What is Technical SEO?
Technical
SEO is the process of optimizing the crawling, indexing, and rendering phase of
your website to achieve higher search rankings.
Here
are some of the most important topics covered under technical SEO:
- Crawling
- Indexing
- Rendering
- Mobile
- Site Structure
- Site Speed
- SSL Certificates
- Image Optimization
Now
that you know the basics of technical SEO, here are 10 tips you can use to
improve your site’s technical SEO and boost your search rankings.
1. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly
Let’s
start with the most basic technical SEO tip.
One
of the major Google algorithm updates in 2015 was to give increased preference
to mobile-friendly, responsive websites. In what was termed as ‘Mobilegeddon’,
several top websites were penalized for not adopting a more mobile-friendly web
template.
So
how do you check the mobile-friendliness of your website? You can use any of
the following free tools:
·
Google’s
Mobile-Friendly Test
·
HubSpot’s
Website Grader
·
Bing’s
Mobile Friendliness Test Tool
·
GTMetrix
·
Google’s
Mobile-Friendly Test will determine whether your website meets Google’s
criteria for mobile-optimized website.
Google's
Mobile-Friendly Test - Technical SEO Tips
HubSpot’s
Website Grader and GTMetrix provide deeper insights into what you can do to
improve the mobile-friendliness of your website.
2. Create and Optimize Your XML Sitemap
Sitemaps
are necessary for Google to find and index your webpages.
Luckily,
it’s easy to create an XML sitemap. If you’re a WordPress user, you can
generate it using Yoast SEO plugin or Google’s very own Google XML sitemaps
plugin.
Once
you’ve created the sitemap, submit it to Google via Google Search Console.
Login to your Google Search Console account and navigate to Sitemaps -> Add
a new sitemap and then hit ‘Submit’.
Once
you've created the sitemap, submit it to Google via Google Search Console.
Login to your Google Search Console account and navigate to Sitemaps -> Add
a new sitemap and then hit 'Submit'.
Once
your sitemap is successfully submitted, follow these tips to optimize your XML
Sitemap:
If
you block a page in robots.txt, it has no business being in your XML sitemap
Prioritize
high-quality pages in your sitemap
3. Speed Up Your Website
Site
speed matters. Make no mistake. If your site is slow and takes a long time to
respond, Google will place a small penalty on your website.
That
means even if your content is gold standard for that particular topic, your
website will rank lower in SERPs than it would if your website had faster load
times.
This
is a technical SEO aspect that you simply can’t afford to ignore.
·
Optimize
your site’s images – Use a compressed image format like JPG in majority of your
posts. Use a tool like TinyPNG to further compress the image files.
·
Enable
browser caching – This lets you temporarily store some data on a visitors’
computer, so they don’t have to wait for it to load every time they visit your
site.
·
Enable
compression – According to Yahoo, enabling compression on your website can
reduce HTML and CSS files by 50-70% and increase site speed significantly.
·
Reduce
server response time – Google recommends keeping server response time under
200ms.
·
Use a
Content Delivery System (CDN) – Use a CDN like Cloudflare or MaxCDN to increase
your site speed.
4. Fix Your Site Errors by Running a Weekly Technical Audit
Running
a technical audit every week is a must if you want your website to rank well in
SERPs on a consistent basis.
There
are several tools on the market which can help you do this. SEMrush, Moz, and
Ahrefs are all great tools. But I’d highly recommend SEMrush for this activity
as it’s considered the industry gold standard and it offers the most
comprehensive glimpse to the technical aspects of your website. If you don’t
have access to the tool, you can sign up for a 14-day free trial of SEMrush PRO
by clicking here.
Technical
SEO Tips: Use SEMrush to perform site audits and fix technical SEO errors
SEMrush
will scan your website for errors, warnings, and issues, and then subsequently
provide recommendations to fix these errors to improve the overall technical
health of your website.
5. Optimize Internal Links
An
internal link is a hyperlink that points to another page on the same website.
While
internal links may not have the same influence on search rankings as external
links, they still play a critical role in helping search engines understand the
information hierarchy for your website and establishing an SEO-friendly site
architecture.
So
what’s the easiest way to optimize your site’s internal links? Moz recommends
using descriptive keywords in anchor text that give a sense of the keywords the
source page is trying to target.
To
learn more about optimizing internal links on your website, check out this
resource.
6. Include Your Main Keywords in Image Alt Text
Google
can’t see what’s in an image. Rather it uses metadata such as the image file
name and image alt text (alternative text) to determine what’s in an image.
Alt
text is used within an HTML code to describe the appearance and function of an
image on a page.
Typically,
the best practice for alt text is to keep it descriptive with sufficient use of
the main keywords that you’re targeting. At the same time, make sure you’re not
stuffing it with keywords.
7. Use Canonical URLs to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues
Your
first priority should always be to delete the duplicate content on your site.
Once again use an SEO tool like SEMrush to scan and fix duplicate content
issues on your site.
That
said, there are some cases where having duplicate content on your site can’t be
avoided. In such cases, use canonical URLs.
Canonical
URLs come in handy when you’re replicating a blog post from one website to the
other. They are especially useful if you’re running an e-Commerce website with
hundreds of identical pages.So in order to avoid content duplication and a
Google penalty, set up a canonical URL using the rel-canonical tag. You can add
the rel-canonical tag via Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.
Yoast
WordPress Plugin allows you to add canonical URL from its advanced settings.Just
navigate to advanced settings on Yoast, then go to Canonical URL and enter the
URL of the original article.
8. Install an SSL Certificate for Your Website
Google
confirmed back in 2014 that SSL certificates aka HTTPS encryptions are now a
ranking signal.
So
if you’ve been thinking of getting an SSL certificate for your website, now is
the time to upgrade, not just for enhanced security, but also for SEO.
I
recommend SSL certificates from Namecheap if you’re looking at cheap, yet
effective SSL implementation.
Pro
Tip: Though there are several web hosting services which provide SSL
certificates, I highly recommend you try Namecheap SSL certificates. They are
reliable and highly cost effective compared to other SSL providers.
9. Check and Fix Crawl Errors
in Google Search Console
Check
for crawl errors in Google Search Console once a week and fix them promptly as
these are serious technical issues that may hinder the performance of your
website and hurt your rankings.
While
you’re at it, check your robots.txt file as well to make sure you’re not
blocking pages that shouldn’t be blocked.
10. Use Google AMP
AMP
stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. These pages are designed to load super
fast on mobile devices.While Google has not made announcement whether
implementing AMP is search engine ranking signal, Google has been pushing
publishers to use AMP. AMP posts also get highlighted in SERPs as you can see
below.
To summarize, here’s the 10-point
technical SEO checklist to increase your website traffic:
#1 Optimize your website for mobile devices
#2 Create and Optimize Your XML Sitemap
#3 Boost your website’s speed
#4 Fix site errors and warnings with weekly site audits
#5 Optimize internal links
#6 Include your main keywords in image alt text
#7 Use canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content
issues
#8 Install an SSL certificate
#9 Check and fix crawl errors in Google Search
Console
#10 Use Google AMP
