Here we are talking about technical SEO.
This is not as easy as you are thinking. Conversely, here we can help you to understand what is technical SEO and what are its terms, and what SEO experts and owners are finding difficulties when it comes to technical SEO.
What is Technical SEO?
The technical SEO process optimizes a site for search engine results and can include user-experience activities.
The following are some everyday tasks that fall under the technical SEO category:
- Google Sitemap Submission
- Create an SEO-friendly website structure
- Improve your sites performance
- Adapting your website to mobile device
- Find and fix duplicate content
- More information
Technical SEO is mainly used to improve the technical sides of your website and to increase the ranking on the search engine of each web page of the website.
SEO optimization is the key to making your website faster and making it easy for search engines to understand. SEO has two major terms such as on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO is referred to as improving the specific elements of your website which helps you to rank higher on the search engine.
On the other hand,off-page SEO is used for creating exposure for the website with the help of other channels.
This post will teach you the basics and best practices for optimizing your websites technical SEO.
Lets get started.
Is It Mandatory To Optimize Websites From a Technical Perspective?
If you have an e-commerce website then it has become mandatory for you to do technical SEO. in this case Google and other search engine users won't find it difficult to find you as a result.
However, Google analyzes every little thing on your website. Especially the user experience. For example, if you have a PrestaShop store and you put everything to make your store graceful for customers.
Conversely, due to the heavy load of visuals, your web pages are taking 5 seconds to load a page then your customer will simply leave your website. This error is simply analyzed by Google and it will give you a lower ranking.
Improving the technical sides of your website with technical SEO helps search engines to understand your website and you may also get a good ranking on search engines too.
Let's be clear, just focusing only on technical SEO to get a higher ranking on a search engine would be unethical though.
Your website is your major presentation. You don't have to impress Google. You have your customers to impress. Everyone is running behind to stay in the no.
1 position on Google but indirectly they are reducing their customer's user experience.
What's The Connection With Backlinks?
Attaching links in your content has great value. In contrast, it also provides a great contribution to ranking your website higher on the search engine.
But it does not look that easy. You have to always keep up with the quality of content and great SEO.
Regardless, if you are doing business on the Shopify store or just doing guest blogging if you are creating money from links or even getting recognition from it then you should have some good resources, from which you are linking.
Most of the time, links are attached manually, conversely, we have now tools available that can do this job on behalf of people.
Sounds good right? But we suggest that manual work will be better.
What Are The Highlights Of Technical SEO?
To improve online business you have to do so many things. Marketing, SEO, analytics, maintaining user experience, and so on.
In the context of technical SEO, it is kind of a dramatic part for any owner and SEO expert. However, in the following words, you will see some highlights of technical SEO.
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Website Needs To Be Fast
In today's fast-paced world, every customer wants a web store or app that needs to work fast. People want everything done faster as they lose their ability to stay calm.
40% of customers will leave the website if the loading process takes more than 3 seconds.
Google reads everything from your website. If you are using an OpenCart store and if you have a low page loading problem then the possibility may arise that Google will throw you out of a higher ranking.
It simply means low traffic and less user experience. If you don't want to lose your rank then start working on this problem immediately.
Monitoring Your Links
If you already have an existing business and it's running well above your expectations then you have to keep with what you are doing for eternity.
Moreover, one of the prime things is to maintain your links within the content.
It has become easier with a BigCommerce store, as it's a SaaS network and you can simply manage your links or you can get help from links managing tools to update your store time-to-time.
Never Use Duplicate Content
It's very obvious and especially, owners of the website don't want to make an effort to write unique content for each web page.
Don't forget that search engines are reading all the content of your website. Therefore you are confusing it while writing the same content on every page.
There are also some possibilities that you may not do it deliberately but it seems you are indirectly using the same content without even noticing.
This could be acceptable but you have to realize that you are copying our content. If you have a WooCommerce store and if you use the same content then your customers/visitors might not notice but surely Google does.
What Is The Importance Of Technical Seo?
The performance of a site on Google can be significantly affected by technical SEO. No matter how good your websites content is, if pages arent accessible by search engines, they will not appear in the search engine results.
It can result in the loss of potential business revenue and traffic. Google has confirmed that page speed, mobile friendliness and other ranking factors are important.
Users may leave your website if your pages take too long to load. This behavior may indicate that your website needs to provide a better user experience.
Google will likely rank your website poorly.
Understanding Crawling
Search engines must be able to crawl your website before you can begin optimizing it for SEO. Search engines are based on crawling.
Search engines crawl pages by following links from pages that they know.
Every time we post a new blog, we archive it. The next time Google crawls through our blog, the links for the recent posts will be visible.
This is one way Google finds our blog.
You must first ensure your web pages are search engine friendly if you wish to see them in the search results.
