The Insider’s Guide to Technical SEO

Understanding Technical SEO

If you’ve recently performed a website audit, you might have spotted areas where technical SEO can be improved, and yet technical SEO often gets overlooked in favour of more visible optimisation techniques, such as on-page optimisations and content creation. However, technical SEO plays a vital role in the overall success of a website by focusing on its underlying technical aspects. 

This ensures that a site is not only visible to search engines but also optimised for performance and user experience. When done correctly, technical SEO can significantly enhance the user experience and contribute to better search engine rankings, making it an essential component of any comprehensive SEO strategy.

What Is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of optimising the technical aspects of a website to improve its visibility and performance on search engines. It involves a range of behind-the-scenes elements that impact a site’s overall health, its ability to rank well, and the overall user experience.

Several components of SEO strategy can be considered to be technical SEO, including: 

• Crawling and Indexing: Ensuring search engines can effectively crawl and index the website’s pages.
• Site Architecture: Creating a clear, logical structure that enhances navigation and link equity distribution. You should also avoid broken links and 404 errors. 
• Page Speed Optimisation: Improving loading times to enhance user experience and reduce bounce rates.
• Mobile-Friendliness: Ensuring the website is fully responsive and performs well on mobile devices.
• HTTPS Implementation: Securing the website with HTTPS to protect user data and boost trustworthiness.
• XML Sitemaps: Providing search engines with a roadmap of the website’s structure for efficient crawling.
• Structured Data Markup: Using schema to help search engines understand the content and improve rich snippets.
• Canonical Tags: Preventing duplicate content issues by indicating the preferred version of a page.

Technical SEO focuses on the behind-the-scenes elements that directly affect a website’s functionality. In contrast, on-page SEO deals with the content and HTML source code of a page, such as keyword optimisation and meta tags, while off-page SEO involves activities outside of the website, such as backlink building and social media marketing, that influence a site’s authority and ranking.

Crawlability: Get Found and Get Seen

In technical SEO, one of the primary goals is to ensure that search engine crawlers can easily find, understand, and index your website. Search engine crawlers scan the web for content by following links from one page to another. When they visit a site, they begin by reading its HTML code, which helps them understand the content and structure of the pages.

To make this process as seamless as possible for crawlers, it’s essential to use tools like sitemaps, robots.txt files, and strategic internal linking.

A sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website, serving as a roadmap for search engine crawlers. By providing a sitemap, you help crawlers understand the structure of your site and ensure that all your key pages are discovered and indexed, even those that might be hard to find through regular browsing. 

Similarly, the robots.txt file is a simple text file placed in the root directory of your website that gives instructions to search engine crawlers about which pages they are allowed to access and index. For example, you might use robots.txt to prevent crawlers from indexing pages with duplicate content or to keep certain administrative pages out of search results. By correctly configuring your robots.txt file, you can control the flow of crawler traffic and ensure that they focus on the most important parts of your site.

Internal linking is another powerful tool in technical SEO, and can overlap with your on-page optimisation techniques. By creating links between the pages on your site, you guide crawlers through your content and help them discover and index pages more efficiently. Internal links also help distribute link equity, or SEO value, across your site, boosting the ranking potential of important pages. A well-planned internal linking structure ensures that crawlers can easily follow the path you’ve set out, fully understanding how you intend your website to be used.

The Helpful Content Updates

2022 brought with it two updates known as the “Helpful Content Updates”, with a third update arriving to further fine-tune the algorithm in September 2023. Like BERT, these updates were designed to further improve the quality and relevancy of results shown on the SERP pages. Ultimately, Google’s goal is to reward helpful, relevant content with visibility, and the Helpful Content Updates created a system that allowed them to do so by gauging which pages were most successful at engaging visitors.

It may seem obvious, but a good content strategy is key in order to make the most of the Helpful Content updates. This includes regularly updating your website’s content to ensure it is relevant, accurate, and provides useful information to your target audiences.

For many, this means taking the time to create more long-form content, or getting smarter about the hierarchy of their content and how it is structured in order to rank well and establish your website as an authority.

It isn’t all about guides and articles, however. Sites that incorporate high-quality multimedia elements like videos, images, and infographics to make content more engaging and informative also saw a boost to their SEO rankings with Helpful Content.

Indexing and Site Visibility

In technical SEO, regularly monitoring tools like Google Search Console is essential to understanding how your site is being indexed by search engines. Search Console provides insights into how your pages are crawled, indexed, and displayed in search results, helping you identify and fix issues that could hinder your site’s performance.

Using canonical tags and noindex tags allows you to manage how your content is indexed and ranked. Canonical tags signal to search engines which version of a page is the preferred one when you have duplicate or similar content, preventing potential SEO issues caused by duplicate content. Noindex tags, on the other hand, are used to prevent specific pages from being indexed altogether, which is useful for keeping low-value or sensitive pages out of search results.

