Week 7 · 4–5 hours
Technical SEO, Crawling & Core Web Vitals
Use a crawler and page-experience data to identify technical observations without confusing tool outputs with priorities.
Technical tools produce evidence, not priorities. Crawl data shows how a site is configured; Core Web Vitals show aspects of real-world page experience. Both need interpretation.
Learn
Complete only the named pages or lessons below. Links inside them are optional unless the task says otherwise.
SEO Spider Getting Started Guide
Why this: Learn the workflow from installation through a first crawl and issue review.
Pay attention to: The free version can crawl up to 500 URLs; start with a small public site.
Google Search technical requirements
Why this: Anchor crawler outputs in the minimum conditions a page needs to be eligible for Google Search.
Pay attention to: Access for Googlebot, a working HTTP response and indexable content; eligibility does not guarantee indexing.
Core Web Vitals and Google Search results
Why this: Learn the current loading, responsiveness and visual-stability metrics without treating performance scores as a shortcut to rankings.
Pay attention to: LCP, INP and CLS; their good thresholds; Search Console reporting; and why a perfect score is not the objective.
Check your understanding
You should be able to explain these without relying on course terminology.
Practise
Apply this week’s learning through a guided practical exercise.
Scenario
Crawl a small public site with the free SEO Spider, then check two representative pages in PageSpeed Insights.
Your task
Record 5–8 meaningful crawl observations. Add a short page-experience section comparing the two pages: note available field data, the LCP, INP and CLS results, relevant lab diagnostics and what you would investigate next. Choose your top three observations and rate their impact, confidence, effort and business value as low, medium or high. Keep the hands-on work to roughly 2–2.5 hours.
Good work should contain
- Examples tied to URLs
- Business or user impact
- Field and lab data labelled correctly
- Core Web Vitals interpreted without overclaiming
- Uncertainty made explicit
- A prioritised shortlist
Common mistakes
- Copying the Issues tab as an audit
- Calling every redirect bad
- Treating the Lighthouse performance score as a Core Web Vitals result
- Assuming a better score guarantees better rankings
- Presenting warnings as conclusions
Technical SEO & Page Experience Audit
Review and refine the exercise to a client-facing standard, then save the finished version as portfolio evidence.
Suggested filename 07-technical-seo-page-experience-audit.xlsx
Skill demonstrated Crawling, Core Web Vitals interpretation and technical prioritisation
An interviewer may ask “How would you use crawl data and Core Web Vitals to decide what needs attention?”
Career task
Alongside the SEO exercise, complete one small job-readiness task each week. These tasks build towards confident junior applications.
Add Screaming Frog to your CV only as practical personal use, with the exercise as evidence.
Notes
Personal notes stay separate from the questions intended for Chris.
Personal notes
Capture useful observations, definitions and reminders.
Question for Chris
Use this for uncertainties or points you want to discuss.
Finished this week?
Mark the week complete once you have finished the learning, exercise, portfolio output and career task.