You can do it in several ways:
Build an SEO-Friendly Site Architecture
The site architecture (or site structure) is how your pages are connected to your website.
A site structure that effectively organizes your pages so crawlers can find the content of your website quickly and easily.
When structuring your website, ensure all pages are within a couple of clicks from the homepage. Homepage links lead to category pages. The category pages then link directly to the individual subpages of your site.
The structure reduces orphan pages.
It is difficult for users and crawlers to locate orphaned pages when there are no links.
Tip: If you use Sem tools, it is easy to find if your website has orphaned pages. Create a site audit project and use it to crawl your website.
After the crawl, click on the tab "issues" and type "orphan" to see if your website has orphaned pages. Add internal links to orphan pages on pages other than the one causing the problem.
Read More: How does SEO Increase Your Online Presence?
Google Sitemap Submission
A sitemap will help Google to find your website.
Sitemaps are usually XML documents containing your websites essential pages. This lets the search engines know what pages are on your site and how to locate them.
This is important, especially if many web pages need to be linked.
sitemap:
You can find your sitemap at either of the following two URLs:
- yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
- yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml
The best way to submit your sitemap is through Google Search Console (GSC).
Note: Read this guide if you still need to activate GSC for your website.
Click "indexing"> "sitemaps" in the GSC sidebar to submit your sitemap.
You can then paste the URL of your sitemap in the box and click "Submit."
You should receive a message similar to this after Google has processed your sitemap:
Understanding Indexing
Search engines will crawl and index your web pages. They then analyze the pages to understand their content.
The search engine then stores these pieces of content in its massive database of billions of pages.
Search engines must index your pages for them to show up on search engine results.
- You can check your index status by searching for "site:".
- You can type website: www.cisin.com in the Google search bar to determine if cisin.com is indexed.
- You can see how many Google pages have been indexed.
- Searching the URL of a page with the site: search will also show you if that particular page is indexed.
Noindex Tag
It is an HTML tag that prevents your page from being indexed by Google. The "noindex" tag is placed in the appropriate section on your website and appears as follows:
In an ideal world, all of your pages would be indexed. Use the "noindex tag" only to exclude specific pages from being indexed.
You could also be:
- Thank you pages
- Landing pages for PPC
Read our robots meta tag guide for more information on "noindex tags" and to learn how to avoid the most common mistakes.
Canonicalization
Google can be confused when it finds the same content across multiple pages of your website. It only sometimes knows which pages to display in its search results.
Canonical tags are helpful in this situation. This tag lets Google know which version of a page to index.
The Best Techniques for SEO
Google will crawl and index your web pages if you create an SEO-friendly site structure and submit your sitemap.
Consider these best practices if your site is to be optimized fully for SEO.
Use HTTPS
HTTPS, or HTTPS for short, is the secure version of HTTP. This helps to protect user-sensitive information such as passwords and card details.
Its been an important ranking factor since 2014.
Visit your website to check if it uses HTTPS. You can confirm by looking for the lock icon. Youre using HTTPS if you dont see "Not Secure" in the address bar.
An SSL certifies the authenticity of a website. It also establishes secure connections when the users access it.
Lets Encrypt offers a free SSL certificate.
Important: After your site has moved to HTTPS, you must ensure that all redirections from HTTPS to HTTP are added.
It will then redirect any users visiting your websites HTTP version to the HTTPS secure version.
You Should Only Have One Version Of Your Website Accessible To Users And Crawlers
The users and crawlers of your website should be limited to one version:
- https://yourwebsite.com
- https://www.yourwebsite.com
The duplicate content created by having both versions available needs to be fixed.
It also reduces your profile of backlinks. Some websites link to "www", while others may relate to "non-www". It can have a negative impact on your Google ranking.
Use only one version. Send visitors from the other website to your main website.
Increase Your Page Speed
The page speed affects rankings on both mobile devices and desktop computers. Make sure that your website loads as quickly as possible.
Google PageSpeed Insights can be used to test the speed of your site. You get a score between 0 and 100. The higher number is better.
Consider these ideas to improve your sites speed.
- Compress Images- Images are the most extensive files on any webpage. Compressing images with tools such as Shortpixel can reduce the file size and make them load faster.
- CDN (content delivery network)- CDN copies your pages on servers worldwide. The CDN connects users to the closest server so that the files requested can travel less distance.
- Reduce the size of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files- Minification reduces file sizes by removing unnecessary characters and space from code. This improves the page loading time.
Read More: 5 Reasons Why SEO is a Must for Your Website
Ensure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly
Google indexes mobile first. Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it will look at the mobile versions of pages to rank and index content.
Make sure that your site is mobile-friendly.
Google Search Console has a report called "Mobile Usability". To see if this is the case, click the link to view the information.
