Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the foundation of a successful search engine optimization strategy, that involves optimizing the technical aspects of your website to ensure that search engines can crawl, index, and rank your site efficiently.

Technical SEO refers to the optimization of the technical elements of a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search results. Unlike on-page SEO, which focuses on content and keywords, technical SEO is concerned with how well search engines can access, crawl, and index your site. This includes optimizing site speed, mobile-friendliness, site architecture, and addressing any technical issues that may impact your site’s performance.

To achieve optimal results, Technical SEO encompasses several key components.

Establishing Correct Website Navigation and Architecture

The main objective of the technical SEO is to make all pages of the website crawlable and easy-to-reach for both users and search crawlers. Errors on this field may cause the poor website indexing and ranking that influence negatively on the organic traffic.

Doing the technical SEO audit, I focus on the following:

• Making sure that all obligatory and recommended files, required for the website indexing, are set up correctly. These are robots.txt that contains directives for the search crawlers, sitemap.xml file that contains the website sitemap, .htaccess file that is not visible without access and that contains server rules and settings like redirecting traffic from www to non-www domain mirror or backwards
• Checking up that all internal links follow to the valid pages. All broken links and all links that are redirected should be fixed if it is possible or at least collected, sorted and sent to the developers’ team.
• All external links should follow to the valid pages. Sometimes it is impossible due to the number or reasons. In this case 301 redirect rules should be set up to keep the backlink mass working.
• Make sure that all pages have internal links. So-called “orphan pages” are difficult to reach for both users and crawlers so it would be better to establish the proper internal linking to prevent their appearance. The exception is pages that are created “orphan” on purpose, for example, landing pages for ads or for marketing needs that are created to collect the direct traffic only.
• Excluding all kinds of duplicated content from indexing using rel=canonical tags. This is applicable for e-commerce websites but sometimes may concern blogs and corporate websites.

The result is a detailed report with description of discovered issues and the ways of their fixing, especially if agency or company I work for has their own R&D department.

Structured Data and Schema Markup

Structured data helps search engines understand the content of your site and can enhance search results. I use the following types of the on-page markup:

• Schema Markup to provide additional information to search engines to get rich snippets.
• Open Graph Markup to automatically create attractive snippets then the page is shared in socials
• Google Tags for marketing team to help them collect on-page statistics.

The most reliable SEO approach is to make a website as transparent and clear for search systems as possible, so use of markup could be beneficial for the website ranking and CTR.

Site Speed Optimization

Site speed is a critical factor for both user experience and SEO. A slow-loading site can lead to higher bounce rates and lower rankings in search results. I focus on optimizing various elements to improve site speed:

• Image Optimization: Compressing and resizing images to reduce load times and converting images into the up-to-date formats like webp (WordPress may require installing a special plugin to use webp images, they are considered suspicious by default for some reason).
• Leveraging browser caching to speed up page loading for returning visitors.
• Reducing the size of CSS and JavaScript files to enhance performance.
• Using a CDN to deliver content more quickly to users based on their geographic location.

Some updates can be implemented by me, some require coding so they are usually requested to implement by developers.

Required data can be obtained using the Screaming Frog tool, the column “Response time”, or using Google Pagespeed Insights API that allows batch collecting the page performance metrics.

Mobile Optimization

With the increasing use of mobile devices, ensuring your site is mobile-friendly is essential. I implement responsive design techniques to ensure that your site adjusts seamlessly to different screen sizes and devices. This also includes optimizing mobile page speed and usability.

The Process of Implementing Technical SEO

Here’s how I typically approach a Technical SEO project:

1. I start with a comprehensive audit of the website to identify technical issues and areas for improvement. This audit includes crawl errors analyzing, site speed, mobile-friendliness etc. to figure out which critical issues may require immediate fixing. If I find some, I report about them to the developers’ team of fix them myself if it is possible.
2. Based on the audit results, I prioritize the issues that need to be addressed. High-impact issues such as site speed and mobile optimization are tackled first to ensure quick improvements in performance.
3. I then implement the necessary changes and optimizations myself or together with developers. This includes technical fixes, site improvements, and the structured data setup.
4. After implementation, I thoroughly test the changes to ensure they are effective and do not introduce new issues. Ongoing monitoring is also essential to catch any future problems and to track improvements in site performance and search engine rankings.
5. I provide detailed reports on the work completed, including the improvements made and their impact on site performance. Regular updates keep you informed of progress and results.

Benefits of Technical SEO

• First of all, the poor technical website settings may cause poor website indexing up to the absolute ignorance from Google. Adjusting the technical SEO in accordance with the best SEO practices is a foundation for all next SEO, marketing and sales steps.
• Faster load times and help improve site performance and a user experience.
• Enhanced ability for search engines to crawl and index your site causes the better search engine visibility.
• Rich snippets and structured data can improve your website’s CTR.

Technical SEO is a crucial component of a successful SEO strategy. By optimizing the technical aspects of your website, I help ensure that your site is not only accessible and efficient but also capable of achieving higher rankings and better performance in search engine results. If you’re ready to enhance your website’s technical foundation and drive better results, feel free to contact me to get started.