What Google and social platforms actually see when they visit your page — and how to check it for free in two minutes, without installing anything.
Updated August 2026 · 6 minute read
Technical SEO is everything a machine checks about your page before the content itself gets judged. It is the foundation: if it crumbles, the world's best copy cannot save your rankings. The most common failures are also the easiest to find — and fix.
The seven things every page should pass:
• Title tag and meta description — what shows in Google's results. Missing them means Google guesses.
• Open Graph tags — control how your link looks when shared on LinkedIn, Facebook and in chats.
• JSON-LD structured data — tells machines what the page IS (article, product, organization).
• Heading hierarchy — one h1, logical order. Both screen readers and crawlers navigate by it.
• Alt text on images — accessibility AND image search in one.
• Canonical URL — stops duplicate content from splitting your ranking signals.
• Security headers (HTTPS, CSP and friends) — a trust signal that matters more every year.
You don't need to read source code. An automated check hands you the list of what's missing — sorted by weight.
No account, no scan quota, no email required. Paste a URL, read the report, fix what's red.
WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace or hand-written HTML — the tool sees your page the way Google does.
Step 1 — Run an automated profile. Open the free page profiler, paste your URL, and get a 21-point score covering metadata, social tags, structured data, headings, images, canonical/hreflang and security headers. No signup.
Step 2 — Read findings in priority order. The report groups issues into meta tags, social sharing (Open Graph/Twitter), structured data, headings, images, canonical/hreflang and security. Start with anything marked critical — typically a missing title, description or Open Graph image.
Step 3 — Fix in templates, not pages. Most technical SEO problems repeat across every page built from the same template. Fix the template once and hundreds of findings disappear together.
Icon findings? If the report flags a missing favicon, don't resize images by hand — the free site-icons CLI generates every favicon size plus favicon.ico from a single SVG in one command.
Step 4 — Re-run and keep the score. Re-profile after each release. A stable or rising score is the cheapest regression test you can run — and before/after numbers are a concrete deliverable you can show a client or your boss.
A missing title tag affects every search impression. A missing og:image only affects shares. Both matter — but not equally. Fix in that order.
JSON-LD must parse as valid JSON and use @context https://schema.org. Two blocks in one script tag is invalid — split them. Validate after every CMS update.
HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options and a CSP are one-line changes on most hosts. They rarely move rankings directly, but they compound trust signals and protect against injection.
1. Duplicate titles across templates. Every product or post inheriting the same title competes with itself. Unique titles are the single highest-leverage fix.
2. Broken Open Graph images. A relative og:image URL renders nothing on LinkedIn. Always use absolute URLs pointing at a real, crawlable image (≥1200×630 px).
3. Invalid or missing structured data. Copied JSON-LD snippets that no longer parse do nothing. Validate them — silently broken markup is extremely common after redesigns.
4. Multiple h1s or skipped heading levels. Themes and page builders love injecting extra h1s. One h1 per page, levels in order.
5. Canonical pointing at the wrong host. After migrations, canonicals often still point at staging URLs — telling Google to ignore the live site. Check yours today.
Yes. The web profiler runs on the page, no account needed, no scan limit. There is also a zero-dependency Python CLI you can download and run against any URL, with JSON output for CI pipelines.
No. It removes the ceiling: content and links decide how high you climb, but unresolved technical failures cap what any of it can achieve. Treat it as table stakes.
After every significant release, plus a quarterly sweep. Automated checks take seconds — there is no reason to let regressions sit for months.
Crawl budget issues, JavaScript rendering quirks, Core Web Vitals field data and content quality all need other tools. This covers the on-page fundamentals every site should pass first.
The web version profiles public URLs. For authenticated pages, fetch the HTML yourself and run it through the CLI's rule engine locally.
Yes — there is a Danish guide to technical SEO checks and a fully Danish interface at /da/page-profile.
Check how your links render when shared: Open Graph checker guide.