Technical SEO remains the foundation of any optimization strategy. In 2026, Google places even more emphasis on user experience and technical performance. Here's what matters.
Core Web Vitals: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) under 2.5 seconds, FID (First Input Delay) under 100ms, CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) under 0.1. These are MANDATORY for good ranking.
LCP Optimization: optimized images (WebP, AVIF), preload critical resources, CDN for assets, font-display: swap for fonts, eliminate render-blocking resources.
FID/INP Optimization: minimize JavaScript, code splitting, defer non-critical JS, Web Workers for heavy tasks, avoid long tasks (over 50ms).
CLS Optimization: explicit dimensions for images/video, font fallbacks similar in size, don't insert content above existing content, animations with transform not width/height.
Correct Indexing: properly configured robots.txt, updated sitemap.xml, canonical tags on duplicate pages, hreflang for multilingual, noindex on thin content pages.
Crawl Budget: important pages should be maximum 3 clicks from homepage, strategic internal linking, eliminate redirect chains, fix 404 errors, pagination with rel=next/prev.
Structured Data: implement Schema.org markup (Organization, LocalBusiness, Product, Article, FAQ, HowTo). Test with Google Rich Results Test. Increases CTR by 20-30%.
Mobile-First: Google indexes the mobile version. Ensure all content is visible on mobile, touch targets minimum 48px, font-size minimum 16px.
Security: HTTPS mandatory, correct HTTP headers (HSTS, X-Frame-Options), Content Security Policy. Google penalizes insecure sites.
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