Technical SEO

Just as a physical store must be structured for customers to navigate conveniently and comfortably, your website must be optimised for the search engines and users to visit. This is where technical SEO comes into focus – the behind the scenes mechanisms that dictate precisely how visible your website is.

As a business owner, you’re not just selling products or services. You’re also selling an experience. This experience begins long before a customer clicks “order,” when they’re just floating through cyberspace. Craft it right, and you’ll guide valuable traffic right to your product and service pages. Get it wrong, and you might as well be space debris, unremarkable and unnoticed.

Technical SEO – The Engine Room of Your Web Presence

Technical SEO is the foundation upon which all other SEO strategies are built. It’s the technical part of optimising your website that helps search engines to crawl, index, and understand your site more effectively. It encompasses everything from the site’s structure and speed to schema markup and mobile-friendliness.

Fundamentally, technical SEO ensures that there are no barriers to the search engine bots, and that your website is structured in a way that is not only friendly to search engines but also to the people who visit. Without it, your content might not even be seen in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Technical SEO Checkpoints

Site Speed – How quickly does your website load? Plodding load times push away users and can hurt your Google rankings.

Mobile-Responsiveness – Does your content fit neatly onto the screen of a mobile device? If it doesn’t, it will need work. More users than ever are browsing, buying and consuming content on mobile devices, so a website that works on mobiles is essential.

Indexing – Are all your important pages indexed by search engines? A crawl error can keep a page out of the results.

HTTPS – Ensure your site is secure, especially if you handle sensitive information. Google’s preference for secure sites also impacts rankings.

Website Structure

Your site’s structure isn’t just for you to organise content logically; it’s for search engines and visitors too. A clear, hierarchical model allows search engines to understand what content is important and how it relates to other content on your site. Visitors should be able to navigate intuitively to find what they’re looking for.

Tips for an SEO-Friendly Site Structure

• Create a logical hierarchy with categories and subcategories that make sense for your content.
• Use internal linking to guide both users and search engines through your site.
• Implement breadcrumbs for easier navigation and to provide search engines with more context about the page’s place in your site.

On-Page Optimisation

On-Page Optimisation is where you use the language of SEO to communicate the value and relevance of your content to search engines. This includes meta tags, headings, image tags, and page content – all elements that can be optimised to facilitate better rankings.

On-Page Optimisation Best Practices:

• Use unique, keyword-rich meta titles and descriptions for each page.
• Ensure H1, H2, and H3 headings are used to structure your content and include relevant keywords.
• Optimise images for search by using descriptive file names and making use of alt text.
• Craft high-quality, relevant page copy that includes your targeted keywords.

Backlink Analysis

Backlinks — hyperlinks from other websites to yours — are crucial for SEO rankings. However, the quality of the link really does matter. Low-quality or spammy backlinks can harm your website’s credibility, while high-quality backlinks from reputable sources can significantly boost your SEO efforts.

Backlink Strategies include:

• Use tools to conduct a backlink analysis to and monitor your link profile’s health.
• Disavow toxic backlinks that can hurt your SEO standing.
• Actively build relationships within your industry to foster natural, high-quality backlinks.
• Create shareable content that naturally attracts backlinks.

Content Management System

The Content Management System (CMS) you choose can greatly impact your website’s SEO potential. From WordPress to Shopify to custom systems, each has its advantages and drawbacks concerning technical SEO requirements.

Choosing the Right CMS for SEO

• Ensure your CMS allows for customizable URLs and meta information on a page-by-page basis.
• Look for a CMS with a robust set of SEO plugins or built-in features which can help with technical optimisation such as image optimisers and page speed analysis tools.
• Consider the flexibility of your CMS for implementing on-page SEO elements without needing extensive technical knowledge.

The Ultimate Technical SEO Checklist

Use this handy checklist for technical Search Engine Optimisation

Crawlability

Robots.txt – Ensure important pages are not blocked from being crawled by search engine bots.

XML Sitemap – Create and submit an XML sitemap to search engines to help them discover and index your website’s pages efficiently.

URL Structure – Use a logical and SEO-friendly URL structure that includes relevant keywords and is easy for both users and search engines to understand.

Site Speed and Performance

Page Load Speed – Optimise images, enable compression, minimise HTTP requests, and leverage browser caching to improve page load times.

Mobile Responsiveness – Optimise your website for mobile-friendly viewing, making sure it loads quickly as this is a significant ranking factor for search engines.

Site Architecture

Internal Linking – Implement a logical internal linking structure to help search engines understand the hierarchy and relationship between different pages on your website.

Breadcrumb Navigation – Use breadcrumb navigation to improve user experience and provide search engines with additional context about the structure of your website.

Technical Markup

HTML Markup – Ensure proper usage of HTML tags such as title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags (H1, H2, etc.), and schema markup to provide search engines with relevant information about your content.

Canonical Tags – Use canonical tags to specify the preferred version of duplicate or similar content to avoid issues with duplicate content penalties.

Site Security

SSL Certificate – Secure your website with an SSL certificate to establish a secure connection between your web server and users’ browsers, which is essential for both user trust and search engine rankings.

HTTPS Protocol – Ensure your website is served over HTTPS to provide a secure browsing experience for visitors and to receive a minor ranking boost from search engines.

Structured Data

Schema.org Markup – Implement structured data markup using Schema.org vocabulary to provide search engines with additional context about your content, which can lead to rich snippets in search results and improved visibility.

Site Accessibility

Alt Text for Images – Use descriptive alt text for images to improve accessibility for visually impaired users and provide search engines with additional context about your images.

Mobile Optimisation

Responsive Design – Web pages adapt seamlessly to suit the sizes of different screens and devices

Mobile Usability – Optimise for mobile usability by improving touch elements, font sizes, and overall user experience on mobile devices.

Page Structure and Formatting

Header Tags – Properly use header tags (H1, H2, etc.) to structure your content and provide hierarchy and context to search engines.

Meta Tags – Write compelling meta titles and descriptions that accurately reflect the content of your pages and include relevant keywords to improve click-through rates from search engine results pages (SERPs).

Indexing and Crawling

Google Search Console – Monitor crawl errors, submit sitemaps, and analyse indexing issues using Google Search Console.

Robots Meta Tags – Use robots meta tags to control how search engine crawlers access and index your website’s pages.

URL Optimisation

URL Structure – Keep URLs short, descriptive, and keyword-rich to improve user experience and search engine visibility.

Canonicalisation – Canonicalise URLs to avoid duplicate content issues and consolidate link equity to the preferred version of a page.

Server Optimisation

Hosting – Choose a reliable and fast hosting provider to ensure your website’s server response times are optimal.

These elements of technical SEO will give your website a good grounding on which to build a wider SEO strategy.  Regular monitoring and ongoing optimisation of these technical aspects are essential for maintaining and improving your website’s search engine performance over time too.