This report will show you how many pages are affecting mobile usability.
You can also look at specific problems. You can also use Google Mobile-Friendly Tool if you do not have Google Search Console.
Use Structured Data
Google can better comprehend the contents of pages with structured data. You can earn rich snippets by adding structured data markup codes to your page.
Rich snippets are a more attractive search result with extra information under the title. Rich snippets can make your pages more attractive. This can increase your CTR.
Google offers a variety of markups for structured data. Choose the one which best suits the page you wish to enhance.
For example, if you have an online store, it makes sense to add structured product data to the product pages. You dont need to manually code the data because many free tools, such as this one, generate structured data.
If you use WordPress, the Yoast plugin can be used to implement structured information.
You Can Easily Find And Fix Duplicate Content Issues
When you duplicate content, it means that the exact or nearly identical content appears on several pages of your website.
The page appears under two URLs.
- https://buffer.com/resources/social-media-manager-checklist/
- https://buffer.com/library/social-media-manager-checklist/
Google does not penalize websites for duplicate content. Duplicate content may also cause problems, including:
- Search results for undesirable URLs
- Backlink diversion
- Spending a crawl budget is wasteful
Our SEO professional services for Site Audit will help you determine if your website has issues with duplicate content.
To begin, run a crawl through your website in Site Audit and click on the tab "Issues". Search for duplicate content. The tool shows you if there is any and offers advice to correct it.
Find & Fix Broken Pages
A website with broken pages can negatively impact the users experience. If those pages contain backlinks, they are wasted, as they lead to outdated resources.
Site Audit can crawl your website to find any broken pages. Click on the tab "Issues". Search for "4xx."
Youll be able to see if there are any broken pages. To get a complete list of your broken pages, click on "# Pages".
You have two choices to fix pages that are broken:
- Restore Pages accidentally deleted
- Redirect old posts by adding backlinks on other pages relevant to your website
You need to update or remove any links that lead to the pages you have deleted or redirected after fixing broken pages.
- Go back to "issues". Search for "internal link" to see if there are broken links.
- Click on "# Internal Links". You will see all the broken pages and their links. Click on the URL for more information.
- On the following page, click the XURLs button under "Incoming Internal Links" to see a list of all pages that point to the broken page.
- Redirect broken links with new links.
Optimize Core Web Vitals
Google measures user experience using Core Web Vitals, a set of speed metrics.
The following metrics are included:
- Calculates how long it takes a page to load the largest part of a web page for a particular user.
- First Input Delay (FID). Measures how long it takes for a website to respond to the users initial interaction.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).- Measures changes in the layouts of different elements on a page.
You should aim to achieve the following scores in order to ensure that your site is Core Web Vitals optimized:
- LCP 2.5 sec or less
- FID (100 ms and lower)
- CLS -- 0.1 or less
Google Search Console allows you to check the performance of your website for Core Web Vitals metrics.
- Visit your Search Consoles Core Web Vitals Report.
- Tools can be used to create a Core Web Vitals-specific report.
- Click "View Details" in the Site Audit Tool.
- You will be presented with a comprehensive report of the Core Web Vitals Performance and suggestions for each problem.
You Can Use Hreflang To Translate Content Into Multiple Languages
Use hreflang tags if your website has multiple languages. Hreflang is an HTML attribute that specifies a websites target language and geographic location.
This helps Google to serve users with the appropriate language and country versions of your page. We have, for example, multiple language versions of our website.
These versions use hreflang to inform Google of the language and geographic targeting.
The tag can be easily implemented. Add the hreflang tags to the relevant section on all pages. You can add these tags to each page if, for example, your website is in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Keep Up With Technical Seo Issues
Its not a one-time thing. Over time, new problems are likely to arise.
Its important to monitor your SEO technical health regularly and fix any issues that arise. Semrushs Site Audit Tool can help you do so.
Semrushs Site Audit tool monitors 140 issues related to technical SEO for your website.
If we audit the website of Petco in Semrush, we will find that there are three redirect loops and chains. SEO is negatively affected by redirect chains and loops because of the negative impact they have on user experience.
Youre not likely to find them accidentally. This issue may have gone unnoticed if not for a crawl audit. These technical SEO audits can help you improve your SEO by providing actionable items.
Want More Information About Our Services? Talk to Our Consultants!
Conclusion
In the end, this is what technical Search Engine Optimization and its terms are. Besides, it's the information from the scratch, nevertheless, technical SEO has so many things which can be learned and evolved.
Enlighten yourself with it and try to make sure about what steps we don't have to make.
SEO is a deep ocean the more you get inside the more you discover everything related to it. If you are new in this field then you can start when you hire a sem expert and you've already started.
Then you can take further steps and make your store user-friendly and maintain your rank on search engines by keeping updated the SEO terms of your web store or website.
