Technical SEO is what we do to make search engines crawl or index the website easier. The work we do under technical SEO makes the site rank better.
Implementing Technical SEO includes two steps,
- Performing website audit to know where we stand.
- Create a plan to address the fall.
Why technical SEO is important
Technical SEO is that much important “It’s like a tree that falls in the forest when no one is around to hear it … does it make a sound? Without a strong technical SEO foundation, your content will make no sound to search engines.
Five Categories of Technical SEO
- Crawlability
- Indexability
- Accessibility
- Rankability
- Clickability
Technical SEO Audit Fundamentals
- Audit Preferred Domain
Website domain is the way people find our site. We have to choose whether we go with www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com. Here we have to redirect form www to non www or else Google will split the SEO values between the two.
- SSL Certificate
SSL certificate is the security license acquired by the website. If someone entered the card details or other information, the SSL certificate protects the details. This is the importance of SSL certificates. SSL is denoted by https:/ .
After setting up the SSL certificate, we have to do the following instructions,
- Redirect all non-SSL pages to SSL ones.
- Update all canonical tags and hreflang accordingly.
- Update Robot.txt and sitemap.xml
- Update search console and Bing webmaster tools.
- Optimize Page Speed
Page speed is one of the main factors to rank in SERP. The average time a user waits for the website to load is 6%. Some of the tips to improve page speed is,
- Compress the images, HTML, Java, CSS files of the website.
- Audit redirects regularly.
- Trim of the code to increase page loading speed.
- Use content distribution network. This server maintains the whole content according to the geographical location and provides data when a user searches the website.
- Go with Happy plugin- Old or outdated plugins may help spammers to de-rank our site.
- Use cache plugin. Cache plugin stores the static version of our site. So, this helps to decrease the loading speed.
- Use Asynchronous codes. Scripts are written in the header section, and it loads first, only after that body or HTML code is loaded. This may affect page speed. By using asynchronous code, Scripts and HTML are coded simultaneously.
Crawlability Checklist
- Create an XML Sitemap.
- Maximize your crawl budget.
- Optimize your site structure.
- Set a URL structure.
- Utilize robots.txt
- Add breadcrumb menus.
- Use pagination.
- Check your SEO log files.
Create XML Sitemap
Creating and running XML sitemap may help to crawl sites easily.
Maximize your crawling budget
Few tips to maximize crawl budget are,
- Remove duplicate pages.
- Fix any broken links.
- Make sure your CSS and JavaScript files are crawlable.
- Keep sitemap updated.
Optimize your Site Architecture
The hierarchical arrangement of pages on a website is known as website architecture. It describes the way you categorize and link content on a website. An effective structure should facilitate user navigation and provide search engine crawlers with a clear understanding of the relationship between pages.
Set a URL structure
Make your URL structure intuitive so that users and search engines can quickly and easily understand the connections between different pages on your site. Once your URL structure is in place, it’s fairly simple to pick the right URL keywords for each page.
Utilize robots.txt
When bots enter the site, it should see robot.txt file to ensure that which page to crawl and which page to not.
Add Breadcrumb Menus
Adding WordPress breadcrumb menus to a website offers several benefits. Breadcrumb menus can also reduce bounce rates, because they improve your site’s User Experience (UX). When users can navigate your website easily, they are more likely to spend time on it.
Pagination
Where a user can use links such as “next”, “previous”, and page numbers to navigate between pages that display one page of results at a time.
Indexability Checklist
- Unblock search bots from accessing pages.
- Remove duplicate content.
- Audit your redirects.
- Check the mobile responsiveness of the site.
- Fix https error.
Unblock search bots from accessing pages
We want to ensure that bots are sent to the preferred pages and that they can access them freely.
Remove duplicate Content
Duplicate content confuses the bot and impacts indexability negatively.
Audit your redirects
Redirect loops, broken URLs, can cause issues.
Check the mobile responsiveness of the site
Websites that are mobile-responsive are pages that have been reformatted to reproduce what is experienced on the desktop.
Fix HTTPS Error
HTTP errors can impede the work of search bots by blocking them from important content on your site.
301 Permanent Redirects
Used to permanently send traffic from one URL to another.
302 Temporary Redirects
Temporarily redirect traffic from a URL to a different webpage.
403 Forbidden Messages
Content a user has requested is restricted based on access permissions or due to a server misconfiguration.
404 Error pages
Tells users that the page they have requested doesn’t exist, either because it’s been removed, or they typed the wrong URL.
405 Method Not Allowed
means that your website server recognized and still blocked the access method, resulting in an error message.
500 Internal Server Error
General error message that means your web server is experiencing issues delivering your site to the requesting party.
502 Bad Gateway Error
It is related to miscommunication, or invalid response, between website servers.
503 Service Unavailable
Tells you that while your server is functioning properly, it is unable to fulfill the request.
504 Gateway Timeout
Means a server did not receive a timely response from your web server to access the requested information.
Accessibility Checklist
Server Performance
Processes intended to boost a server’s application configuration, the efficiency of its data processing, its overall speed, and general performance.
HTTP Errors
Similar to server errors HTTP errors will reject access to our website.
Load Time and Page Size
If the page has a high load time, then the bounce rate increases. Which may lead the server not to crawl the particular web page.
Orphan Pages
Pages with no internal links are called orphan pages. These pages should be avoided.
Page Depth
It is the number of clicks you need to reach a specific page from the homepage using the shortest path. Page depth should be minimal.
Rankability Checklist
Internal and External links
Links help search bots understand where a page fits in the grand scheme of a query and gives context for how to rank that page.
Backlink Quality
Links help search bots understand where a page fits in the grand scheme of a query and gives context for how to rank that page.
Content Clusters
Helps to optimize a website’s structure and internal linking by organizing content around topics into pillar and cluster pages.
Clickability Checklist
Use Structure Data
Structured data employs a specific vocabulary called schema to categorize and label elements on your webpage for search bots. “Basically, structured data tells bots, “This is a video,” “This is a product,”.
Win SERP Features
Rich results are those elements that don’t follow the page title, URL, meta description format of other search results. Examples of rich results are people also ask, videos, breadcrumbs, etc.
Optimize Featured Snippet
Featured snippet is available in top of SERP which holds 0th position. Featured Snippets are intended to get searchers the answers to their queries as quickly as possible. According to Google, providing the best answer to the searcher’s query is the only way to win a snippet.