Technical SEO is improving the technical aspects of a website i.e. high page loading speed, easier to crawl and index, and understandable for the search engine. They are the main aspects of technical SEO. Technical Seo improves page rankings and website performance.
Technical SEO should not be taken lightly, because without it, you’ll have a harder time ranking well for the keywords you’re targeting.
It is believed that a good SEO strategy should be a combination of both on-page SEO and technical SEO.
If your on-page activities are not providing efficient results then Technical SEO should be improved to ensure regular crawling and proper indexing of the website.
Why should you focus on Technical Seo
Technical SEO makes crawling, indexing, and ranking easier for search engine crawlers.
Sometimes, search engine crawlers find it difficult to check and crawl your website due to some hindrance and it may be possible that they move on without crawling and indexing your website. Technical SEO helps to make website users and search engines friendly that cause effective crawling and indexing.
Many people thought that merely creating good content is enough to improve website rankings but 80% of marketers believe that technical SEO is important for indexing, ranking, and reaching the right people at the right time.
Therefore a good content should be combined with on-page as well as technical SEO. “If the content is the voice of your website than technical SEO amplifies it to a higher extent.”
Without technical SEO your website can not perform well.
Good Technical Seo can cause a great impact on search engines and well users in the form of experience and understanding.
Importance of Technical Seo
When we talk of technical SEO we refer to SEO activities without contents. Technical SEO made it possible for our content to achieve a higher ranking for the search engine. It enables research engines to crawl to your website and index your site. Technical SEO analyses the search engine technique in accessing and crawling to your site.
Now, Technical SEO is very important for higher rankings of a website. Imagine a Bike with a sporty and attractive body and good fuel power, but if it does not have good interiors and mechanics (like engine, brakes, etc) to run with? Will it be successful in the market? Definitely Not. The same thing is to SEO. If you have good content on your website but your website is not technically good then the users can’t find your website at the right time and may not consider it good. Therefore technical SEO should be combined with SEO to make your Marketing successful.
List of various aspects of technical SEO-
- Page loading Speed
- Duplicate Content
- URL Structure
- Mobile-friendliness
- XML Sitemaps
- Optimize your website structure
- Meta Tags
- Robots txt
- Optimize your images
- Error Pages and redirects
Page Loading Speed
People love fast loading websites and slow loading may give a negative impact on people. 50% of people expect a website to be loaded in a max 3 sec and 87% of people leave the website if it takes more than 3 sec to open. This ultimately results in the loss of many new and existing customers.
Page loading speed is a part of technical SEO and it should be optimized properly. Technical SEO provides you an opportunity to improve page loading speed by using various tools and techniques.
Tools, like google page speed insights and google mobile speed tools, are popularly used to check website speed and optimize it accordingly.
Duplicate Content
If you have created and written a brilliant content that is most relevant for the user. But what restricts other websites to copy the same content is the conical tab. It tells google about which content is original and which is a copy.
Therefore the best way to tell the search engines about the originality of your content is the canonical tag. If crawlers find that your website contains duplicate content it may degrade the rankings of your page or may even decide it. Moreover, it affects the credibility and reputation of your website in a negative way.
Always check for duplicate content issues and fix them. Duplicate content can be detected by using a search console and if there is any such content you can modify and fix it. Another option to save your content is a canonical tag that tells google about the source of copied content. It solves this error forever.
URL Structure
URL is the address of a website at which a user reaches. It is an important part of technical SEO and thus it should be clear, user friendly, and consistent.
It defines the address of the website to both search crawlers and users. Search engine crawlers inspect a website through its URL and index accordingly. You have to submit a URL of a particular page to the webmaster to invite search engine crawlers for crawling. If the URL is optimized properly it helps to boost up rankings and traffic.
It should be that efficient which tells the user about the web page’s topic brief before actually visiting the website. Adding keywords to the URL improves its relevance by 98% by helping search engine crawlers to find it easily for a particular keyword.
Mobile Friendliness
Nowadays mobile users have taken over from desktop PC users. With the ever-increasing use of mobile for online marketing, the desktop PC is left far behind. Mobile users are the predominant viewers who use the search engine and make purchases. Technical SEO makes it possible for the website to be accessed effortlessly.
Mobile optimization definitely increases the conversion rate of the mobile site. It is worthwhile to ensure that the mobile site is compatible with all mobile devices and networks. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool verifying whether your site is mobile-friendly or not. One has to simply enter one’s website and the tool tells if there is any issue including the HTML and CSS.
