SiteAuditLint Academy · Technical SEO

Understand technical SEO. Check your site health. Fix what blocks crawling and indexing.

Learn how the technical structure of a website affects crawlability, indexability, and page discovery. Six focused lessons cover H1 headings, canonical tags, redirects, HTTP status codes, XML sitemaps, and robots.txt.

Start with H1s Browse all lessons

6 focused lessons. Beginner to intermediate. Learn at your own pace.

Your learning path 6 lessons
01
H1sHeading structure and H1 tags
 02
CanonicalsCanonical tags and duplicate URLs
 03
Redirects301 vs 302, redirect chains and loops
 04
Status codesHTTP responses, 404s, and 5xx errors
 05
XML sitemapsSitemap URLs, index files, and lastmod
 06
Robots.txtUser-agents, Allow and Disallow rules
Learn at your own paceStart with the issue your audit found, or work through all six in order.

01–06 / Site health

Choose a technical SEO topic

One focused topic per page. Work through them in order if you are learning technical SEO, or jump directly to the crawl issue you need to understand.

01Structure

H1s

How the H1 tag signals the primary topic of a page, and how a logical H1 to H6 hierarchy helps users, screen readers, and crawlers read your content.

  • H1 tags
  • Missing H1s
  • Multiple H1s
  • Duplicate H1s
  • Heading hierarchy
Open lesson
02Consolidation

Canonicals

How rel=canonical tells search engines which URL is the preferred version when parameters, protocols, or trailing slashes create duplicate pages.

  • Canonical tags
  • Self-referencing canonicals
  • Duplicate URLs
  • URL parameters
  • Canonical conflicts
Open lesson
03Redirection

Redirects

How permanent and temporary redirects pass users, crawlers, and link signals to a new URL, and why chains and loops waste crawl budget.

  • 301 redirects
  • 302 redirects
  • Redirect chains
  • Redirect loops
  • Redirect targets
Open lesson
04Responses

Status codes

What the HTTP response code returned for each URL tells Googlebot, and how 404, soft 404, and server errors affect crawling and indexing.

  • 200 OK
  • 3xx redirects
  • 404 errors
  • 410 Gone
  • Soft 404s
  • 5xx errors
Open lesson
05Discovery

XML sitemaps

How an XML sitemap lists the canonical, indexable URLs you want discovered, and how sitemap errors send mixed signals to crawlers.

  • Sitemap URLs
  • Sitemap index files
  • lastmod dates
  • Sitemap errors
  • Non-indexable URLs
Open lesson
06Crawl control

Robots.txt

How robots.txt directives manage crawler access by user-agent, and why a blocked URL is not the same as a noindexed URL.

  • User-agents
  • Allow rules
  • Disallow rules
  • Sitemap directive
  • Crawl restrictions
Open lesson
Remember the distinction. Technical SEO is not a single ranking factor. It is the foundation that lets search engines crawl, render, and index a website. A technically clean page can still fail to rank, and a ranking drop can have causes beyond site health, such as content quality or search intent.

Practical guides

Put site health into practice

Technical problems are easier to fix when they are tied to real URLs and crawl data. These guides show what to check when a site audit flags an issue.

Ready to audit your site? Review the SEO Fundamentals course if you need a refresher, then run a technical SEO audit with SiteAuditLint to find broken links, redirect chains, status code errors, and canonical conflicts across every page.