Search engine optimization is very important for driving traffic to the website.
There are many types of SEO and one of them is technical SEO.
In this article, I will tell you what Technical SEO is and how you can implement it on your website.
So without wasting time let’s begin the article.
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the process of ensuring that a website follows the technical specifications of contemporary search engines to improve organic rankings.
Technical SEO is the practice of optimizing the technical aspects of a website to boost the search engine rankings of its pages.
The pillars of technical optimization include making a website faster, easier to crawl, and more understandable to search engines.
Technical SEO is a subset of on-page SEO, which focuses on optimizing the components of your website to increase rank.
It is the polar opposite of off-page SEO, which deals with enhancing website performance through other methods.
What Is The Importance Of Technical Search Engine Optimization?
You can have the most excellent content and the most excellent website.
However, what if your technical SEO strategy is ineffective?
If so, you will not be assessed.
At the most basic level, Google and other search engines should be able to detect, crawl, render, and index the pages on your website.
However, this is only the beginning.
Even if Google crawls all the content on your site, you’re not done.
This is because, for your site to be effectively optimized for technical SEO, its pages must be secure, mobile-friendly, free of duplicate content, and load quickly… Technical optimization involves a million additional variables.
This doesn’t mean that your technical SEO has to be flawless in order to rank well.
It is not true.
However, the easier you make it for Google to find your content, the more likely you are to rank.
Technical SEO Checklist
Search engines prefer websites with certain technical characteristics in their search results.
For example, a secure connection, a responsive design, or fast loading times – and technical SEO is the effort required to ensure that yours does.
Below is a checklist of important things to do to ensure the speed of your technical SEO.
By adhering to these standards, you can help ensure that the security and structure of your site meet the expectations of search engine algorithms and that your site is rewarded in search results as a result.
1. Use SSL.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a cryptographic technology that encrypts the connection between a web server and a browser.
If a website is using SSL, the URL will start with ‘https://’ instead of ‘http://’.
Google said in 2014 that they wanted to see ‘HTTPS Everywhere’ and that secure HTTPS websites would be given priority in search results over unsecured HTTPS websites.
As a result, it makes sense to secure your site’s security whenever possible – this can be done by installing an SSL certificate on your website, but most major website builders now include SSL by default.
2. Ensure That Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly.
Responsive website design adapts easily to any device size and resolution, making it easy to navigate and read.
Google makes it clear that having a responsive website is an important ranking factor for their algorithms.
With Google’s new ‘Mobile First’ indexing approach, a flexible website is more important than ever.
As a result, it is wise to ensure that your website is responsive and displays optimally on mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.
3. Speed Up The Loading Time Of Your Website.
Search engines consider page speed to be an important ranking factor, favoring sites that load quickly.
You can speed up your website in different ways:
- Use fast hosting.
- Use a responsive DNS (Domain Name System) provider.
- Limit the amount of ‘HTTP requests’ by using scripts and plugins sparingly.
- Instead of using multiple CSS stylesheets or inline CSS, a single CSS stylesheet should be used (the code that tells the website browser how to display your website).
- Make your image files as small as possible (without getting pixelated)
- Customize the size of your website pages (this can be done using a tool called GZIP)
- Remove any unnecessary spaces, line breaks, or indentation in your HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code (for help, see Google’s Minimize Resources page).
The methods discussed above will surely help you to speed up your website.
4. Solve Duplicate Content Issues.
Duplicate content can mislead users (and search engine algorithms), and can also be used to manipulate search results or increase traffic.
As a result, search engines despise it, and both Google and Bing insist that webmasters address any duplicate content issues.
Duplicate content can be resolved by:
You are preventing multiple versions of a page or post from being published by your CMS.
You are using the canonical link element to inform search engines about the location of the ‘main’ version of your content.
5. Create A XML Sitemap.
An XML sitemap is a file that helps search engines locate and understand your website.
Think of it as a “search map” that shows search engines what each page is in.
It also provides useful information about every page on your website such as:
- How often your site is updated.
- How long it has been since a page was last visited.
- Etc.
Your XML site is automatically created in Bigcommerce.
If you are using another platform, you will need to use a sitemap generator to generate a sitemap generator.
6. Consider Enabling The AMP.
AMP is a Google-backed initiative that uses special code known as AMP HTML to accelerate information delivery on mobile devices.
On mobile devices, AMP versions of your web pages load exceptionally fast.
They do this by reducing your content and code to its minimum requirement, keeping text, photos, and videos but removing scripts, comments, and forms.
Because they load so quickly, AMP versions of sites are significantly more likely to be read and shared by people, improving stay times and the number of backlinks pointing to your content – both positive SEO factors.
In addition, Google sometimes displays AMP sites in the prominent carousel in search results, giving you a significant search boost.
7. Add Structured Data Markup To Your Site.
Structured data markup is a type of coding you can add to your website to help search engines interpret the information.
This information can help search engines better index your site and provide more relevant results.
In addition, structured data improves search results by adding ‘rich snippets’ – for example, structured data can add star ratings, pricing for goods, and reviewer information to reviews (examples below) in reviews.
These improved results can increase your click-through rate (CTR) and drive more visitors to your site because they are more aesthetically appealing and emphasize information that is immediately important to searchers.
Adding structured data to your site is worth the effort as sites with higher CTRs are generally considered the preferred treatment in search engines.
8. Register Your Site On Google Search Console And Bing Webmaster.
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are free Google and Microsoft tools that enable you to submit your website to be indexed in their respective search engines.
When your website is ready to go live, send its XML sitemap (see above) to both Google Search Console and Webmaster Tools so they can crawl it and start displaying results from it in search results.
These services also enable you to monitor the overall performance of your site from a search engine perspective.
Additional things you can do with the tool are:
- Test your site’s mobile usability
- Gaining Access to Search Analytics
- Check your site’s backlinks, reject spammy links, and more.
Conclusion.
Technical SEO is one of the most important parts of the SEO process because it ensures that your website gets ranked higher in search engines.
You need to keep your site mobile-friendly, optimize images, and ensure that your page load speeds are fast and responsive.
If you want your business to grow and make more money, you have to implement technical SEO on your website.
I hope you enjoyed this article and you learned something new.
Please share this article with your friends on social media.
Thanks for reading!
