Pushing your websites to rank in search engines is difficult. Let’s consider website ranking a puzzle, and the missing piece to solving it is technical SEO. Technical SEO is an important aspect of website optimization, involving website structure analysis, code, and other technical elements that can affect the website’s performance.
In this article, we’ll cover what you need to know about technical SEO to solve the missing link. We’ll also discuss its importance, some best practices, and the tools you need to help you get started.
In this article, we will explore:
- What Is Technical SEO?
- Why Is Technical SEO Important?
- Fundamentals of Technical SEO
- How Does Crawling Work?
- How Does Indexing Work?
- Technical SEO Best Practices
Website Speed
Mobile-Friendliness
Crawlability
Site Structured Data
HTTPS - Tools for Technical SEO Audit
Google PageSpeed Insights
Semrush
Ahrefs - 11 Steps To Conduct a Technical SEO Audit
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Conclusion
- Related Reads
What Is Technical SEO?
“On-page optimization,” “off-page optimization,” and “Technical SEO” should blend together for SEO.
- On-page optimization focuses on improving the content and structure of individual pages.
- Off-page optimization focuses on building high-quality backlinks and online authority.
- It is concerned with the technical aspects of a website that can affect its search engine visibility.
Technical SEO improves website speed, search engine crawl-ability, mobile-friendliness, and other technical aspects to improve your entire site structure its search engine visibility, and user experience. It is an important aspect of modern SEO that should not be overlooked and implementing technical SEO is the best practice to create a solid foundation for your online presence.
Why Is Technical SEO Important?
Let’s understand why Technical SEO has become so important. As discussed, it affects two main aspects.
Your website’s search engine visibility – Without proper technical optimization, your website may not rank high on search engines, resulting in low traffic and conversions.
User experience – A poorly optimized website can lead to slow loading times, broken links on one page or multiple pages, and other issues with a web server that frustrates users. Who will like these? Henceforth, it results in a high bounce rate and low user engagement.
Fundamentals of Technical SEO
There is only one goal – to have a web page to be found in the top rank of search queries. To achieve this, other search engines, like, Google, and Bing should be able to find, crawl, and index your website URL and pages.
How Does Crawling Work?
Crawling is when the computer program ‘Crawler’ visits your website and looks at what you have written or have on it. The Crawler bot follows every link on the category pages of your website to find other page internal links that you have created. The crawler sends this information back to the search engine.
The search engine then decides if your website is good and can be useful. If yes, it places your website on the search results page to be found by the user. There are things you can do to block search engines and get control of this. Here are a few options.
- Crawl Rate: This is a module where you can set the frequency of a crawler to crawl your pages.
- Robots.txt: This tells which page search engines can access and which can’t.
- Access Restriction: This restricts search engines from accessing your website. It can be of best use for member-only content or for development sites.
How Does Indexing Work?
Indexing adds web pages to the database of a search engine, so they can be viewed when someone searches for relevant web pages using keywords.
Some factors that affect indexing are:
- The popularity and authority of your website.
- The speed and performance of your website.
- The technical aspects of your website.
- The quality and relevance of your content.
Technical SEO Best Practices
Website Speed
Website speed is an important factor to consider when it comes to Technical SEO. A fast-loading website improves user experience and boosts search engine rankings. Some factors that can boost your website loading speed are:
- Compressed images
- Enabling browser caching
- Minified CSS
- JavaScript files
Mobile-Friendliness
About 2 billion people use smartphones to access the internet. That makes having a mobile-friendly website crucial for both search engine ranking and user experience. Here is a list of things you have to keep in mind to optimize your website for smartphones:
- Use responsive designs.
- Optimize images for mobile use.
- Avoid flashes and pop-ups.
Crawlability
Search engines depend on a computer program, called crawlers, to crawl and index your website’s pages. If the crawler finds your website difficult to crawl or is restricted from crawling, search engines may not index your web pages. This may result in low search engine visibility.
Check for these factors to improve your website crawlability:
- Use a Robots.txt file
- Avoid duplicate content
- Fix broken links
Site Structured Data
A well-structured website makes things easier for search engines to crawl and index your website’s pages. You take these measures to maintain a well-structured website:
- Use clear and concise URLs.
- Create a sitemap.
- Use internal linking to connect your pages.
HTTPS
With the advancements in website security, search engines now have important pages they tend to index more with HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) security than with HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). That makes it essential to use HTTPS not only for website security but also for improving website ranking and search traffic.
Tools for Technical SEO
Google PageSpeed Insights
You can use Google PageSpeed Insights. This free tool helps you analyze your website’s page speed and provides suggestions to improve it. You can also use this tool to see site speed and ensure that your website is optimized for mobile devices with its mobile-friendly test.
Semrush
Semrush is another popular tool that has content structured data you can use to make a comprehensive analysis of your website’s technical SEO performance. Semrush packs a ton of features, including a site audit tool, backlink analysis, and keyword research.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is also a powerful and popular SEO tool with multiple versions with which you can get an in-depth analysis of your website’s technical SEO performance on the same page with all the other pieces of information. It features site audit, backlink analysis, Google Analytics, and content analysis.
11 Steps To Conduct a Technical SEO Audit
Let’s look at the steps to follow when conducting a technical SEO audit:
- Crawl your website
- Review your Sitemaps
- Internal link check
- Site Speed/Page Loading Speed
- Google Analytics
- Backlink Audit
- Coverage Issues
- Mobile Friendliness
- Security Issues
- Schema Markup Check. (Click here to read – Technical SEO Audit: A Detailed Guide)
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Technical SEO vs. on-page SEO?
Technical SEO concentrates on improving the infrastructure and architecture of websites to increase search engine exposure. While on-page SEO works by using search engine indexes to optimize individual pages to rank higher in search results.
2. What are the different types of SEO?
Different types of SEO are:
1. On-page optimization
2. off-page optimization
3. Technical SEO
3. What are the pillars of Technical SEO?
The pillars of Technical SEO are:
1. The architecture and design of websites.
2. The performance and speed of a website.
3. Indexing and crawling of websites.
4. The responsiveness and mobile friendliness of websites.
5. Using HTTPS and securing websites.
Conclusion
The user experience and search engine visibility of the pages on your website can both be greatly enhanced by technical SEO. You may optimize the technical components of your own website, to improve user engagement and search engine rankings by putting these best practices into practice and using the appropriate tools. In order to witness the effects for yourself, start working on your technical SEO right away.
