What is Technical SEO? 9 Best Practices for Success

In the digital world, the term SEO is no stranger to anyone involved in online business or marketing. But how many of us are familiar with the term “Technical SEO?” This critical aspect of search engine optimization often goes unnoticed, yet it plays an instrumental role in ensuring a website’s optimal performance.

In this article, we peel back the layers of technical SEO, exploring its significance and components, and share nine best practices to keep your website in tip-top shape. Whether you’re a seasoned SEO expert or a beginner trying to navigate the complex waters of digital marketing, this guide offers valuable insights to enhance your SEO strategy. Let’s dive in!

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO refers to the optimization of your website’s infrastructure, ensuring it excels during the crawling and indexing stages by search engines. Its primary objective is to enhance the technical aspects of a website to amplify its organic rankings. Key components like site speed, mobile-friendliness, architecture, security, and the newly emphasized Core Web Vitals play crucial roles in this optimization process.

Core Web Vitals, introduced by Google, specifically measure aspects of web usability such as loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability (More on this below). In essence, technical SEO not only ensures your site is easily discoverable and interpretable by search engines but also prioritizes user experience and readability — both of which are crucial for boosting search rankings.

How Does Technical SEO Differ From On-Page or Off-Page SEO?

SEO consists of three primary segments: Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, and Off-Page SEO. Each segment caters to distinct aspects of optimizing websites for search engines, and understanding their differences is crucial for holistic website optimization.

• Technical SEO: This focuses on the ‘behind-the-scenes’ elements of a website. It ensures that search engines can efficiently crawl, index, and render a site. Key areas include site speed, mobile responsiveness, site architecture, and XML sitemaps. Essentially, Technical SEO sets the foundation, ensuring the website is structured in a way that’s friendly to search engines.
• On-Page SEO: Centered on the visible content of individual web pages, On-Page SEO aims to ensure that each page is optimized for user experience and specific keywords. It deals with content quality, keyword research, meta tags, and internal linking. The goal here is to make sure that the content speaks effectively both to users and search engines.
• Off-Page SEO: As the name suggests, this focuses on external factors influencing a site’s search ranking. Predominantly concerned with building backlinks from other websites, Off-Page SEO also delves into brand mentions, social signals, and other external engagement metrics. It’s akin to the reputation management of a website in the broader digital ecosystem.

In essence, while Technical SEO optimizes the foundation and infrastructure, On-Page SEO refines the content and layout, and Off-Page SEO bolsters the website’s reputation and authority in the online realm.

Elements of Technical SEO

Now that we have a basic understanding of what technical SEO entails, let’s delve into the key elements that form an effective technical SEO plan.

1. Website Crawling: Website crawling is the primary stage where search engines discover your website. It’s the process where search engine robots, often called ‘spiders,’ navigate through your site pages and posts. Ensuring that your website is easily crawlable is crucial for better indexing and higher SERP rankings.
2. Indexing: After crawling comes the process of indexing, where the crawled data is cataloged and stored in a ‘searchable’ format. A well-structured website increases the chances of more pages being indexed correctly.
3. Site Speed: Google includes site speed as one of its ranking factors. A faster website not only improves user experience but also increases the chances of higher rankings. Optimize your site speed by compressing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript, and leveraging browser caching.
4. Mobile-Friendliness: With mobile traffic surpassing desktop, it’s more important than ever that your site is mobile-friendly. This is also a Google ranking factor. A responsive design that adjusts to any screen size enhances the mobile user experience.
5. XML Sitemap: An XML sitemap acts as a roadmap of your website that leads search engines to all your important pages. XML sitemaps can be useful for SEO as they allow Google to quickly find your essential website pages.
6. Website Security: Having a secure website (HTTPS vs. HTTP) is another known Google ranking factor. HTTPS keeps the user data secure and also helps in building trust.

These elements are all interrelated, creating a holistic framework for technical SEO. Ensuring a website is crawlable and indexable lays the foundation for search engines to access and understand your site. Site speed, mobile-friendliness, and security all contribute to user experience, which search engines value highly. Finally, providing an XML sitemap further assists search engines in navigating your site, ensuring all your important pages are found and indexed.

What Makes a Good Technical SEO Plan?

A good technical SEO plan starts with a comprehensive website audit to identify any existing technical issues that could be affecting site performance and visibility. This could include issues related to site speed, mobile-friendliness, indexing, and security. Once identified, these issues should be prioritized based on their potential impact on your site’s performance and visibility.

The plan should also include:

• Regular monitoring of site health and performance using tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics. This will allow you to quickly identify and rectify any issues that may arise.
• A focus on improving site speed, as this not only affects user experience but is also a known ranking factor for Google. Strategies could include optimizing images, minifying code, and leveraging browser caching.
• Ensuring your site is mobile-friendly, given the increasing proportion of web traffic coming from mobile devices.
• Implementing a secure (HTTPS) website. Not only is this a ranking factor for Google, but it also helps to build trust with your site visitors.
• Regular updates to your XML sitemap to ensure Google can easily find and index all of your important pages.

