Technical SEO ensures that the site is fast, mobile-optimized, and compatible with search engine guidelines so that it can be crawled and indexed smoothly.
However, the SEO world is ever evolving. Algorithms keep changing, and search engines keep updating their ranking factors. So, learning and adapting continuously is essential to stay ahead in the online game.
Through 13 years of experience in the SEO industry, we have witnessed how fixing page speed or website structure can make a significant impact on search engine rankings. Along the journey, our mistakes have been our most instructive guides.
In this article, we have intelligently wrapped the lessons and strategies that we have cultivated over the years to help you improve your website’s technical SEO. Let’s dive in to discover more.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website to help search engines discover, understand, and index your pages. It ensures that the website is user-friendly, ultimately helping it rank higher in search results and reach a broader online audience.
What is the importance of technical SEO?
Technical SEO is important because if search engines cannot properly crawl and index your pages, then your website won’t rank or even be found for that matter. Therefore, working on your technical SEO can lead to improved rankings for your website, better discoverability, and enhanced user experience.
This is how Google bots crawl and index your website.
How is Technical SEO Different from On-page SEO?
People often confuse technical SEO with on-page SEO. To make things easier, let’s break down SEO into three parts– On-page, Technical SEO, and Off-page.
On-Page SEO: On-page SEO includes making changes to your website that are visible to the visitors.
Technical SEO: It is the part of on-page SEO that includes optimizing the technical aspects of the website in order to increase crawlability and indexability.
Off-page SEO: Off-page SEO refers to the optimization of elements outside of a website.
9 Winning Technical SEO Strategies (learned from Experience)
A technically optimized website is one that is both fast and user-friendly, allowing search engines to navigate it effortlessly. It involves various elements that may appear a bit complex initially.
Our experience in the industry has helped us gain valuable insights into technical SEO practices. Throughout our extensive journey spanning 13 years, we have partnered with numerous businesses and assisted them in reaching their SEO goals.
To simplify the process, we are delighted to share some tips and techniques that will help you elevate your website’s technical SEO.
Page Speed
Page speed is an important factor that falls under technical SEO. People are impatient, and nobody is going to wait more than two seconds for your website to load. In fact, reports show that the bounce rate increases by 90% when the page load time goes from one to five seconds, as depicted in the image below.
Source: Think with Google
Besides providing optimal user experience and improving conversion rates, page speed is also an important Google ranking factor.
Let us share a real-life example: one of our clients, who sells ‘electric toothbrushes,’ approached us for help with their website’s technical SEO. We analyzed that their site was running slow, impacting their sales. So, we dug in. First, we optimized the images using tinyPNG (without compromising the quality) and then fixed the unnecessary redirects. Further, we worked on minifying CSS and JavaScript to remove code comments, unwanted commas, white spaces, lengthy function names, etc.
The outcome was extraordinary. The site encountered a whopping 67% in bounce rates and an impressive 38% increase in sales, turning visitors into happy customers.
Before optimizing page speed
After optimizing page speed
Sharing few things that we practice to help our clients improve their website page speed:
- Optimize images: We use high-quality but compressed images because they load quickly and take up less space.
- Minimize Plugins: We use only necessary plugins and keep them updated because too many plugins can slow down the website.
- Reduce Redirects: We keep the website’s path straightforward and minimize the use of redirects to reduce the processing time.
- Limit Use of Videos: We limit the use of video files as they are usually large and can slow down things.
- Test Page Speed: We regularly check the website’s speed with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights.
Site Structure
Site structure is how all the pages on your website are organized and linked together. Having an organized site structure is crucial as it prevents a lot of indexing and crawling errors and provides optimal user experience.
Creating a website with a well-defined hierarchy, topic clusters, and internal links makes it easier for search engines to navigate your website and understand the context of your content. It further reduces the number of orphan pages, i.e., pages with zero internal links pointing to them.
It’s similar to how a clean and organized room is easier to use and find things in. So, good website organization helps search engines find your content, making it simpler for people to discover your website when they search online.
Happy to share a few lessons we learned after helping 100+ businesses with their site structure:
- Plan your structure: Before you build your website, plan your structure and carefully consider how categories, subcategories and pages will be organized.
- Improve internal linking: Use internal links to connect related pages within your website. However, remember to strictly add relevant links only.
- Use concise URLs: Use consistent, concise, and clear URLs that include relevant keywords.
- Use breadcrumbs navigation: Breadcrumbs are like little navigation signs that help users and search engines understand the site hierarchy, improving user experience and site structure visibility.
