Technical SEO Part 2. –

What Does Technical SEO Include?

Technical SEO comprises optimization of the robots.txt file, the XML sitemap, the website architecture, broken links, structured data, mobile-friendly design, HTTPS, duplicate content, URL structure, hreflang, 301 redirects, 404 errors, and duplicate content.

SEO Crawling

To have a search engine like Google recognize your web pages and display them in the search results, crawling is the first step. Robots, usually referred to as spiders or crawlers, are sent out by search engines during the crawling process to identify fresh and updated content on the web. In order to discover new URLs on a website and throughout the Internet, search engine spiders retrieve these web pages and then crawl the links on those sites.

The following are typical technical SEO crawling issues:

• URLs that the server’s robots.txt file has prohibited (5XX) error
• Lack of (400) error
• Wrong canonical urls
• Pages that are unlinked internally, orphan pages
• Rendering

A search engine receives your website, executes the code, and evaluates the information to comprehend the layout and structure. This process is known as rendering. After crawling but before indexing, rendering takes place (explained next). The final structure of a web page must first be rendered by a search engine before the content can be sent for additional processing and indexing.
The following are typical technical SEO rendering issues:

• Javascript that blocks rendering
• Render-blocking CSS

After rendering, indexing takes place, however just because your website is crawled doesn’t ensure it will be indexed. The following are typical technical SEO indexing issues:

• Robots.txt blocks this page
• Identified as noindex
• Routed to a different URL
• Lack of (400) error
• Canonical URL absent
• Duplicated materials
• Inadequate or thin content
• Crawl spending (Spiders will only crawl a certain amount of URLs on each website)

SEO and The Architecture of Your Website

The internal hierarchy and structure of your website’s content delivery system are known as its website architecture.  Because flat website architecture maximizes the crawl budget and provides a better user experience, it is the ideal option for technical SEO.

Users and search engine spiders may access every page on your website with just two or three clicks thanks to flat architecture. Technical SEO benefits from flat website architecture since it enables easy access to every page on your site for both users and web crawlers.

On the other hand, deep architecture refers to lengthy paths to access particular website pages and necessitates four or more clicks to reach the inner pages. A complex website architecture makes it more difficult for users and search engine robots to efficiently access your site’s pages.

SEO and Website Speed

Page speed is the measurement of how quickly a person can access the material on your page. Because speedier pages offer a significantly better user experience and Google prefers to reward this with higher results, page speed is a crucial technical SEO optimization feature. Additionally, sites that take longer to load have shorter average time on page and greater bounce rates, which might impair the quality of website traffic you get.

In terms of page speed and technical SEO, Google provides a list of Core Web Vitals that includes:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Evaluates the efficiency of loading. A decent user experience requires LCP to happen within 2.5 seconds of the page’s initial load.

You can employ the following methods to increase technical SEO for page speed:

• Benefit from browser caching
• The speed of server response
• Utilize a content delivery network (CDN)
• Turn on compression
• HTML, JavaScript, and CSS minification Redirect minimization
• Remove JavaScript that prevents rendering
• Image optimization to reduce file size

Remember that these pointers are crucial for SEO on both desktop and mobile devices. For additional information on mobile optimization, see my article on what mobile SEO is.

SEO and Defective Links

A broken link is a hyperlink on a website that directs users or search engine crawlers to a web page that has been relocated or deleted and cannot be found. Dead links are another name for broken links.

A few broken links here and there won’t hurt your rankings, but if your website has a lot of them, Google can interpret that as low-quality material. Additionally, low-quality content may be penalized in the rankings.

Broken links frequently happen for the following reasons:

• The page has either been moved permanently, is unavailable, or both.
• Your website or a web page’s URL structure has changed, but there isn’t a 301 redirect in place, which results in a 404 error (both of thes are explained next).
• The hyperlink’s URL was supplied by the website’s owner incorrectly (due to typos, misspellings, etc.).
• The hyperlinks’ HTML coding is incorrect (mistyped, incorrect HTML attribute, etc.).

SEO Redirects: 301 and 302

A 302 redirect is merely temporary, but a 301 redirect signals the permanent transfer of a web page from one location to another. Broken links can cause a variety of technical SEO optimization issues, which 301 and 302 redirects can solve (explained next). These redirects are also useful for grouping together several pages and improving website migrations so that issues with crawling or ranking don’t arise.

301 and 302 redirects can be set up in a variety of ways to efficiently inform your site’s users and Google Search that a page has moved. You can manually write these redirects or use a plugin. For more information, go to Google’s documentation on redirects and search.

SEO and 404 Not Found Errors

A 404 error message means that the website you are attempting to access is not available. In general, 404 errors won’t affect how well your site performs in searches, and you may safely disregard them if you’re positive that the URLs shouldn’t be on your site, according to Google. However, if a broken internal link on your website is the reason of the 404 error, you should fix it to improve technical SEO. Contact us for more information now.