What is Technical SEO
Technical SEO can be traced back to the early days of the internet when search engines such as Yahoo and AltaVista first appeared in the mid-1990s. To index and rank web pages at the time, search engines relied heavily on manually curated directories and simple keyword-matching algorithms.
Search engines began to develop more sophisticated algorithms to better understand the content and structure of web pages as the web grew and became more complex. Google introduced PageRank in the early 2000s, a revolutionary algorithm that used links between web pages to determine their relevance and authority.
Technical SEO refers to the behind-the-scenes functioning of a particular website that leads to a better working of a page so that it invites more and more views from the people.
Technical SEO At A Glimpse
Technical SEO is the process of improving a website’s ranking and visibility in search engine result pages by optimizing its technical aspects (SERPs). Technical SEO entails optimizing the infrastructure, design, speed, security, and accessibility of a website for both users and search engine crawlers.
Technical SEO takes care of behind-the-scenes of a website like making a website faster in its working, making it easier to crawl, and making the content easier to read for the readers as well as the search engines. This is what makes a user visit a website over and over again because it is more convenient for them. To learn more about SEO you can take a digital marketing course for a detailed understanding.
Here are some parts of technical SEO that can be used to optimize the website:
- Website Structure and Navigation Optimization: This entails optimizing the structure and navigation of the website so that search engine crawlers can easily crawl and index all pages on the site.
- Website Speed Optimization: This includes reducing the load time of the website to ensure that it loads quickly for users, which can improve user experience and reduce bounce rates.
- Mobile-Friendliness Optimization: This entails optimizing the website’s design and layout to ensure that it is easily accessible on mobile devices, which is becoming increasingly important as more people access the internet via mobile devices.
- Schema Markup Implementation: The website’s code provides additional information to search engines about the website’s content and structure, which can help improve search engine rankings.
- Website Security Optimization: This includes implementing security measures to protect the website from hackers and malware, which can help to improve search engine rankings and protect user data.
- Site Architecture Optimization: This entails optimizing the structure, internal linking, and navigation of a website to make it easier for search engine crawlers to crawl and index all pages on the site.
- Site Speed Optimization: This entails reducing bounce rates and improving user experience by optimizing the website’s load time. Image optimization, caching, and reducing server response time are examples of site speed optimization techniques.
- Mobile Optimization: This entails optimizing the design and layout of the website to ensure that it is easily accessible on mobile devices, which is important as more people use mobile devices to access the internet.
- Website Security Optimization: This entails putting in place security measures to keep hackers and malware at bay, which can help improve search engine rankings and protect user data.
- Technical On-page Optimization: This entails making on-page elements like titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and URLs more search engine friendly to improve the website’s overall ranking potential.
- Structured Data Implementation: This entails adding structured data markup to the website’s code to provide additional information about the website’s content and structure to search engines, which can help improve search engine rankings.
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Technical SEO Audit
Technical SEO audit is a method to make sure that the technical parts of a website are following the best steps for search engine optimization. Following are some of the ways to do a technical SEO audit:
- Ensure Your Content is Visible– Make sure that the content on your page is readable by Google algorithms. Unreadable content, links, etc. can mean that the crawlers won’t be able to read the content and the website won’t rank.
- Set Up Your Tracking- Your Google Analytics account can get you started up with your tracking by letting you see the shifts in your data traffic, where people drop off, where people are spending more time, etc.
- Check Your Canonicalization– For this, you will first have to see if the referenced URL is live or not. Canonicalization tells the search engines about the main version of a page that needs to be displayed to the users when there are multiple versions of the same page.
- Accessing Google Search Console– This is a very useful tool to optimize your website’s SEO and it is free for everyone. It helps the users to check their indexing status, server errors, manual actions, messages, etc. to visually optimize the website
- Mobile Friendliness- This determines how Google perceives the mobile version of a website. You can even use the mobile-friendly test tool to know the statistics of how your website is performing.
- Search Console– This is what gives the user knowledge of their website’s performance in Google’s index. If there is any problem with the mobile design of the site, then the Search console will give you information about where the problem lies.
- Scanning the Website for 404s– The 404s show the error of broken links, dead pages, etc. This error is not only an indicator of a website’s bad performance but also a bad user experience and can lead to a lower ranking of your page by the search engines.
- Site Command- Performing a site command will ensure that the site is being indexed properly along with the number of pages. This helps make sure that your pages are coming up in the search.
- Backlinks– If there are links in your content that lead to nowhere, then it is an indicator to Google that the content is not endorsed by credible sources and therefore it will give your page a lower ranking.
Reasons for Optimizing a Website Technically
After knowing a little bit about what is technical SEO, we will further discuss its importance in today’s time. The following are the reasons you should technically optimize your website.
- Easier for Google to Crawl the Contents– When a user comes online, Google wants to make sure that the user is provided with the best possible results. To get this right, if you present to Google a website or a page, with the help of robots and other technical assistance, Google will crawl your website to judge it on various factors like how quickly a page can load, how easy it is to catch what the content on the website is talking about, and so on.
- User Convenience– Optimizing your website technically is not only for Google’s convenience but also for your user’s convenience. User prefers to visit the best website to find the results they are searching for. For this, you will have to make sure that your website fulfills all the user needs to be ranked first in the search engines.
- Increased Traffic– Not only is Technical SEO helpful for the users but also for brand awareness and brand visibility. Technically optimizing a website makes it more known as more traffic is directed toward it.
- Higher Ranking- If there are no backlinks, errors, etc. in your website, Google will make it rank higher in the search engine to direct the users to your site because it has the relevant content they are searching for. Position zero means that your website holds the topmost position when searched for.
How Does Technical SEO Help a Website?
Now that we know all about what technical SEO is, it is important to know the various characteristics of the website that is technically optimized. Discussed below are some ways in which a website is optimized-
- Faster Load Time – The content of a website can be optimized using technical SEO to increase page load speed, which not only improves user experience but also raises the website’s visibility in search engine results.
- Better Crawlability – Technical SEO can assist in ensuring that all of a website’s content is indexed and accessible to search engines by ensuring that search engine crawlers can easily access and browse a website’s pages.
- Improved Security – Another important characteristic of Technical SEO should be to make the website safe for the users. Technical SEO can be beneficial to make sure that a website is safe and secure from online threats, protecting user data while also enhancing the website’s trust with users and search engines.
- Structured data – Search engines can learn more about the content on a website with the help of structured data. Websites can give search engines more comprehensive information about the content on their pages by utilizing structured data, which can increase search engine visibility.
Conclusion
The usability, performance, and visibility of a website on search engines are all significantly enhanced by technical SEO. Technical SEO can boost a website’s position in search engine results pages and increase organic traffic by optimizing a website’s technical components, such as page speed, mobile responsiveness, and security.