If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “technical SEO” might sound like black magic voodoo practiced by witch doctors on the dark side of the moon. But don’t worry, it’s nothing quite that sinister (or complicated). In essence, technical SEO is all about the nuts and bolts of search engine optimization: ensuring your website is coded in a way that pleases the Google search console and improves your visibility in search results.
By understanding and implementing the basics of technical SEO, you can help your website rank higher and make sure it’s being seen by as many people as possible. Curious to learn more? Read on for a brief overview of what technical SEO entails.
What Do You Mean By Technical SEO Audit?
So what is a technical SEO audit? An examination of a website’s technical components to see if they adhere to best practices for search engine optimization is known as a technical SEO audit. This refers to the technological components of your website that directly influence google search engines ranking elements like Google or Bing.
With technical on-page SEO and off-site SEO you can get benefits such as,
- By improving your website’s technical SEO, you can increase your chances of ranking higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
- A higher ranking in SERPs often leads to more traffic as users are more likely to click on a listing that appears at the top of the page.
- Technical SEO can also improve your website’s usability, making it easier for users to navigate and find the information they’re looking for.
How To Perform Technical SEO Audit?
By following the below-mentioned steps, a successful technical SEO site audit could be performed.
Initiate Website Crawling
Website crawling is the process of automatically visiting web pages and extracting data. It’s commonly used to keep track of changes on a website or to gather data for further analysis. To crawl a website, you will need to use a web crawler, also known as a spider. This is a piece of software that follows links from one page to another and can be customized to extract specific data.
There are many different types of web crawlers available, so it’s important to choose one that’s right for your needs and check the crawl budget. Once you have a web crawler set up, you can specify the starting URL and the depth of the crawl. The depth specifies how many links the crawler should follow from the starting URL. When used responsibly, web crawling can be an invaluable tool for anyone who needs to gather data from the web.
Spot Indexing Issues If Any
There are some indexing issues that might occur while technical audit SEO,
Indexation Errors
The server might return a status code that prevents Googlebot from indexing the page. This might happen if the page returns a 404 (not found) or 500 (internal server error) status code.
Robots.Txt Errors
If you have a robots.txt file, make sure it’s not blocking Googlebot from crawling your pages. Include Meta Robots TagsEvery page on your website should have meta robot tags to tell search engine crawlers what to do with that page. The two most common directives are “index” and “follow.”
Sitemap Issues
If you have a sitemap, make sure it can be accessed by Googlebot and that it contains all of your website’s URLs. Check For Broken LinksBroken links can frustrate users and prevent search engine bots from indexing your pages. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your website and spot any broken links.
Redirect Chains & Loops
Redirect chains occur when there’s more than one redirect between the initial URL and the final destination. Redirect loops happen when there are two or more redirects that point back to the original URL, creating an infinite loop.
Both of these issues can prevent users (and search engines) from reaching the intended page, so it’s important to spot and fix them.
Checking Technical On-Page Elements
As a website owner, it’s important to check your site’s technical on-page elements to ensure that your site is visible and accessible to search engines. This includes:
Page Titles And Title Tags
The title of your page should be descriptive and accurately reflect the content on the page. Your title tag is the HTML element that specifies the title of your page. It should be concise and contain keywords that are relevant to your content.
Meta Descriptions
A meta description is a brief summary of a web page’s content. It appears in the search engine results pages (SERPs) when someone conducts a search using keywords that are relevant to your content. Meta descriptions should be clear, concise, and accurate in order to persuade someone to click on your result.
Canonical Tags
A canonical tag tells search engines which version of a web page is the original or authoritative version. This is useful if you have multiple versions of a page (for example, if you have a mobile version and a desktop version), or if there are duplicate pages on your site. Using canonical tags helps to avoid duplicate content issues and can improve your site’s SEO.
Hreflang Tags
Hreflang tags tell search engines which language(s) a particular web page is written in. This is useful if you have a multilingual website. Hreflang tags can help improve the international SEO of your website by ensuring that users see the correct version of your pages based on their language preferences.
Structured Data
Structured data is code that helps search engines understand the information on your web pages. Adding structured data to your pages can improve their appearance in other search queries. This helps users find the information they’re looking for more easily. Including structured data on your pages can also help you take advantage of rich snippets, which are special features that appear in the SERPs (such as star ratings or product images).
