What Is Technical SEO? Basics and Best Practices

Why Technical SEO is Important:

Technical SEO is crucial because it directly impacts how search engines can crawl, access, and index your website's content. Without proper technical optimization:

• Search engines may not be able to discover or understand your pages, making your content invisible in search results - even if it's valuable.
• Slow loading times and poor mobile experiences can frustrate users, signaling a bad user experience to search engines, which hurts rankings.

Technical SEO ensures your site's architecture, code, and user experience allow search bots to effectively crawl, index, and interpret your content for maximum visibility in search. Neglecting it can lead to major traffic and revenue losses.

Understanding Crawling and How to Optimize for It

Crawling forms the backbone of search engine operations. Search engines discover new pages by tracing links from previously crawled and indexed content. For instance, whenever fresh blog articles are published on our site, we incorporate links to those new posts on the main blog page. This allows search crawlers, during subsequent crawls of the blog homepage, to identify and follow those newly added links, thereby finding the recently published content.

Designing an Optimal Site Architecture for SEO

A website's architecture, also known as site structure, refers to the organizational framework that governs how pages are interconnected through internal linking. Crafting an effective site architecture is crucial for facilitating efficient crawling and discoverability of your content by search engines.

Key considerations for an SEO-friendly site architecture include:

1. Logical categorization and organization of content into appropriate sections or categories.

2. Implementing a clear internal linking structure, with descriptive anchor text, to guide both users and crawlers seamlessly between related pages.

3. Utilizing breadcrumb navigation to provide context and enhanced navigability within your site's hierarchy.

4. Avoiding excessive subfolders or nested directories, as these can create unnecessary complexity and hinder crawling efficiency.

5. Consolidating similar or related content onto fewer pages to reduce duplication and enhance topical focus.

Submit Your XML Sitemap to Google

Submitting an XML sitemap to Google can significantly improve the discoverability of your website's pages. This sitemap file provides a comprehensive list of your important pages and their locations, helping search engines efficiently locate and crawl your content.

An XML sitemap is especially beneficial if your site has numerous pages or poor internal linking, as it ensures search engines like Google are aware of all your pages. By submitting this roadmap, you facilitate crawlers in finding and indexing your full range of content for better visibility in search results.

Your sitemap is usually located at one of these two URLs:

• yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
• yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml

Once you locate your sitemap, submit it to Google via Google Search Console (GSC).

• Go to GSC and click “Indexing” > “Sitemaps” from the sidebar.
• Then, paste your sitemap URL in the blank field and click “Submit.”
• After Google is done processing your sitemap, you should see a confirmation message

Understanding Indexing: Getting Your Content in Search Engines

After crawling, search engines analyze and index your website's content into their huge databases of webpages. For your pages to appear in search results, they must be indexed.

To check if your site is indexed, use the "site:" operator search on Google or other search engines. For example: "site:yourdomain.com" shows approximately how many of your pages are indexed.

Regularly checking with the "site:" search allows you to monitor if search engines can properly index and discover your content.

Use the Noindex Tag Carefully

The "noindex" tag is an HTML meta tag that instructs search engines not to index a specific page: <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> Place it in the <head> section.

Use noindex selectively on pages you don't want indexed, like:

• Thank you/confirmation pages
• PPC landing pages

For important website content, avoid using noindex so search engines can properly index and surface those pages in results.

Refer to guides on proper robots meta tag usage to prevent accidental noindexing mistakes that could hurt your site's visibility.

Implement Canonical Tags Where Needed

When Google finds duplicate content across multiple pages on your site, it can get confused about which version to index and rank. This is where canonical tags are useful.

The canonical tag tells Google which URL is the master version that should be indexed and ranked.

Place this tag in the section of both the original and duplicate pages to clearly signal the canonical URL to Google. This avoids duplicate content issues and ensures the right page gets indexed properly.

Additional Best Practices for Technical SEO

While creating an SEO-friendly site structure, submitting your sitemap to Google, and using noindex and canonical tags appropriately are crucial for getting your pages crawled and indexed, there are further steps you can take to ensure your website is fully optimized for technical SEO. Here are some additional best practices:

1. Secure Your Site with HTTPS

HTTPS, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, encrypts data transmitted between a user's browser and your website, protecting sensitive information from being compromised. Since 2014, HTTPS has been a ranking signal, indicating to search engines that your site is secure. You can easily check if your site is using HTTPS by looking for the lock icon in the browser's address bar. If your site isn't secure, consider obtaining a free SSL/TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt and redirecting HTTP traffic to HTTPS to establish a secure connection.

2. Address Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate content occurs when the same or similar content appears on multiple pages of your site, potentially causing issues such as undesirable URLs ranking in search results, backlink dilution, and wasted crawl budget. Utilize tools like Semrush's Site Audit to identify duplicate content issues and follow recommendations to resolve them effectively.

3. Ensure Consistency in Website Versions

To prevent duplicate content issues and maintain a cohesive backlink profile, ensure that only one version of your website is accessible to users and search engine crawlers. Redirect traffic from alternate versions (e.g., https://www.yourwebsite.com vs. https://yourwebsite.com) to your preferred version using 301 redirects.

4. Optimize Page Speed

Page speed significantly impacts user experience and search engine rankings on both desktop and mobile devices. Evaluate your website's performance using tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights and implement optimizations such as image compression, content distribution network (CDN) usage, and minification of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to enhance loading times.

5. Prioritize Mobile-Friendly Design

Given Google's mobile-first indexing approach, it's essential to ensure that your website is optimized for mobile devices. Verify mobile-friendliness using tools like PageSpeed Insights and address any issues related to viewport tags, font sizes, and spacing to enhance user experience on mobile platforms.

6. Implement Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumb navigation provides users with a clear path to navigate through your website and improves site structure for both users and search engines. Implement breadcrumbs, especially for large websites like e-commerce platforms, to facilitate easier navigation and distribute link equity across your site.

7. Utilize Pagination for Long Content

Pagination divides lengthy content into multiple pages, enhancing user experience and search engine accessibility compared to infinite scrolling. Implement pagination to ensure that search engines can access all content efficiently and users can navigate through your site seamlessly.

8. Review and Optimize Your Robots.txt File

The robots.txt file specifies which parts of your site search engines can crawl and index. Regularly review and update your robots.txt file to prevent inadvertently blocking access to important pages and resources.

9. Implement Structured Data Markup

Structured data markup (schema.org) provides search engines with additional context about your content, increasing the likelihood of obtaining rich snippets in search results. Implement relevant structured data for your content types, such as product schema for e-commerce websites, to enhance visibility and click-through rates.

10. Address Broken Pages and Links

Broken pages and links negatively impact user experience and can waste valuable backlink opportunities. Use tools like Semrush's Site Audit to identify and fix broken pages, ensuring that internal and external links lead to functional resources.

11. Optimize for Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are essential metrics that Google uses to evaluate user experience, including Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Aim to improve your website's performance in these areas to meet Google's recommended thresholds and enhance user satisfaction.

12. Implement Hreflang Tags for Multilingual Content

If your website offers content in multiple languages, use hreflang tags to indicate language and regional targeting to search engines. Implement hreflang tags across all versions of your pages to ensure proper indexing and serving of localized content to users.

13. Stay Vigilant with Ongoing Technical SEO Monitoring

Technical optimization is an ongoing process, and new issues may arise as your website evolves. Regularly monitor your website's technical health using tools like Semrush's Site Audit to identify and address potential issues promptly.

By implementing these additional best practices for technical SEO, you can enhance your website's visibility, user experience, and search engine rankings effectively.