By focusing on these areas, you can develop a solid technical SEO strategy that will help improve your website’s performance, visibility, and user experience.

9 Technical SEO Best Practices for SEO Professionals

Technical SEO is similar to fine-tuning a car’s engine. A site may look spectacular on the outside, but if its underlying mechanisms aren’t running smoothly, it won’t get far in search engine rankings. SEO professionals, therefore, need to prioritize technical SEO to ensure their websites perform optimally. Here are nine technical best practices every SEO expert should have in their toolkit:

1. Optimize Crawl Settings

• Robots.txt File: This file is essential for controlling which pages search engines can or cannot crawl. Ensure you’re not accidentally blocking essential pages.
• Crawl Budget: A site’s crawl budget is the number of pages search engines will crawl on a site during a given time. By optimizing this, you ensure critical pages aren’t overlooked.

2. HTTPS is a Must

Secure your website with SSL to shift from HTTP to HTTPS. Not only does this add a layer of security for your users, but search engines, particularly Google, also consider HTTPS as a ranking factor.

3. Website Speed Optimization

• Compress Images: Large image files can significantly slow down page load times. Use tools like TinyPNG or Compressor.io.
• Reduce Server Response Time: Invest in quality hosting and consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to reduce latency.

4. Mobile-First Optimization

With a significant chunk of users accessing sites via mobile, it’s crucial to have a mobile-optimized, responsive design. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can offer insights into your site’s mobile optimization level.

5. Implement Structured Data

Using schema markup helps search engines better understand the context of your content. This can result in rich snippets in SERPs, potentially increasing click-through rates.

6. Address Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can dilute the value of your content in the eyes of search engines. Use canonical tags to specify which version of a page search engines should consider as the “primary” one.

7. Fix 404 Errors and Redirect Chains

• 404 Errors: These are dead ends for search engines and users. Identify them and redirect them to relevant pages or remove links leading to them.
• Redirect Chains: Multiple redirects in a sequence can slow down page loading and confuse search crawlers. Simplify them to direct redirects whenever possible.

8. XML Sitemap Optimization

Keep your XML sitemap updated, ensuring it lists all vital pages of your site. Regularly submit the sitemap to search engines via tools like Google Search Console to keep them informed of site changes.

9. International SEO for Multilingual Sites

If your site caters to multiple regions or languages, use hreflang tags. These inform search engines about the language and geographic targeting of a page, ensuring the right audience sees the appropriate content version.

Core Web Vitals and Technical SEO

Core Web Vitals have emerged as a crucial aspect of Technical SEO, given their emphasis by Google as essential metrics for evaluating a website’s user experience. These vitals are a subset of factors that are part of Google’s page experience score, designed to provide quantifiable data about users’ experiences on a web page. Let’s delve deeper into their connection with Technical SEO.

Core Web Vitals are composed of three specific metrics:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the loading performance of a page. A good LCP score indicates that the page’s main content loads quickly, ideally within 2.5 seconds of landing on a page.
2. First Input Delay (FID): Quantifies interactivity. It evaluates the time it takes for a page to become interactive, with an ideal time being less than 100 milliseconds.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Assesses the visual stability of a page. This metric is concerned with unexpected layout shifts that can be frustrating for users. A good CLS score is less than 0.1.

How Do the Core Web Vitals Tie Into Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is all about optimizing the structure and infrastructure of a website to ensure it’s crawlable, indexable, and offers an excellent user experience. Core Web Vitals perfectly align with these goals, focusing explicitly on user experience metrics.

1. Website Performance: Technical SEO practices like optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, and minimizing code can directly improve LCP scores by ensuring content loads quickly.
2. JavaScript Optimization: Properly optimizing and deferring non-essential JavaScript can enhance FID scores, as the browser can rapidly respond to user interactions without being bogged down by unnecessary scripts.
3. Stable Design Elements: Ensuring design elements have set dimensions and utilizing techniques like “lazy loading” can prevent unexpected layout shifts, leading to better CLS scores.

Google has made it clear that Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor. This means websites that do not meet the expected benchmarks may experience a decline in organic visibility. Given the close alignment of Core Web Vitals with Technical SEO, professionals in the SEO realm must integrate these metrics into their optimization strategies. By doing so, they’ll not only appease search engines but also offer users a seamless, fast, and efficient browsing experience.

Conclusion

Technical SEO stands as the silent, foundational powerhouse behind a website’s success in the vast digital arena. By implementing the nine best practices outlined, you’re not only laying a strong groundwork for search engine visibility but also enhancing the overall user experience. Remember, in the world of SEO, a robust technical foundation can elevate all your other efforts, from content creation to link building.

If you’re keen on optimizing your site’s technical backbone and leading the digital race, don’t navigate these complexities alone. Reach out to the experts at Markitors — we’re here to guide, assist, and ensure your website is primed for success. Contact us today!