Guide to Technical SEO
Beyond the well-known approaches to search engine optimization (SEO) that include elements such as keywords, there are technical elements of SEO that makes your website more easily crawled and indexed.
Technical SEO requires specialized skills to implement effectively; but in our guide to technical SEO, we’ll touch on some of the most important backend elements that improve your website’s visibility in search engines so you can reach a wider audience.
SEO Audit
Before you’re ready to optimize the technical aspects of your website, you need to conduct an SEO audit. There are a number of factors that must be audited including:
- Domain name – this is your website name that follows the “www” or in some cases the “www” is absent. In either case, you need to identify the preferred format of your domain so search engines understand how to identify your URL.
- Secure sockets layer (SSL) – SSL makes your site secure and allows visitors to safely provide personal information such as payment details. Search engines rank secure sites higher, so you must implement SSL.
- Page speed – similarly, search engines prioritize sites that run quickly and smoothly. If your page is running slow, your ranking will suffer.
Crawling
Search engines rely on search bots that crawl web pages and obtain information about your site and business. Technical SEO helps to make your site more easily crawled by these bots. Factors such as an XML sitemap, website architecture, URL format, robots.txt, and pagination can make your website more crawlable and therefore improve your search ranking.
Indexing
Next, search bots will index your site’s pages based on their relevance to particular topics. Optimizing your site for indexing is another important element of Search Engine Optimization. Unblock search bots so they can access your pages, ensure your site is free of duplicate content, review your site’s redirects, and audit your site for mobile-responsiveness. Also, make sure to eliminate any HTTP errors.
Rendering
Rendering is often referred to as SEO accessibility – essentially, search bots need to be able to easily access content on your site. Load time, page size, page depth, and redirect loops are issues that can impact a search bot’s ability to render your website. Any issues that arise must be rectified.
Ranking
Technical aspects of SEO will ultimately affect your site’s ranking. The quality of internal and external links is very important in your ranking. Additionally, backlinks from other websites improve the credibility of your website and therefor improve your ranking. Even how content is organized on your own site can impact search rankings – so take time to organize content into related topics or groups.
Clicking
Finally, when your website ranks higher, that doesn’t mean you’ll maintain that position. Click-through rates relate to your ranking, so you want people to actually click on your site in the results page. You can improve clicking by using structured data you can achieve rich results. Useful content that is well-structured is the key to improving click-through rates. Media such as articles, images, and video should be combined with reviews, FAQs, local listings, and other valuable information to improve your clickability.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many aspects to technical SEO that must be considered to improve your search engine ranking. Working with a professional online marketing firm can help you ensure your technical SEO is effective in promoting improved search rankings.
