validate with Google's Rich Results Test, not just the generic Schema validator. Make your site fully functional on mobile without separate m-dot URLs—responsive design is the standard, and Google indexes mobile-first now. Monitor Search Console weekly for coverage errors, security issues, and manual actions. Set up alerts for sudden drops in indexed pages. At Ottawa SEO, we run technical audits quarterly for our portfolio sites because search engine behavior changes constantly. A site that passed technical muster six months ago might have new issues today from algorithm updates or CMS changes you didn't notice.