- Test on real users: It’s best to test your site’s structure with real users to gather valuable feedback on how easy it is to navigate. You can further make adjustments based on their input to improve the user experience.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is when you have an exact copy or a near copy of content that exists on multiple web pages on your site. When duplicate content is present, it can be challenging for search engines to determine which version is the most relevant to display in search results. Therefore, duplicate content can lower your Google rankings, affect your SEO performance, and lead to backlink dilution. Duplicate content is the part of technical SEO that needs to be fixed in order to improve the overall performance of the website.
Our advice on how to fix duplicate content:
- Use 301 redirects: You can use 301 redirects to point back all the duplicates to the original preferred version.
- Implement canonical tags: Apply canonical tags to the non-preferred page versions to help search engines index only the original version of the content.
- Noindex tags: Use “noindex” meta tags to tell search engines not to index duplicate content.
Here’s an example, when we conducted an SEO audit for our client, who owns an e-commerce brand in the fashion industry, we discovered over 10,000 instances of duplicate product descriptions across the website. This duplicate content was one of the reasons behind our client’s diluted search engine visibility.
To resolve the issue, our team administered the following strategies:
- Implemented canonical tags to prioritize high-traffic pages and crafted unique descriptions for key products.
- Applied 301 redirects for outdated product pages, guiding visitors and search engines to active product pages.
By implementing the right techniques, we achieved a significant decrease in duplicate content for our client, leading to a 166.67% increase in organic traffic.
Structured Data
Structured data is a standardized format that helps search engines understand and classify the page content. It is like a special language that the search engines understand. Having structured data helps websites and search engines communicate more effectively, improving the information that you see when you search online.
It consists of structured markup languages like Schema.org, JSON-LD, etc., that give more details about the contents of a web page and help prioritize relevant content for search engine algorithms. One of the key benefits of using structured data is that it helps your website’s search results appear as rich snippets, making them show more detailed information to your customers. This extra information boosts the chances of customers clicking on your results, improving your search engine rankings.
Here are the techniques we implement to ensure that our clients’ website has structured data:
- Use relevant schema markup for the content.
- Ensure that the structured data is mobile-friendly.
- Include ratings, events, and other elements to enhance rich snippets with structured data.
The most important lesson that we have learned, and practice is: Always test the structured data markup to ensure it has the right format and is correctly recognized by search engines.
Broken Links
Broken links are the links that land you to pages that no longer exist. It typically occurs when the website content is removed or moved to another URL. Broken links make it more complicated for search engine bots to crawl and index your website. Besides this, broken links are negative for user experience and can significantly damage your website’s SEO.
How to fix broken links?
- Site Audits: Conduct regular site audits using tools such as Screaming Frog, SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc., to screen and fix broken links.
- Redirect URLs: Always redirect the page’s URL whenever you move or delete it.
- Implement Custom 404 Pages: Create custom 404 error pages that guide users to the homepage or other important web pages on your site when they encounter a broken link.
For instance, while conducting a comprehensive site audit for a respected “cosmetics brand,” we noticed that the website had numerous broken links, impacting its credibility and search engine rankings. Our team readily started working on the issue to fix the broken links.
First and foremost, we updated the internal links and replaced them with relevant, working ones to ensure smooth navigation. Next, we engaged in targeted outreach, requesting websites to update outdated links pointing to our client’s site. Lastly, we implemented 404 redirects to guide encountering broken links to relevant, updated pages.
The transformation was commendable; with fixed internal and external links, the brand witnessed a higher rank in the search engines leading to a 33.3% increase in organic traffic. This smooth user experience further resulted in a rise in conversions, turning visitors into customers.
Implement HTTPS
HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP that ensures the website is safe for the users. HTTPS plays an essential role in technical SEO by encrypting the data exchanged between a user’s browser and a website, safeguarding sensitive information.
When search engines like Google began prioritizing secure websites in their rankings, we guided several clients through the transition. We have closely witnessed the impact of redirecting sites from HTTP to HTTPS. We observed that by implementing HTTPS, the websites experienced improvements in search visibility, giving a slight ranking advantage over non-secure HTTP sites.
To check whether your website is HTTPs, simply visit the site, and you will notice the “lock icon” on the left side of your search bar if it’s safe.
Three tall lessons we have learned after our hands-on experience with HTTPS implementation are:
- Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS: Once you move your site to HTTPs, ensure that you redirect the HTTP versions to HTTPs.
- Select the right SSL certificate: Choose the correct SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. An SSL certificate proves that a site is authentic and makes it safe for people to use.
- Run a test: Test your website on different browsers and devices to make sure all the elements load properly over HTTPS.
