Technical SEO might seem complicated because search engine optimisation (SEO) has many components, but it is actually the easiest part of SEO. Search engine optimisation is not just about your content and keywords, but the way your website is designed and how easy the search engine can digest your web pages.
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is about optimising certain technical aspects of your site so search engines can crawl and index your site. SEO can be divided into two spheres, content and technical. Content is all about what you write and what is on your site, alongside how it is constructed and the more ‘technical’ aspects. Technical SEO encompasses such things like site speed, mobile usability and site/page hierarchy.
Why Is Technical SEO So Important?
The importance of technical SEO lies in the fact that if you only have content and no technical optimisation, it’s unlikely that your content will be found. Search engines need to be able to access your pages easily and understand what they are about.
A technically sound website not only improves rankings but also enhances user experience, making it easier for visitors to navigate and engage with your content.
What Does Website Crawling Mean?
The crawling process is a core search engine feature that involves exploring a website using a bot. This bot follows pages and links on a site to find any new page updates. During crawling, broken links, poor page navigation and pages that are blocked can hinder the bot’s ability to visit a page, which could end up missing content on a website.
Why Is Website Indexing Important?
After a page is crawled, it gets a chance to become part of the search engine’s index, a page meganet. This index is essentially everything people need to know about the web and it’s important to understand that only index pages will be visible on search engines.
Building A Website With A Logical Framework
The organisation of a website directly correlates with the ease of accessing content on the site. The categories and subcategories define the sections, so these should be one of the first things optimised when setting up your website. For beginners, a simple rule is to make sure any page on your website can be reached within a few clicks from the homepage. This improves accessibility and helps search engines understand your site hierarchy.
The Importance Of Optimised URLs
Your website’s URLs should not be under-rated and should be crafted carefully to express the intent of that specific page. This will tell visitors what to expect on the page, so they should be descriptive and easy to understand. For search engines and visitors, ‘/technical-seo-guide’ is better than ‘/guide-01’ because the structure is the one that is more informative.
Why Website Speed And Performance Matters
One of the main reasons is site speed. One of the main drivers is the experience of the users. The slower a site is, the more likely people are to click off. Search engines see this and subsequently sites that are slower are ranked lower. Improving speed is simple and doesn’t require a ton of complex technology. Some things that can help are compressing images, reducing the amount of plugins you use and reviewing the hosting provider that you use.
Mobile-First Indexing
Most internet users use mobile devices for their browsing. As such, search engines have adjusted their primary method of indexing websites to mobile devices first. In a search result, one of the most important considerations for Google’s index is the mobile version of a website. Sites not doing well in their mobile rendition will struggle even more in ranking overall.
Tip: Your website needs to be adapted to perform on many devices. Your text should be legible and buttons should be easy to click and pages should quickly load on mobile phones.
Understanding Technical SEO Elements
When ensuring your website is SEO-sound, you probably want to understand key aspects such as XML sitemaps, Robots.txt files and much more:
XML Sitemaps
The best way to explain XML sitemaps is that they function as a website’s roadmap to search engine crawlers. A search engine is provided with the most important URLs so that it can efficiently and effectively grab the right information it is looking for.
Robots.txt Files
The robots.txt file tells search engines what parts of your site to crawl and which to ignore. This is helpful so search engines don’t crawl duplicate or unnecessary pages on your site. It is important to know that if you hide pages that should be found, it can hurt your search visibility.
Canonical Tags
Sometimes you may have some pages that are very similar. When this is the case, you want to tell search engines which of those pages is the most important by using canonical tags.
