TECHNICAL SEO

What is technical seo ?

Technical SEO is a division of SEO which inclines at changing the structure of a website making it easier for it to be indexed by search engines. It takes care of the technical parts of your website – sitemaps, page speed, URL structure, schema, site navigation, etc.If you want to pull in a lot of organic traffic to your website, you will first need a website that is technically optimized. It’s like making your site design and content meaningless if people can’t find or use your site.

Why is technical seo important ?

Most do not focus on their technical SEO but understand the impact of having on-page optimization and content. However, the reality is that technical SEO is a very significant piece of the success puzzle since it makes it possible for search engines to locate your site, accordingly raising the chances of it appearing in the SERPs. An ideal technical SEO is an interplay of various elements such as speed, mobile friendliness, easy navigation, user friendliness, and functionality. Less technical focus unfortunately results in nice-looking websites that have slow loading, are only usable on PCs, do not show users the information, and collapse when trying to call or buy the products to customers.

The technical elements of SEO are very important for SEO of a website. So this is the only way the search engines can effectively crawl, index, and understand your website.

 Here are the most important elements to focus on:

1. Website Speed and PerformancePage Load Speed:

  • Page Load Speed:  Furthermore improve the page load speed through techniques like image compression, caching, and minifying CSS/JavaScript to cut the load times. Higher-ranking web pages give a better user experience than slow ones.
  • Core Web Vitals: Follow the Google Core Web Vitals metrics including the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) to improve the site’s performance and ranking.

2. Mobile-FriendlinessResponsive Design:

  • Responsive Design:  Develop a responsive design for your website as mobile-first is the concept for the Google search engine. A responsive design means that your website will adapt itself to the various screen sizes, providing a seamless browsing experience across devices.
  • Mobile Usability: For instance, a user may find small text, unclickable buttons, or intrusive interstitials that may not give a successful experience of the website on mobile that is why your website should be mobile usable.

3. CrawlabilityXML Sitemap:

  • XML Sitemap:Generate an XML sitemap which will help search engines find and crawl the important pages of your website efficiently. After that, the next step is to upload the sitemap to the Google Search Console.
  • Robots.txt File: Make sure to set up the robots.txt file correctly. It tells the search engine robot to crawl the necessary parts of your site and not allow the sensitive pages to be indexed by the robot.
  • Internal Linking: The power of internal links appears when they are used to inform search engines of the structure of the website and help them find new content.

4. Site Architecture and NavigationLogical Structure:

  • Logical Structure: Lots of hierarchy and clean organization, which will make both users and search engines happy as they can both easily navigate your website. Moreover, it is a good idea to use breadcrumbs that provide added benefits to the website’s navigation.
  • URL Structure: Additionally, a well-structured URL that includes the defined keywords and is free of unnecessary. A clear URL structure helps both search engines and users understand page content.

5. Secure Website (HTTPS)SSL Certificate:

  • SSL certificate: By integrating a SSL certificate to a site\’s HTTP address Padma can transform her website from insecure to secure. Secure websites are given a ranking boost by Google, and most users are more likely to trust sites that use HTTPS.

6. Structured Data and Schema MarkupSchema Markup:

  • Schema Markup: Employ structured data (schema.org is used) which refers to a computational encoding language for the data on your website so that search engines have a better understanding of the content. Also, the higher appearance of SERP by your site with such snippet-like features as reviews, pricing, and product information is possible.
  • Breadcrumbs Schema: Breadcrumbs, designed for schema, will help in enhancing the navigational structure by providing the necessary information for the search engine.

7. Canonicalization

  • Canonical Tags: By using canonical tags, you can tell search engines which version of the page you prefer, and thus avoid the problem of duplicate content. This is critical as search engines can easily misinterpret your website’s content as duplicates and, consequently, offer you lower rankings.

8. Indexing and Crawl Errors

  • Google Search Console: Always check Google Search Console for errors like crawl issues, broken links, and pages that are not indexed regularly.
  • Noindex and Nofollow Tags: Place noindex tags on pages that you do not wish to see in the search engine results, such as login or admin pages. Continuously, use nofollow tags on links that do not benefit from search engine optimization.

9. Duplicate Content:

  • Content Consistency: Be careful not to include identical content on your own website or on different URLs. Canonical URLs or 301 redirects should be used to unify similar content in order to avoid ranking penalties.

10. Site Security:

  • Malware and Hack Protection: Detect and fix your security vulnerabilities, malware, or hacking attempts of your website by scanning it regularly. If your website is insecure, Google might blacklists it and you may lose traffic as a result.

11. 404 Error Pages:

  • Custom 404 Page: Create an intuitive custom 404 error page that helps users find their way back to the main site, therefore enhancing their experience when they click on a broken link.

Technical SEO’s role in an overall SEO strategy

Technical SEO is the backbone of SEO strategy. A site that has significant technical issues or is not indexable will waste any other efforts.

Usually, an SEO campaign is executed in a comprehensive manner and the technical SEO audit is the first step and often the longest. Hence, technical SEO is constantly in action from the very beginning for practical reasons.

Websites that are out of the indexing list of those having issues become the sole reason for the remaining CREATES to be ineffective. The on-page SEO team is often conflicted with the technical SEO audit aspects, which they need to follow in guiding their initial actions, on the other hand. 

Take, for instance, a situation where there are several parts of the site that don’t have on-page content, meta descriptions, or H1s. A house can only be so far when an on-page SEO team is going to do the analysis (mostly based on keyword and/or ranking data) of the house to champion new site sections to build out.

In the same way, the off-page SEO team sometimes have to wait for the technical SEO person to finish the competitive link auditing task. Normally, the technical SEO audit comes before the competitor links analysis. 

The technical SEO nature of this makes it the main focus of the SEO campaign, especially at the beginning. In the same way, the technical SEO team uses tools like Ahrefs or Lumar to check site health, but their involvement is usually less at that point.

  1. How to improve technical seo?

To improve your site’s technical optimization, you need to take into account:

  • Javascript
  • XML sitemaps
  • Site architecture
  • URL structure
  • Structured data
  • Thin content
  • Duplicate content
  • Hreflang
  • Canonical tags
  • 404 pages
  • 301 redirects