Identify Image Issues
Images are an important part of any website, but they can also cause problems if they’re not properly optimized—image issues to look for include: Missing ALT text, slow-loading images, and incorrect image format.
Image optimization has a number of benefits
Improved Website Performance
Images can take up a lot of bandwidth, which can slow down your website. By optimizing images for the web, you can reduce their file size without compromising quality, making your site faster and more responsive.
Increased Engagement
A fast, responsive website with high-quality images is more likely to engage and retain visitors than a slow, sluggish site with poorly optimized images. By making sure your images are optimized for the web, you can keep people engaged with your content and coming back for more.
Analyze Internal Links
There are a few things to keep in mind when analyzing internal links:
- Identify 4xx status codes that need to be redirected. This will help ensure that users don’t run into any dead ends when exploring your site.
- If there are any orphan pages with no internal links leading to them, identify and address them. This will help prevent users from getting lost on your site.
- Make sure that all of your internal links are up-to-date and accurate. This will help users find the information they’re looking for quickly and easily.
- Finally, take a look at the overall structure of your site’s internal linking. This will help you ensure that users can navigate your site easily and intuitively.
Analyze External Links
External links are links that send traffic to your website from another website. You can use external links to increase the number of visitors to your site, as well as the number of backlinks, which can improve your site’s search engine rankings. However, it is important to carefully select the sites that you link to, as linking to low-quality or spammy sites can hurt your own site’s reputation.
When choosing external links, look for websites that are relevant to your own site’s content. For example, if you have a blog about gardening, you could link to a website about plants. You should also make sure that the website you’re linking to is high-quality and well-established. A good way to check this is to see if the site has been around for a long time and has a lot of backlinks itself.
By analyzing internal and external links websites can be made better.
Analyze Site Speed And Performance
Site speed and performance are important for a number of reasons. First, faster sites improve user experience by reducing the amount of time it takes for pages to load. This can lead to higher customer satisfaction and increased conversion rates. In addition, fast sites tend to rank higher in search engine results, which can lead to more traffic and higher search engine visibility. Finally, speed is also a factor in mobile search, where slower sites are likely to be penalized by search engines.
There are a number of tools that can be used to analyze site speed and performance. Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a popular option that provides detailed information on how to improve the speed of a website. GTmetrix is another tool that gives insights into page load times, specifically. Both of these tools are free to use and provide valuable information on how to improve site speed.
Mobile Friendliness
In the world of online business, it is essential to have a website that is mobile-friendly. With more and more people using their smartphones and tablets to access the internet, it is important to make sure that your website can be easily viewed on these devices. There are a few things that you can do to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly:
- Use responsive design
- Keep your content short and to the point
- Use large, easy-to-read fonts
- Optimize your images
Why Is It Important To Perform Technical SEO?
Google analytics eye is on the site. There are several reasons to perform a technical SEO audit:
Algorithms Changes
Google and other engines are constantly changing their algorithms. As a result, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest changes in order to ensure that your website is visible in search results.
Webmaster’s Guidelines
Google and other engines have released guidelines for webmasters. These guidelines detail what they consider to be best practices for optimizing websites. Following these guidelines can help to improve your website’s visibility in search results.
Website Errors
Website errors can be discouraging for users and costly for businesses. Technical SEO is the process of identifying and fixing errors on a website, such as broken links, poor mobile optimization, and duplicate content. By addressing these issues, businesses can improve their website’s visibility on search engine results pages and create a better user experience.
Titles and Meta Data
Technical SEO can also help to improve a website’s titles and metadata. This information is used by search engines to determine what a website is about and how it should be ranked in search results. By optimizing this data, businesses can ensure that their website is accurately represented in search results and attract more clicks from potential customers.
Outdated Content
Search engines prefer websites that provide fresh, relevant information, and outdated content can hurt a website’s ranking. Technical SEO ensures that all of a website’s content is current, accurate, and relevant, helping it to maintain a high position in search results.
Wrap Up
In short, technical SEO is the practice of optimizing your website and its content in order to make it as visible and user-friendly as possible to search engines. It encompasses all aspects of your site that can be optimized for better performance in SERPs, including but not limited to HTML markup, internal linking, site structure, and more. If you’re looking for help with a technical SEO audit or any other aspect of SEO, the WESFED team can assist you. Contact us today for more information about our services!