Technical SEO
The Unseen Work that Elevates Your Website’s Performance
As a category of search engine optimization, technical SEO focuses on the infrastructure and foundation of a website. It enhances a website’s crawlability, indexation, and overall performance in search engine rankings.
Unlike on-page SEO, which deals with content and keywords, or off-page SEO, which focuses on backlinks and social signals, technical SEO helps search engines find, crawl, comprehend, and rank your content efficiently.
Key Components of Technical SEO
1. Site Structure and Crawling
A well-organized site structure with intuitive navigation helps users and search engine crawlers understand the hierarchy of information on your site. Employing XML sitemaps, robot.txt files, and breadcrumb navigation improves crawlability and indexing.
2. Website Speed and Performance
Users leave slow websites, and search engines know it. Optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, and employing Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) can give your website faster load times, and your users less waiting.
3. Mobile-Friendliness
Do you know what percentage of your audience visits your website on a mobile device? If not, you should check your analytics. For most websites, mobile users make up the majority of visitors. Plus, Google’s mobile-first indexing prioritizes mobile-friendly websites, making mobile optimization a major aspect of technical SEO.
4. URL Structure and Canonicalization
Crafting clear, descriptive URLs and implementing canonical tags helps search engines understand the preferred version of duplicate or similar content, preventing issues related to content duplication and ensuring proper indexation.
5. Technical Errors and Site Health
Regularly monitoring and fixing technical issues such as broken links, 404 errors, server errors, and duplicate content is vital. Tools like Google Search Console and website crawlers help identify and rectify these issues promptly.
Best Practices for Technical SEO
Regular Site Audits
Conduct routine audits to identify and rectify technical issues affecting the website’s performance.
SEMrush is a tool we use to identify 404 errors, missing title tags and meta descriptions, broken scripts on your website, and other red flags.
Google Search Console allows us to request page indexing so your site is discoverable on Google. It’s also a place where we can tell Google we’ve made fixes and changes to the website, view mobile errors, and more.
Screaming Frog gives insights on your page word counts, your website title tags, meta descriptions, and header structure. Additionally, it gives clues regarding server errors, speed issues and other technical aspects of SEO.
Optimize for Mobile
Make it easy for your audience to use your site on their mobile devices. You can test how mobile friendly your site is by visiting it on multiple devices yourself, or using one of many online screen size simulators.
Page Speed Optimization
Continuously work on improving loading times by compressing images, minimizing HTTP requests, and leveraging browser caching.
Structured Data Markup
Use structured data markup to give search engines extra context about your content. This can potentially earn your site enhanced visibility in rich snippets and knowledge panels.
Secure Site Protocol (HTTPS)
Switch to HTTPS to ensure data security and gain a slight ranking boost as encrypted sites are preferred by search engines.
It’s Time to Get Technical
Neglecting the technical aspects is a costly mistake. Websites break. Plugins, forms, server updates, new website builds, content deletion and other regular occurrences can leave damage in their wake. To keep your website healthy and improve your rankings, you need to keep a constant eye on your site’s technical errors and opportunities.
By embracing the principles and best practices of technical SEO, you have a better chance of driving relevant traffic to your website.