To maximise your site’s indexability, it’s important to check how it performs across different devices. Search engines prioritise mobile-friendly websites, so ensuring that your site is accessible and functions well on smartphones, tablets, and desktops is key to maintaining strong search visibility. Testing your site on various devices helps you catch any issues that could impact user experience or prevent crawlers from properly indexing your content.

Putting Users First

In technical SEO, putting users first is paramount. Even if your site boasts excellent content, it won’t achieve its full potential if it’s not user-friendly, visually appealing, or easy to navigate. Ensuring a positive user experience is as important as the content itself, as it directly impacts how visitors engage with your site and, ultimately, your search engine rankings.

This means considering how users interact with your site and making it as easy as possible for them to find the information they need. Simplify navigation, reduce clutter, and ensure that key actions (like finding contact information or making a purchase) are straightforward and accessible. An intuitive design encourages users to spend more time on your site and reduces frustration, which can lead to higher engagement and lower bounce rates.

With the growing use of mobile devices, optimising your website for various screen sizes is crucial. A site that works seamlessly on a desktop but fails on a smartphone will likely lose visitors, considering most internet users today expect to access websites on the go. Responsive design, which adapts to different devices, is essential to ensure that your site is accessible and functional across all platforms. This not only improves user experience but also boosts your site’s ranking, as search engines prioritise mobile-friendly websites.

Speed is a critical factor in technical SEO. With user attention spans shorter than ever, you have only a few seconds to capture a visitor’s interest. Slow-loading pages can lead to high bounce rates, where users leave before your content even loads. To check and optimise loading times, use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, which provide insights into your site’s performance and suggest areas for improvement. Compressing images, minimising code, and leveraging browser caching are just a few ways to boost your site’s speed and keep users engaged.

Navigation is another key element of user-first technical SEO. A clear, intuitive navigation structure helps users easily find what they’re looking for and enhances their overall experience on your site. Effective internal linking is crucial here, as it not only guides users through your content but also helps search engine crawlers index your pages more efficiently. By creating a logical flow through your site, you ensure that both users and search engines can navigate it with ease, improving user satisfaction and SEO performance.

Staying Secure

Your site security not only protects your website but also plays a significant role in how search engines rank your site. Ensuring that your site is secure builds trust with users and search engines alike, safeguarding both your data and the personal information of your visitors.

Security breaches and data leaks can have devastating consequences for your website’s reputation and search engine rankings. Implementing robust security measures helps protect against these risks. Regularly update your site’s software, use strong passwords, and employ security plugins or services to monitor and defend against potential threats. Keeping your site secure is essential for maintaining user trust and ensuring that your site remains a safe environment for all visitors.

An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is fundamental to securing your website. SSL encrypts the data exchanged between your website and its users, ensuring that sensitive information, like personal details and payment information, remains private. Search engines like Google consider SSL a ranking factor, meaning that sites with up-to-date SSL certificates are more likely to rank higher in search results. Regularly check that your SSL certificate is current and functioning correctly and that your site displays the HTTPS protocol in the browser bar, reassuring users that your site is secure.

Top Tips for Technical SEO 

• Make sure your website’s structure and content are easily accessible to search engine bots. 
• Create a comprehensive sitemap and submit it to search engines like Google. 
• Check Google Search Console to understand how your site is indexed.
• Address indexing issues swiftly.
• Optimise for a range of devices.
• Review your linking structure
• Consider the user journey
• Use tools like Google Page Speed Insights to assess your site’s loading times.
• Ensure that your SSL certificate is up to date and that your site is using HTTPS. 

Useful Resources for Technical SEO

• Google Search Console: A free tool that provides insights into how Google crawls and indexes your site. It helps identify and fix indexing issues, monitor site performance, and track important metrics like clicks and impressions.
  
• Google PageSpeed Insights: This tool analyses your website’s speed on both desktop and mobile devices, providing suggestions to improve loading times and overall performance.
  
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider (link to article): A powerful website crawler that helps you audit your site for common SEO issues, such as broken links, duplicate content, and missing meta tags.
  
• Schema.org: A resource for structured data markup that helps search engines understand your content better. Implementing schema can improve rich snippets and enhance your site’s visibility in search results.

Get Started with Optimising Technical SEO

By leveraging these tools and focusing on the key aspects of technical SEO, you can enhance your website’s performance, improve user experience, and boost your search engine rankings. Remember, a well-optimised site not only attracts more visitors but also keeps them engaged, ultimately leading to greater success online. Keep these strategies in mind as you continue to refine your SEO efforts and stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

For help and support in improving your technical SEO, why not get in touch? 

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