We live in the digital age and websites, blogs, businesses need to have a great online presence. Although content is important for getting people to your website, technical SEO is the engine of a website’s ranking on search engines. If you’re a newbie or an SEO enthusiast looking to beef up your SEO chops, the first thing you need to know is technical SEO. In this guide, we’ll take you through all of the basics of technical SEO and give you tips on how to optimize your website for speed.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO: Technical SEO means making your site crawlable, indexable and search engines able to find and digest what you have written. Technical SEO – unlike content and backlink SEO, it is all about the technicality of your site so that the search engines are able to find it and rank it efficiently.
Website speed, mobile optimization, website structure, crawlability, and indexing best practices are all important aspects of technical SEO. This is why you should master technical SEO, but you will not only get better rankings but also a better UX and a better conversion.
Why is Technical SEO Important?
Technical SEO is necessary for the pages of your website being easily crawled, indexed and searched by search engines.
Then search engines may punish you by ranking your site lower or even removing it from their index altogether, should there be broken links, slower page speeds or poorly structured data.
Here are the top reasons why technical SEO is a must to learn:
- Higher Ranking: A technical optimized website is more likely to be higher in search results pages (SERPs).
- Superior User Experience: Faster, mobile-friendly site will keep your customers interested and minimize bounce rate.
- Improved Crawlability: Search engines have to crawl your site in order to find you and technical SEO makes sure that they can.
Key Elements of Technical SEO
You should take a few things into account when it comes to technical SEO to master. Below are the main things that lead to technical SEO success:
1. Website Speed Optimization
Site speed is the number one ranking criterion of Google and other search engines. A sluggish website sends visitors running away and it’s a big problem for your SEO. Google’s Core Web Vitals (which cover site speed, interactivity, and visual quality) are critical for rankings.
How to Improve Website Speed:
- Compress images without losing quality.
- Do not wait to load pages and do not cache the pages.
- Decrease the amount of JavaScript and CSS files so page loads faster.
- Using browser cache to store on the server.
2. Mobile Optimization
As more and more people use their phones, Google implements mobile-first indexing which means the mobile version of your website will be the one that is being ranked first. Not having your site optimized for mobile can cause both user experience and rankings damage.
How to Optimize for Mobile:
- Web-Friendly Design: Make sure your website can fit on every screen.
- Easy to Use Navigation: Click-able buttons and menus.
- Check Mobile Compatibility: Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool — Make sure your website is mobile-compatible.
3. Site Architecture and Internal Linking
An organized, neat website is also easier for search engines to crawl and index. The internal linking structure lets search engines know the relationship between pages on your site.
How to Improve Site Architecture:
- Build a basic URL structure for both users and search engines.
- Breadcrumbs — Build hierarchy and navigation into a site.
- Implement internal linking between pages to transfer authority around your site.
4. XML Sitemap and Robots.txt
A sitemap file is a text file with all of the key pages on your site that are going to be crawled and indexed by search engines. Robots.txt on the other hand instructs search engines which pages to crawl and which ones to not.
How to Make Use Of These Files:
- Send an XML sitemap to Google Search Console and search engines.
- Make your robots.txt optimized so crawlers cannot crawl irrelevant pages such as admin or duplicate content.
5. Fixing Crawl Errors
Crawl errors: Search engines can’t read certain sections of your website. These are the kind of mistakes that will cause the page to get excluded from the index and fall down rankings.
How to Identify Crawl Errors:
- Test crawl errors with resources such as Google Search Console.
- Correct 404 errors by redirecting broken links to the proper pages using 301 redirects.
- Identify and fix server (5xx errors) that could be blocking search engines from seeing your website.
6. Structured Data and Schema Markup
Structured data (or Schema markup) is code you can add to your site so that the search engines know what you are talking about. Structured data lets you provide more rich snippets to your listings in search results (star ratings, pricing, event details, etc).
How to Implement Structured Data:
- Markup products, articles, recipes and more with Schema.org.
- Use the right JSON-LD code in your pages.
- Google Rich Results Test Tool to verify your structured data.
7. Secure Your Website (HTTPS)
Secure websites are the top in search results of Google. HTTP sites are less secure and Google will report you. Changing to HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) is an easy technical SEO action that works.
How to Implement HTTPS:
- Get an SSL certificate for your site.
- Change internal links to be HTTPS instead of HTTP.
- Switch HTTP urls to HTTPS to avoid duplicate content.
8. Canonical Tags
Canonical tags advise search engines on what version of a page is preferred (avoiding duplicate content). Search engines will become confused and rank the wrong page without them.
How to Use Canonical Tags:
- Add link rel="canonical" href="URL"> tag in the head element of your dupe pages.
- Ensure every page has a separate canonical URL to steer search engines.
- Technical SEO Tools To Improve Your Ranking : Tools For Technical SEO.
Technical SEO — There are various tools available to you that help you keep track of your website’s performance and wellbeing. Some popular tools include:
- Google Search Console: Crawl errors, indexing issues, performance monitoring.
- Google PageSpeed Insights: To analyse and speed up your website.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider: To do a complete SEO check on your site.
- Ahrefs and SEMrush: For backlink analysis, site visits, competitor reports.
Conclusion
It is a major SEO strategy requirement to be proficient in technical SEO. When you re-engineer your website in technical terms, it will appear more appealing, run faster and provide better user experience. From speeding up your website to fixing crawl problems to structured data, all of this will contribute to your ranking.
And as you learn more technical SEO, keep in mind that this is never finished. A regular audit and keeping up to date with SEO news will keep you in the race. If you do what we did in this primer, you’ll soon have a technical and usable website that people and search engines will love.
Call to Action: If you’re trying to get more SEO for your website and increase organic traffic, never underestimate technical SEO. Optimize now and start getting rank increases!