XML Sitemap
XML Sitemap is the map of your website that lists all the important pages on a website. This file is designed for search engines to read and helps them understand the structure and content of your site. An XML sitemap tells the search engines how pages on your website are connected and how to reach them. This makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website, ultimately improving its visibility in search results.
Image source: Search Engine Journal
Sharing some insider tips that we gained through optimizing XML Sitemaps for diverse websites:
- Prioritize essential, high-value, and SEO relevant pages in your XML sitemap to enhance the search engine’s focus on core content.
- Keep the number of URLs limited per sitemap for efficient crawling and indexing by search engine bots.
- After creating the sitemap, submit it to search engines like Google, Bing, etc.
- Include hreflang tags if your website has alternate language versions. This practice facilitates improved search visibility across diverse language audiences.
- Verify that your robots.txt file does not block the crawling of URLs listed in your sitemap.
- Regularly monitor and analyze to fix all errors and warnings.
Enhance Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is a specific set of measures that Google uses to evaluate the user experience based on website performance, interactivity, and visual stability. They directly relate to the technical aspects of the website’s performance.
Core web vitals include three components that include:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the time a website takes to load.
- First Input Delay (FIP): Measures interactivity of the user with the website.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): It measures the visual stability.
You can check your core web vitals metrics in Google Search Console. These are the scores you should aim for in order to see if your website is optimized for core web vitals.
- LCP –2.5 sec or lower
- FID – less than 100 milliseconds
- CLS – less than 0.1
Mobile Friendly Website
A mobile-friendly website is one that is optimized for multiple screen sizes, including smartphones and tablets. It features a responsive design, loads quickly, and is easy to navigate. Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it uses mobile versions of a website for indexing and ranking content. We have observed that websites not optimized for mobile devices face higher bounce rates and lower engagement, affecting SEO metrics. Therefore, it is crucial to prioritize mobile-friendly websites to rank in the search engine results.
To check if your website is mobile-friendly or not, you can run mobile-friendly test by simply entering your website’s URL.
Our advice on how to make the website mobile-friendly for users: (based on how we do it for our clients)
- Use the same robots meta tags (specifically noindex or nofollow tags) on the desktop and mobile version of the website.
- Ensure to have the same content and matching headings on both the versions, mobile as well as desktop version.
- Keep the structured data same on mobile and desktop sites.
- Verify if the images and videos are mobile optimized.
- Ensure that the title and meta description matches across both desktop and mobile version.
How We Can Help You Elevate Your Technical SEO with Our Proven Solutions
If you want to rank in the SERPs, then you must implement the given strategies to improve your technical SEO. However, it is important to realize that technical SEO requires constant efforts to reap complete benefits.
If you want a more efficient path, you can get help from an experienced SEO agency like ours. Our proficient team boasts a wealth of experience in technical SEO services that we have gained over the years.
This is how we at SEO Experts Company India perform technical SEO to help your websites rank in the search engine result pages:
Website Audit: First and foremost, we conduct a website audit to check your website’s current state and verify which areas need improvement.
Page Speed Optimization: We focus on enhancing your website’s page loading speed to reduce bounce rate and enhance user experience as well as search engine rankings.
Site Structure: We pay special attention to your website’s architecture for smooth navigation and search engine crawlability. We take care of the internal links and topical clusters to help search engines understand your site better.
Eradicate duplicate content: We make sure that your website is free of similar or duplicate content. Our team makes sure that the content on your website is high-quality and unique.
Fixing broken links: We identify and fix the broken links on your website by implementing 301 redirects and other strategies for enhanced user experience.
Mobile optimization: We ensure that your website is responsive and mobile-optimized for the ultimate user experience.
SSL certificate: We implement HTTPs and secure your website with SSL certificate to improve your website’s security and enhance user trust.
Structured data implementation: We proficiently use structured data to enrich rich snippets and rank your website higher in the search results.
XML sitemaps: We implement XML sitemaps to help search engines crawl and index your website effortlessly.
Core Web Vitals Optimization: We abide by the core web vitals guidelines and optimize your website’s interactivity, visual stability and loading speed, ensuring higher search engine rankings.
Crawl errors: Our expert team intelligently identifies and fixes crawl errors to ensure smooth indexing by search engine bots.
Performance tracking: We regularly monitor and provide reports on the progress of your campaign that help you measure the impact of our services on your website’s technical performance.
Allow us to help you elevate your search engine ranking and enhance user experience with our exceptional technical SEO services.
Feel free to reach out to us to learn more about our services. We would be more than happy to extend a helping hand.
