Technical SEO is one of the most intimidating areas of SEO; but getting it right is essential as it helps search engines find, crawl, and index your pages for better results and insights. The main objective of technical SEO is to improve rankings and increase online visibility.
Technical SEO is considered one of the three pillars of search engine optimisation that establishes your website’s scalability. If a website has critical errors, then no marketing magic can fill the gap and save your website’s search performance.
Major components of Technical SEO
- Indexing
- Crawling
- Rendering
- Maintaining website performance
How is technical SEO different?
Technical SEO is one of the most underrated pillars of search engine optimisation that improves your site performance and enhances your business visibility. It all depends on the approach. How you do it is fundamentally different. You need to break it down into three main areas of focus to help improve website performance and technical aspects.
Crawling, Indexing, and Rendering
It’s important that search engine bots can easily find your webpage and crawl it hassle-free, involving your website’s status codes, website architecture, sitemaps, and, more importantly, robots.txt files. It also enables search engine bots to index your web page easily. However, any unintentional tactics utilised could render your web pages non-indexable.
If you want the best indexing results, the content on your page should be comprehended as it renders. It would help to consider how successfully you applied schema markup and how accessible your web page is. It is critical to send the proper information via canonical tags and good pagination.
Exploring HTTP Status Codes
Search engine robots use HTTP status codes when crawling to help search engines recognise the overall health of your website. A web server allocates these HTTPS status codes in reply to a request generated by the client or a crawler when you scroll down the website, or search engine robots crawl the web page or website. Here are some of the most common HTTP status codes:
- HTTP Status Code 200 – OK
This status code is ideal for your normal and properly functioning page; visitors and link equity pass through linked pages like a dream. You don’t need to do anything, and you may go about your day confidently with everything as it should be.
- HTTP Status Code 301 – Permanent Redirect
Generally, a 301 redirect should be optimised whenever a URL needs to be redirected to another permanently. This redirection error means website visitors and robots that scroll on that page will be redirected to the new URL. Link equity and the power transmitted by all those backlinks earned on your content are also passed to the new URL via 301 redirection.
- HTTP Status Code 302 – Temporary Redirect
This redirection is also similar to 301, in which the visitors and bots are passed to the new web page but doesn’t affect the link equity, which might not be passed. As its name suggests, it is used for temporary changes only. Using 302s will allow search engine crawlers to take redirection as temporary. It means it may need to pass along the link equity in 301.
- HTTP Status Code 404 – Not Found
This suggests the server could not locate the file or page requested by the browser. 404s do not tell if the missing page or resource is gone forever or only for a while. You may see how this looks on your site by entering a URL that does not exist. It’s like running into a brick wall. Like you, your visitors will get a 404 error page and either try again (if you’re lucky) or navigate to another site containing the information they want.
- HTTP Status Code 410 – Gone
A 410 status code is more convenient and permanent than a 404. It means the webpage is gone. That page is no longer available from the server, and there is no forwarding address to set up. Any links on your website that head to a 410 page send robots and visitors to a random or dead resource. If you experience such a resource, immediately remove it from your content.
- HTTP Status Code 500 – Internal Server Error
It’s a classic server error and will affect your website’s overall access. Users and artificial bots will be lost, and your link equity will go fast. Search engines recommend well-maintained sites, so you will want to inspect these status codes & get them resolved as soon as possible.
- HTTP Status Code 503 – Service Unavailable
A 503 response, a variant of the 500, indicates that the server is unavailable. Everyone (human and nonhuman) is asked to return later. This could be due to a temporary overload on the server or server maintenance. A 503 status code informs search engines that the page or site will be unavailable for a short period and that they should return soon.
Understanding XML Sitemaps, Robot. Txt Files
- XML Sitemaps
Generally, sitemaps are XML files that list your website URL and offer additional information like the last alteration date, the pace of changes, and the priority of each page. They help search engines discover and index your pages more accurately and superbly.
- Robot.TXT files
Robots.txt files guide search engines on which pages of each website can or cannot be crawled. They assist you in controlling the access of the content and eliminate duplicate and low-quality indexable pages.
How are SSL and HTTPS used for securing your websites?
- HTTPS
HTTPS is an abbreviation for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure that acts as a connector to fill the gap between the computer and the website. The main objective of HTTPS is to maintain the website’s privacy, confidentiality, and identity nowadays, where everyone wants a secure space to access someone’s website.
- SSL
You must first obtain an SSL certificate to activate HTTPS on your website. Make certain that you obtain your certificate from a reputable source. Your site hosting firm will assist you with enabling your SSL certificate. You can also consult a web developer to assist you with implementing HTTPS on your website. When you switch your website from HTTP to HTTPS, you are doing an upgrade.
- Meta Tags Optimisation
Meta Tags optimisation is an excellent chance to hint search engines more about your website pages in a smarter way. Meta tags are optimised within the HTML code section of the webpage. Furthermore, you can use them to explain what is inside the page to Google or Bing.
Core Web Vitals & Speed Optimisation
A slow and sluggish page is one of the most significant errors when optimising websites. To deal with such errors, use Google’s recommended tools, such as Google Page Speed Insights, GT Metrix, etc.
Content Duplicacy and Canonicalization
Content duplication is one of the most significant errors. That reduces your website’s performance and repeatedly posts redundant content.
Possible causes of duplicate content
- Alternate versions of the website
- The same content is accessible via numerous URLs.
- Pagination
- Content syndication
So, canonicalisation is the best technique to identify content duplication. On various websites, duplicate content or web page versions may exist and are also indexable. In terms of SEO, canonicalisation refers to signalling your recommended version of the page so that you want search engines to show it to users.
Significance of Internal Linking
Internal links are hyperlinks that lead to pages within the same domain. These are different from external links that link to other domains’ pages. Thus, internal links help Google find, index, and evaluate all website pages with proper strategy. Thus, Internal links can send page authority to valuable pages. It can be drawn in two ways, i.e., Navigation links and Contextual links.
Technical SEO aims to eliminate obstacles from the search engines’ pathway to success and make your technical SEO journey easy so that you can understand your site and rank it well. Technical SEO can be overwhelming for those without the necessary knowledge and expertise. To fully take advantage of everything technical SEO can bring to your website, it’s best to work with an experienced digital marketing agency.
Author Bio:
Hi, I am Olivia Robinson, a writer, and blogger by profession. As I’m a wanderer, I share my experiences through my write-ups in a way that it’s understandable and appealing to people. I aim to achieve a difference through my writing, which allows my readers to make informed and valuable choices.