As an Ohio marketing agency, we’ve seen businesses spend time and money on flashy content and beautiful design, only to have their websites fail on basic SEO structure and ranking. And in a world rapidly shifting toward Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), lack of SEO is certainly a costly oversight.
This guide focuses on technical SEO, the backend strategies and optimizations that help search engines understand, index, and rank your site. Whether you work with an external web agency or manage a site internally, the below principles are essential to modern digital marketing.
Why Ongoing SEO Maintenance Is Essential in 2025 and Beyond
Like web design upkeep, technical SEO isn’t a “set-it-and-forget-it” task. The landscape around digital is constantly changing and your site’s visibility is influenced by:
- Search algorithm changes – daily
- New competitors ranking on SERPs – daily
- Server performance from bot and legit traffic – daily
- Code updates to your content management system (CMS) – on you
- Broken website links or expired content – on you
That’s why periodic SEO maintenance is necessary to survive today’s digital age. SEO maintenance ensures your site can be found, indexed properly, and optimized for long-term performance. At a baseline, you need someone monitoring your digital infrastructure, and preferably someone who understands the strategy behind the execution, not just the code (that’s us!).
Let’s dig into what matters most below.
Get the Foundational Core Areas of Technical SEO Right
From a high level, you’ll want to triage your efforts according to four key SEO categories: performance, best practices, accessibility, and SEO fundamentals. If you’re a product owner or marketing lead, this section is your SEO checklist.
A fast website is a better website for users and for search engines. Page speed is one of Google’s core ranking factors and must not be ignored.
Here’s where to start:
- CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Use a CDN like Cloudflare or Amazon CloudFront. The goal is to serve assets as close to the user as possible to minimize latency. Less latency equals a faster website.
- Stop when: A CDN is properly configured and active on every page load.
- Cache Policies
- Caching tells browsers how to handle repeated visits. Configure headers and expiration rules that allow non-dynamic files (like images or scripts) to be cached.
- Stop when: All dynamic content is cached without disrupting website functionality, and the performance is consistently fast.
- Image Optimization
- Large images slow everything down. Compress and resize images using tools like TinyPNG, Squoosh, or WebP formats. Balance quality with size.
- Stop when: All images are compressed, properly scaled, and load without visible quality loss.
2. Best Practices
This covers various technical hygiene items that help with security, performance, and maintainability of your website.
A few quick wins:
- Use HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate
- Minimize JavaScript and remove unused code
- Use lazy loading for offscreen assets
- Remove broken or dead links
These tweaks are low-hanging fruits that improve SEO and overall site health.
3. Accessibility
Search engines love accessible websites because they mirror great user experiences. Even if you’re not subject to legal accessibility standards, the benefits are worth it.
Use this simple test:
- Font Readability
- Is the font size large enough? Is there enough color contrast?
- Stop when: Content is easily scannable and readable across devices.
- Structural Clarity
- Are sections clearly defined? Is related content grouped together?
- Stop when: Your layout separates content logically (e.g., headers for each service, FAQs grouped, etc.).
4. SEO
This is where technical SEO connects directly with search engine visibility. What you should pull from this is ensuring that your website is designed to be easily indexed by search engines.
- Search-Friendly Schema Markup
- Add structured data (schema markup) to each page using JSON-LD. This tells Google exactly what each page contains—products, articles, FAQs, reviews, etc.
- Use Google’s Rich Results Test to verify.
- Stop when: All relevant web pages have valid, working schema markup.
- Robots.txt
- This file tells search bots which parts of your site to crawl or ignore. Make sure it’s clean and doesn’t accidentally block important pages.
- Stop when: Googlebot can access all pages you want indexed.
- Sitemap.xml
- Submit a sitemap that lists all your site’s important URLs. While not a ranking factor, it helps clarify the site’s structure to web crawlers.
- Check it by visiting: www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
- Stop when: All key pages are included and the sitemap updates automatically.
- Canonical URLs
- Avoid duplicate content penalties by setting canonical tags. These URLs tell Google which version of a page is the “master” one for SEO value.
- Stop when: All important pages have correct canonical tags.
Monitor SEO Status with Google Search Console
Once your website’s infrastructure is in place, ongoing monitoring becomes critical. Google Search Console (GSC) is your dashboard for real-time SEO performance.
Here’s what to watch:
- Index Coverage
- See which URLs are and aren’t indexed. This often includes duplicates from www/non-www, HTTP vs HTTPS, or subdomains.
- Stop when: Only the correct domain (e.g., https://yourdomain.com/page) is indexed. Remove or redirect the other alternatives.
- Error Reports
- Look for 404 errors, redirect loops, and other crawl issues. Often, broken links or missing content create unnecessary dead ends, which penalize your website’s SEO.
- Stop when: All indexable pages return 200 (OK) status and no high-priority errors exist.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Under the “Performance” tab, examine which search queries your pages rank for, how often they appear (impressions), and their CTR.
- If you’re ranking well but getting zero clicks, it’s time to revise your:
- Meta titles
- Descriptions
- Headlines
- Featured image (for social/media preview)
- Stop when: CTR trends are improving and core pages outperform competitors for targeted keywords.
AEO: The Future of Technical SEO
As search evolves, so does the importance of AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Google and Bing are increasingly leveraging AI to serve direct answers via featured snippets, AI summaries, and voice search. Search is definitely shifting in the AEO direction. However, the SEO fundamentals still apply to ranking on AEO.
To compete:
- Use schema for FAQs, how-tos, and reviews
- Structure content with clear questions and concise answers
- Include TL;DR sections or summaries
- Target long-tail, conversational queries
- Ultimately, keep maximizing your SEO
Your goal is to become the source for search engine answers. Again, AEO overlaps with technical SEO, making things like schema markup, fast page loads, and clean architecture even more essential.
The Bottom Line
If your website isn’t optimized for technical SEO, it’s not optimized at all.
As a full-service Ohio marketing agency, we believe every business deserves a site that’s fast, visible, and built for the future of search, including AEO. That’s why technical SEO isn’t optional!
To recap:
- Improve site speed using CDNs, caching, and image compression
- Fix accessibility and structural issues to enhance user experience
- Validate schema markup, sitemap, robots.txt, and canonical URLs
- Use Google Search Console to track and troubleshoot performance
- Prepare your content for AEO by structuring pages for clarity and answers
Need help with technical SEO or monthly site audits? Our marketing team can diagnose, repair, and future-proof your site, so you can focus on growing your brand. Contact us today for a free consultation.
