You’ve probably heard the term “SEO” before, as it is becoming more widespread in its usage. But have you heard of Technical SEO? Search Engine Optimization can be used in writing blog posts to help increase a website’s exposure. But when referring to technical SEO, it is related to the elements of your webpage and its technical set up. The overall idea is to improve the elements on and off of your website in order to get better rankings. Using SEO for both aspects will help improve your website and its ratings.
It Should Be Fast
It is very important that your website is able to upload quickly once someone has clicked on your link. If it is too slow, you can count on people not being patient enough for it to load properly. Technology is only speeding up, so you need to make sure that your website is up with to speed. If your website is slow, Google will place your website further down in its search result list, as they prefer to keep the fastest loading webpages at the top of the search results list. The slower your website, the less traffic you’ll have.
It Should Be Crawlable
The purpose of search engines is so that they can “crawl” your website to detect its most important content. These robots will follow the links embedded in your site as well. This is why it is important to have a good internal linking structure, as this will help to guide the robots to better understand your content. However, be aware that you can direct the robots where you would like them to crawl or not crawl. You can even tell them that you don’t want certain pages of your site shown in the search results.
It Shouldn’t Have Many Dead Links
Have you ever tried clicking on a link to a website only to discover that it didn’t exist? This is a frustrating experience, and one that should be avoided as much as possible. If your website contains dead links, the search engines will pick this up and likely rank it lower in the search results, because they don’t like to encounter dead links either. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to have a webpage without dead links as websites are always a work in progress. As you change things on your pages, remember to redirect the URL of a page if you move it or delete it.
It Shouldn’t Confuse Multiple Links
If your webpage contains duplicate information in several different places, this can confuse search engines as they won’t be sure how to rank it. Because of this, they could mark down your website, meaning that you won’t receive as much traffic. A duplicate content problem can occur without your knowledge because different websites will share very similar content. The search engines will detect this and flag it as duplicate. There is, however, a technical solution to this problem. By using a canonical link element, you can alert search engines as to the proper original page.
It Should Be Secure
Making your website safe for your users to protect their privacy is crucial and necessary. The best way to do this is to implement the HTTPS. The S on the end refers to the security of the website to alert anyone who clicks that it is indeed a secure site. The HTTPS will ensure that no one else can interfere with the data on your page as well. If you would like to check if your page is secure, look on the left side of your search tab. If there is a lock symbol, then your webpage is safe and secure.
It Should Have Structured Data
Having structured data will only improve the search engines’ understanding of the content on your site. With this, you can tell the search engines specifically about your products and content. It will also allow you to go further into detail about whatever is on your site. Due to the fact that there is a fixed format to implement this data, it will be very easy for search engines to understand. Therefore, they will place your page at a higher rank, giving you more traffic.
It Should Have a Sitemap
An XML Sitemap gives an ordered list of all of the sites that are linked to your webpage. Much like a roadmap to help you find your way, a sitemap serves a similar function for the purpose of guiding the search engines. It is usually organized in such a way that are by categories, pages or tags and also includes things such as images embedded and the last date and time that the page was changed or edited. While an XML Sitemap isn’t required for a website, it is recommended and can only help.
Contact a digital agency to implement all these technical SEO features in your website.
