Technical SEO. What is technical SEO and why is it important? Ignoring it could be costing you valuable traffic.
Emmanuel Akyeam
Website Development | AI & Data Science Enthusiast | SEO | IT Support - Volunteer? I help businesses deploy SEO strategies & User-centered Websites to achieve Top Google Rankings and Boost Conversion Rates
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO collectively denotes different website and server optimization efforts that help search engine spiders crawl and index your website more effectively.?
Why is technical SEO important?
Well, I have always said that technical SEO is a necessity, not an option. The numerous factors contributing to technical SEO create a better experience for visitors.
Crawlability and Speed for Technical SEO
Crawlability refers to the accessibility of your web pages to be crawled and indexed. Thus, it is the most essential and basic thing focused on technical SEO.
? Robots.txt. File
Robots.txt is a file that tells search engines which pages to crawl. It is placed in the root directory of your website and you can view your robots.txt file by navigating to “yourwebsite.com/robots.txt”
Robots.txt file helps you to:
Speed
Page speed is not important for just search engines. They play a greater role in search engines. Web pages that load slowly are incredibly annoying. Studies have shown that if your webpage takes more than three seconds to open, it is highly likely that more than 53% of your visitors will leave.?
Some of the ways you can improve your site speed are:
Other factors that affect Technical SEO
Dead Links/Redirects/Missing Pages
Ending up on an ugly 301 or 404 error page is the most annoying experience for a website visitor.? You should do your best to minimize 301 or 404 errors on your website.?
However, that is easier said than done. It is also important to pay attention to optimizing the 301 or 404 pages.
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Add a friendly note; give them frequently navigated pages, the homepage, and other important pages.
Site Security/HTTPS/SSL Certificate
Search engines prefer secure sites over non-secure ones.?
While many things can be done to elevate your site’s security, start by implementing HTTPS.?
You need an SSL (secure socket layer) certificate to implement HTTPS on your site.
Mobile Optimization / Friendliness?
A seamless mobile experience is essential for user satisfaction, impacting bounce rates, time on site, and conversions.
Google prioritizes the mobile version of websites for indexing and ranking, so a poor mobile experience directly hurts your search visibility.
Mobile devices (excluding tablets) account for more than half of online traffic. A mobile-friendly website is essential.?
Mobile devices are frequently used for local searches, making mobile optimization critical for businesses targeting local customers. Using mobile-optimized UI/UX, avoiding popup ads, improving page speed, etc, improves the mobile-friendliness of your website
XML Sitemap?
A sitemap is a roadmap to your site’s structure for the search engines.?
Sitemaps are a huge help if your site is brand new and lacks external backlinks.
For any website, sitemaps are a must. Add sitemaps to your sites and submit them to Google Search Console and Bing Webmasters Tool for impactful ranking.
Google Search Console / Bing Webmaster(s) Tools
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are free tools from Google and Microsoft, respectively, that allow you to track, monitor, and improve your website’s performance on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Submit your website’s XML to sitemaps in both tools. These tools also show you some visitors, notify you of penalties on your site, show external backlinks, give you an insight into search terms that people use to find you, track technical errors that crawl detects, and rank positions, including keyword acquisition.
Knowing about these factors can help you work better with your development team or help improve your site’s technical SEO.