What is Technical SEO?
Harlan Wilton The Short Version
Technical SEO is the infrastructure that lets search engines find, read, and rank your pages. It's not about keywords or content quality - it's about making sure Google can actually access what you've built.
If search engines can't crawl your site, your content doesn't exist to them.
What Technical SEO Covers
| Area | What It Does | Nuxt SEO Module |
|---|---|---|
| Crawling | Tells search engines which pages to access | Robots |
| Indexing | Helps search engines understand your site structure | Sitemap |
| Meta Tags | Describes pages to search engines and social platforms | SEO Utils |
| Structured Data | Enables rich results (stars, FAQs, products) | Schema.org |
| Social Sharing | Controls how links appear when shared | OG Image |
Why It Matters
You probably have technical SEO problems you don't know about.
Common issues that hurt rankings:
- Staging sites getting indexed (duplicate content)
- Missing or broken sitemaps
- Pages blocking search engines unintentionally
- No canonical URLs (same content, multiple URLs)
- Broken internal links
These don't throw errors. They silently cost you traffic.
The Nuxt Challenge
Single-page apps and server-rendered sites have specific SEO quirks:
- Client-side rendering: Search engines may not wait for JavaScript to load
- Dynamic routes: Need to be explicitly included in sitemaps
- Multiple environments: Dev/staging/production all need different robots rules
- Meta tag management: Changes per-page, needs to be reactive
Nuxt handles much of this, but configuration across multiple SEO concerns gets complex.
What Nuxt SEO Does
Instead of configuring each concern separately:
// Without Nuxt SEO - scattered configuration
// robots.txt - manual file
// sitemap - separate package
// meta tags - per-page useHead calls
// schema.org - manual JSON-LD
// og images - external service or manual creation
Nuxt SEO handles it in one install:
export default defineNuxtConfig({
modules: ['@nuxtjs/seo'],
site: {
url: 'https://example.com',
name: 'My Site'
}
})
This gives you:
robots.txtwith automatic environment detectionsitemap.xmlfrom your routes- Canonical URLs on every page
- Schema.org markup
- OG image generation
All modules share the same site config. No duplicate settings, no mismatches.
Do You Need This?
Yes, if:
- You want organic search traffic
- You're launching a production site
- You've had indexing issues before
- You don't want to think about SEO plumbing
Maybe not, if:
- You're building an internal tool
- The site is behind authentication
- You're explicitly blocking search engines
Quick Wins
Even basic technical SEO helps. If you do nothing else:
- Set your site URL - Modules need this for absolute URLs
- Don't block production - Verify robots.txt allows indexing
- Have a sitemap - Helps search engines find pages faster
- Use canonical URLs - Prevents duplicate content issues
Next Steps
- Install Nuxt SEO - Get started in 2 minutes
- Mastering Meta Tags - Control how pages appear in search and social
- Controlling Crawlers - Manage what search engines can access