It is advised that the loading speed of page could be maximum of 6 sec for mobile.
XML Sitemap
In a way, an XML sitemap is an inventory of all the pages of the site. XML Sitemap acts as a guide for the search engine on the site. It sees to it that the search engine does not lose sight of any of the important contents on the site.
Sitemap is generally categorized in posts, pages, tags, or other custom post types. Technical Seo makes it possible to provide a proper XML Sitemap submission from time to time.
Optimization of Site Structure
A lot of minds has to be applied while structuring the site. It should be such that both users, as well as search engines, are very compatible with its functioning. A clear site structure is easy to be crawled to the site and also for the viewers to navigate the site with ease.
It should be ensured at the time of forming the structure all important pages are linked from the home page. The site should be simple with clear URLs. At the time of updating the site structure make it sure to implement a 301 redirect from the old page to the new one.
Meta Tags
Meta tags are part of technical SEO. They provide the first impression on a user if they are searching for your product on the search engines. Although it does not impact your website’s rankings it encourages people to click on your page by giving a brief but attractive summary about your page.
It is advised that every page of your website should have different and unique meta titles and descriptions. It should attract users to click on your site once. But it should make sure that the description should not be stuffed with words. But it should only provide a brief summary of your webpage.
Robot.txt.file.
The function of the Robot.txt.file is to inform the search engine about the parts of the pages of the site that are to be crawled and those which are not to be crawled. Crawled pages are those which are visible to the users and those not to be crawled are visible only to site administrators.
At the time of development of the site sometimes the entire website is blocked by the user. But actually when the website is ready then the blocked website is forgotten. When the site comes live, the site owner does not update it write the result that some pages or even sometimes the entire website is not indexed and crawled by a search engine.
It is advisable to frequently check the robot.txt.file to ensure that the change made afterward are incorporated.
Optimize your images
Images on a page also impact page loading speed, therefore, it should be optimized and compressed properly. A file called “sprite” is used to combine many images in a single file. It also includes logos, social media, and navigation icons.
To make images more easily crawled by google crawlers, you can add relevant alt tags in the images that include the name or description of the topic of the image. You can also use alt tags that include keywords. Alt tags help crawlers to understand the topic of the make and to make sure that the image is relevant to the content and website.
Moreover, when Google finds out that the website is optimized 100% it automatically makes it rank higher in the search engine.
Error Pages and redirects
There are some common errors or redirects that should be taken in the view while conducting a technical SEO audit. These errors are of much importance for both search engines and crawlers. Some common errors and redirects are
HTTP 200- it means that the particular page of your request is found with content.
301- 301 is a permanent redirect. It specifies that a particular page is moved to a new location or deleted permanently.
302 – A 302 redirect tells search engines that a website or page has been moved temporarily. It makes your users lands on a different page for some time for example when you are redesigning a page.
404 – This is a page not found error and it is the most common type of error. 404 error should be checked and if you find so on your site then find out its source because it might be due to a simple spelling mistake in the URL. It should be avoided at any cost.
Checklist for Technical SEO
Now if you have already read the above article then you have definitely understood what is technical SEO, what is its importance, and what are its main aspects.
It is advised to perform and conduct a technical SEO audit of a website. Below is a list of some terms that should be checked in this audit.
- Check and optimize the page loading speed and make it faster
- Add breadcrumbs to your pages and posts for a definite path
- Check and optimize robots.txt
- Check and optimize URL Structure
- Optimize your website structure effectively
- Add structured data to your homepage, posts and other pages
- Add canonical URL tabs to the pages
- Optimize your website for 404 error Page
- Submit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console
- Enable and use HTTPS for the security of your website
- Must check the mobile-friendliness of your website and create AMP Pages.
- Check and optimize for error and redirect pages
- Optimize your website’s meta tags and images
Conclusion
Technical SEO is a broad topic whose main aspects are already covered in this article. It basically consists of many checks and optimizations to make proper and effective crawling and rankings.
It is advised to perform SEO audits from time to time to ensure the smooth functioning and performance of the website. But technical SEO needs some advanced knowledge of certain topics and even help of a developer. But some tasks can be easily carried out like page speed optimization, site link, mobile-friendliness, etc. It is very important for a website otherwise your website will remain underperformed even after implying other important activities.
At last, it is advised to apply technical SEO properly to your website and make it error-free and extraordinary for search engines and users.