Technical SEO refers to optimizing a website’s technical aspects that are responsible for crawling and indexing by search engines, as well as website performance.
Technical SEO covers:
Technical SEO is important because it can have a significant impact on your website’s performance and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
It ensures that your website is easily indexable and crawlable by search engines and helps identify and resolve any technical issues that could potentially harm your website’s rankings on Google.
This aspect of SEO is particularly important for large websites that have numerous pages, as ensuring proper technical optimization becomes even more critical in managing a complex site structure efficiently.
Before diving into technical SEO, it’s essential to conduct an SEO audit to identify any issues that your website may have. This audit process allows you to assess the on-page SEO and technical aspects that affect your site’s performance and need attention.
A helpful tool for this is Ahrefs’ Site Audit, which scans your website and generates a comprehensive report.
Google Search Console is another essential tool for Technical SEO..
Once you have a clear understanding of your website’s technical status, you can start addressing specific aspects of technical SEO. Here are some areas you can begin working on right away:
HTTPS establishes a secure connection between your website and a visitor’s browser, ensuring encrypted communication and data privacy.
Since 2014, HTTPS has been considered a “lightweight” ranking factor by Google.
However, its importance has grown significantly since web browsers started labeling websites without a security certificate as “Not Secure.”
As a result, obtaining an SSL certificate and transitioning your website to HTTPS has become crucial for maintaining user trust and positively impacting your search engine rankings.
Pages that take longer to load deliver a less-than-ideal user experience - and the longer it takes for the page to load, the higher the probability of the website’s visitor bouncing back to SERPs in search of a faster one. Granted, a higher bounce rate won’t necessarily affect the site’s ranking - but it’s an indicator of underlying issues that should be addressed.
Page speed is already a ranking factor for desktop (since 2010) and mobile (since 2018). And in 2021, Google also introduced Core Web Vitals as part of Page Experience signals, making page speed an important aspect of website optimization.
You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check the speed of individual pages. Alternatively, you can go to the Performance report of Ahrefs’ Site Audit to find info about slow-loading pages.
Structured data plays a vital role in enabling search engines to comprehensively understand the key elements of your content, organize it effectively, and display your website in rich search results.
While structured data may not be as critical for text-based blogs, it is essential for certain types of websites, such as e-commerce platforms, event listings, recipe websites, book catalogs, video platforms, and more.
Implementing structured data markup specific to your content type allows search engines to present your website in enhanced search result formats, such as rich snippets, knowledge panels, and other visually appealing features.
Since 2020, Google has adopted a mobile-first indexing approach, where their primary crawler utilizes the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking.
Moreover, with over 60% of website traffic originating from mobile devices in recent times, it has become imperative to prioritize delivering an exceptional user experience for mobile users. This includes ensuring that your website is fully optimized and responsive across different mobile devices and screen sizes.
By aligning with Google’s mobile-first indexing and catering to the needs of mobile users, you can enhance your website’s visibility, user engagement, and overall search engine rankings.