What is technical SEO? Basics and ten best Practices
On-site and off-site SEO are two categories of SEO. These two are related to text, keywords, and connections, but technical SEO is sometimes disregarded. Many individuals must be made aware of the issue or become anxious when encountering the term technical. So, what exactly is technical SEO, and which are some of the best technical SEO tools? The more thorough optimization modifications give your text the highest chance of ranking for appropriate keywords and phrases.
Technical SEO is critical as it entails improving website features that might be more apparent to visitors, such as loading time and indexing. You can significantly increase your website’s exposure and efficiency in search engine results by using technical SEO basics and implementing ten recommended practices.
Consequently, you must understand technical SEO and how to perform it properly. The best part is that after you’ve completed a technical SEO inspection of your website and resolved any possible issues, you won’t be confronted with them again.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO entails optimizing website features and upgrading its infrastructure to increase visibility and usability. It is a critical component of any SEO (Learn SEO Free) strategy since it may assist you in delivering an improved user experience, generating organic traffic and improving rankings. Technical SEO comprises mending broken links and ensuring sites are indexed, enhancing page performance, optimizing for mobile viewing, setting up redirects, generating an XML sitemap, organizing data markup, etc.
Technical SEO Tools
Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)
Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) are amongst technical SEO tools that include various valuable features for executing technical SEO. Its most significant feature is the ability to locate 404 errors or webpages on your websites that aren’t visible to users. Furthermore, Google Webmaster Tools enables you to verify your Robots.txt file (a file on your webpage that stops search engines from showing directory listings in search results) to confirm that no vital sites are banned from search engines.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog provides technical SEO tools which scan many parts of a domain which will be valuable for your technical SEO approach. It is primarily helpful for on-page SEO, such as detecting copied page headings and descriptions and evaluating URL structures to identify what has to be updated.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights
A faster page load time may assist in enhancing your page rating and, at the very least, improve your visitors’ experience on your website. Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool offers technical SEO tools that let you look into the site’s performance and user experience. It examines it on mobile and desktop platforms.
The Responsinator
It is identical to the Google Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool, although there are significant distinctions. It displays how your website might seem on various mobile and tablet devices, including landscape and portrait.
Best Technical SEO Techniques
Now that we know what technical SEO is, let’s look at the recommended specialized SEO techniques. You may do your SEO audit using the list below.
1. Choose a Desired Domain
The first step in the technical SEO checklist is choosing a particular domain. While building your blog or web page, you need to select a domain. By doing so, you tell browsers the variant of the domain you intend to maintain for the duration of your website’s existence.
2. Improve Your Robots.txt
When you’ve determined your ideal domain, the following step is to review and optimize your robots.txt file.
Robots.txt is a text file located in the root directory of your website. It provides directions to search engines about which pages of the site can crawl & add to their index. The format is pretty simple, and further changes are not required.
3. Improve Your URL Structure
The next step on your technical SEO audit checklist is to modify your site’s Web address. By URL structure, we imply the syntax of your URLs. In general, once you’ve defined the format of your permanent link structure, the only thing left remains to optimize your URLs whenever you publish new material.
4. Website Navigation and Structure
The design of a site is an important SEO factor for several reasons. Visitors are more likely to stick on a page longer and discover what they are looking for faster, and search engines can better comprehend and crawl a website. Many administrators need to pay more attention to the layout and site structure while optimizing their websites, which damages their SEO.
5. Add Breadcrumb Menus
A breadcrumb menu is a collection of links at the top or bottom of a webpage that allows visitors to return to a preceding section (typically the category page) or the site’s home page.
A breadcrumb menu has two functions: visitors can easily traverse a site without using the browser’s back button. Secondly, it provides another signal to search engines about the layout of a website.
6. SEO and Structured Data Markup
Structured data has grown in popularity in recent years due to its extensive use by Google in Search Results. It is a code tag applied to web pages that allow web crawlers to understand the context of information. It is a part of SEO because it requires the inclusion of coding to your website.
7. Examine Your Canonical URLs
A canonical URL should be assigned to all pages on your site. This is accomplished by including the link rel=”canonical” href=”yourpageurl”> tag in the head> of your articles and pages. It is a straightforward method for Google to decide which version of a page to use when indexing your website. The concept is similar to the desired domain, in which the website is accessible via many URLs.
8. Improve Your 404 Page
When a person visits a URL that does not exist on your website, a 404 page is displayed. Perhaps the page was removed, the Address was changed, or they inserted the URL incorrectly in their web browser. Most current WordPress themes have SEO-friendly 404 pages by the standard; if not, you can improve your 404 page’s SEO by installing a plugin or altering your theme designs.
9. Website Speed
Website speed is yet another well-known ranking indication. Google emphasizes the significance of speed in all of its SEO advice, and studies show that quicker websites outperform slower ones.
10. Mobile Compatibility
It is optional to have a mobile-friendly website. Most of your visitors are undoubtedly on mobile, and with Google’s launch of the mobile-first algorithm, your ranks will suffer if you lack a speedy, mobile-friendly website.
Mobile-friendliness is an important aspect of technical SEO since if you’ve got a mobile-friendly design that is correctly configured, you won’t have to deal with this issue again.
Conclusion
Technical SEO is a monster that should be split down into parts. Once you’ve mastered technical SEO, you won’t have to deal with it again, save for occasional SEO audits. The term technical suggests that you must have some technical expertise to do tasks (such as page performance optimization, adding structured data, and so on). Still, it is vital to do so, or your website will not realize its full potential. You can use technical SEO tools for the best optimization of your websites. But your success depends upon your technical SEO strategy.