One of the cornerstones of SEO is the technical side of things. You could have the best article on the most-searched topic in your niche, but if your site hasn’t fixed its technical SEO faults, it won’t do well in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Therefore, you need to prioritise investing in the website’s technical SEO.
In this article, we’ll define technical SEO and provide 10 practical suggestions for increasing your site’s visibility in search engines immediately.
What is Technical SEO?
Optimizations made to your site during the crawling, indexing, and rendering phases contribute to your overall technical SEO.
To put it simply, technical SEO is the process of enhancing your website’s technical characteristics in order to raise its position in search engine results pages. It’s a vast subject area that includes everything to do with search engine optimization, such as:
- Mobile optimization
- XML sitemaps
- Image SEO
- Site structure
- SSL certificates
- Internal and external links
- Site speed
- Canonical URLs
- Crawling and indexing
10 Tips for Technical SEO
Now that you know the fundamentals of technical SEO, here are 10 strategies you can apply to improve the technical SEO of your site and move it higher in search results.
1. Make your website mobile-friendly
Let’s get started with the most fundamental technical SEO recommendation.
In 2015, one of the most significant changes Google made to its algorithm was to prioritise mobile-friendly, responsive sites. The “Mobilegeddon” algorithm update penalised numerous popular websites for failing to switch to a mobile-friendly design.
In the present day, it is crucial to have a mobile-friendly website.
So, how do you determine if your site is suitable for mobile use? The Mobile-Friendly Test on Google is a great resource. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see if your site is up to snuff in terms of mobile optimization.
2. Optimise Your XML Sitemap
Google can’t crawl and index your site’s pages without a sitemap.
An XML sitemap can be made quickly and easily. Free WordPress plugins like Yoast and Google XML Sitemaps can help you create one.
The sitemap should then be submitted to Google through the Google Search Console.
Get started by going to Sitemaps in your Google Search Console account. You can submit a new sitemap by adding one.
Take into account these XML sitemap recommendations once you’ve submitted your sitemap for review:
- You shouldn’t include a page in your XML sitemap if you’ve explicitly forbidden it in robots.txt.
- Include only high-quality content in your sitemap.
- Dynamic XML sitemaps should be used if your site has more than 50,000 URLs.
3. Speed Up Your Website
Website loading times are crucial. Don’t get me wrong. Google will penalise your site’s rankings slightly if it loads slowly and takes too long to react.
This means that your website will not rank as highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) as it would if page load speeds were improved.
You can’t afford to disregard this technical SEO factor.
4. Performing Weekly Technical SEO Site Audits To Fix Your Site Errors
If you want to improve your search engine rankings permanently, you need to do a weekly technical SEO audit to identify and rectify any problems with your site’s on-page optimization.
5. Optimise Internal Links
A link to another page within the same website is called an internal link.
Even though internal links may not have as much of an impact on search engine results as do external connections, they are nevertheless essential for building a search engine optimised site structure and making sure search engines can easily understand your website’s information hierarchy.
6. Include Your Main Keywords in Image Alt Text
Google’s image recognition can’t read what’s there in an image. Instead, it reads the image’s metadata, which includes the file name and alt text, to figure out what it is.
Alt text is used in HTML to describe an image’s appearance and purpose.
The standard advice for alt text is to be as descriptive as possible while still making use of your primary keywords. You should also avoid overusing keywords.
7. Use Canonical URLs to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues
Getting rid of any duplicates on your site should be your top focus. Use a duplicate content scanner and removal tool like Semrush to get your site back in good standing with search engines.
However, there are occasions where it will be impossible to avoid publishing content more than once on a website. Make advantage of canonical URLs in such instances.
When copying a blog post from one domain to another, a canonical URL will come in helpful. In the case of an e-commerce site with hundreds of similar pages, they become invaluable.
8. Install an SSL Certificate for Your Website
In 2014, Google officially acknowledged that SSL certificates, often known as HTTPS encryptions, constitute a ranking indication.
Websites that haven’t yet upgraded to an SSL certificate are missing out on search engine optimization and user confidence.
9. Check and Fix Crawl Errors in Google Search Console
Crawl errors are major technical issues that can hamper your website’s performance and affect your rankings, therefore it’s important to check for them once a week in Google Search Console and repair them as soon as possible.
You should also double-check your robots.txt file to ensure that it isn’t blocking any legitimate pages by mistake.
10. Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Site
In addition to hurting your search engine rankings, broken links can also make for an unpleasant user experience.
A “404 Not Found” page is the last thing you want your readers to see. That’s a certain way to drive away a potential customer who otherwise may have become a repeat visitor.
That’s why it’s important to keep an eye out for dead links and replace them as soon as you notice them.
Conclusion
In order for search engines to successfully crawl and index your website, you need to do a series of checks and tweak various settings, which is what technical SEO entails.
The good news is that aside from performing regular SEO Audits, you won’t typically need to worry about technical SEO after you’ve gotten it right.
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