What is Technical SEO? Benefits and Best Practices

Did you know that 95% of pages on Google have zero backlinks? Still, they are among the top search engine results! This is because of Technical SEO, which is very important in optimizing a website’s technical aspects to improve its ranking.

Understanding Technical SEO 

Technical SEO is a process that deals with optimising website’s of technical aspects. Its main goal is to help search engines access, crawl, understand, and index web pages without any errors.

Technical SEO audit focuses on improving technical elements such as website speed, crawl ability, mobile friendliness, site architecture, and other aspects. 

Proper technical optimization makes sure that search engines can effectively rank your website in SERPs, ultimately leading to more visibility and organic traffic.

Benefits of Technical SEO

Technical SEO is important because it improves a website’s rank by optimizing its technical elements. Regardless of the quality of the content, if a page on any website has technical barriers Google will not index your page and it won’t be visible in search results. Now, this can result in loss of traffic and ultimately worsen your SERP ranking.

Here are some benefits of technical SEO that you should know:-

1. Improved Website Speed and Ranking: According to Google, 53% of users bounce back from any site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. As Google favors websites with better loading speed, improving speed also improves the ranking of the website
2. Enhanced User Experience: By improving the speed and navigation, Technical SEO enhances the user experience with an easy interface, clear labeling, logical grouping, and simpler menus.
3. Mobile Friendliness: Technical SEO optimizes the website for all types of devices by removing elements such as large file sizes, unwanted plugins, and slower website loading time.
4. Improved Website Security: By configuring an SSL/TLS certificate and implementing HTTPS, technical SEO sets an encrypted connection between a user’s browser and a website. 

Technical SEO Fundamentals

Technical SEO components can be broken into five categories: Crawlability, Indexing, Accessibility, Ranking, and Clickability. The first three components form the foundation, whereas ranking and clickability are optimization factors that are focused on the improvement of a website. 

1. Crawling

In simple words, Crawling is a process in which a search engine looks for content from new pages. If you want to check the crawling report and the performance of your website, you can check that in Google Search Console. 

Crawlability Checklist

1. Create an XML sitemap.
2. Maximize your crawl budget.
3. Optimize your site architecture.
4. Set a URL structure.
5. Utilize robots.txt.
6. Add breadcrumb menus.
7. Use pagination.
8. Check your SEO log files.

2. Indexing

After the search engine finds the webpage, it stores the content in its huge database of contents. This process of storing the content by the search engine is called Indexing. Did you know that Google can index upto 90% of pages if technical SEO is followed properly? Furthermore, you will be surprised to know that Google crawler only accesses about 54% of web pages because of a lack of technical web optimization.

Indexability Checklist

• Unblock search bots from accessing pages.
• Remove duplicate content.
• Audit your redirects.
• Check the mobile responsiveness of your site.
• Fix HTTP errors.

3. Accessibility 

After making your content discoverable and stored on the search engine, now it’s time to make it accessible and usable for as many people as possible. As accessibility is the core purpose of the World Wide Web, this step is very important. If your content is not accessible to other users then it’s just a waste. So, do set up the technical SEO right by ticking all the accessibility checklist boxes. 

Accessibility Checklist

1. Server Performance
2. HTTP Status
3. Load Time and Page Size
4. JavaScript Rendering
5. Orphan Pages
6. Page Depth
7. Redirect Chains

4. Rankability 

After storing the content, search engines now have to organize it, putting the most relevant content at the top and the poorly written ones at the bottom. There are other factors also that search engines follow in the process of ranking such as the value of the domain name, subdomain, subdirectory, or URL-level keyword data that contributes to the ranking of your web pages. 

Rankability Checklist

1. Internal and External Linking
2. Backlink Quality
3. High-Quality Content
4. Keywords
5. Optimized images

5. Clickability 

After ensuring that your content ranks, it’s time to check with the click-through rate (CTR), that is the number of times that your webpage was clicked. The higher CTR means better traffic. 

Clickability Checklist

1. Use structured data
2. Win SERP features
3. Optimize for Featured Snippets
4. Consider Google Discover
5. Use breadcrumb navigation
6. Use pagination

How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit

Technical SEO is a vast and complex area but with a plethora of tools available, it gets easier and seemless, where you can get insights and analytics in just a few clicks. Here is your essential toolkit for Technical SEO:

• Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools: Provides insights into crawl errors, indexation status, and mobile usability.
• Ahrefs Site Audit and Semrush Site Audit: Check and find broken links and duplicate content
• Screaming Frog and DeepCrawl: Check crawl errors and indexing issues
• PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom: Check loading speed and website performance
• Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test: Check if your website design is responsive across devices

Google Analytics along with Ahrefs or Semrush Site Audit tool you can effectively audit your website and stay right on the best practices of Technical SEO. Given below are the points to consider while auditing a website.

• Fix Crawlability and Indexability Issues: Spot and Fix Crawlability and Indexability Issues by reviewing and optimizing your Robots.txt file and XML sitemap. 
• Audit Your Site Architecture: Good site architecture aids both search engines and users. Focus on hierarchy, navigation, and URL structure for improved crawlability and user experience.
• Fix Internal Linking Issues: Internal links are crucial for website structure. Identify and correct broken links to maintain link equity and avoid issues with orphaned pages.
• Spot and Fix Duplicate Content Issues: Address duplicate content issues to avoid confusion in search results. This ensures accurate representation and performance of your pages in SERPs.
• Audit Your Site Performance: Optimize site speed for better user experience and search engine rankings. Evaluate both page speed and site speed to enhance overall performance.
• Discover Mobile-Friendliness Issues: Given the dominance of mobile traffic, ensure your site is mobile-friendly for a better user experience and improved search engine rankings.
• Spot and Fix Code Issues: Ensure clean and relevant code for search engines. Pay attention to HTML, JavaScript, and structured data during your audit for optimal site understanding.
• Check for and Fix HTTPS Issues: Secure your site with HTTPS for user trust and data integrity. Confirm the legitimacy with an SSL certificate, displaying a padlock in the browser.
• Find and Fix Problematic Status Codes: Address HTTP status codes for effective communication with browsers. Focus on 4XX and 5XX codes, which indicate client and server errors, respectively.
• Perform Log File Analysis: Analyze log files to understand how search engines crawl your site. Gain insights into user and bot interactions for effective SEO optimization.
• Optimize Images and Videos: Verify alt text descriptions are meaningful and keyword-rich. Optimize image size and format for fast loading and check video embeds, scripts, and other elements for proper implementation and loading speed.

Takeaway

Technical SEO is a very important part of Search Engine Optimization that modifies your website as per Google algorithms. It improves the rank of a website by optimizing its technical elements. Google may not index and crawl your website because of technical barriers, meaning they won’t be visible in search results, regardless of the content quality. Therefore, adapting the best technical optimization practices is necessary.

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