The process of improving the technical aspects and optimizing your website technically for search engine rankings, refers to technical SEO. The process includes implementing SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), XML sitemaps, structured data markup, Google search console and Bing webmaster, and more such activities that is completely different from the usual off-page SEO activities of merely increasing backlinks and promoting the website’s URL on multiple websites.
Websites that display a certain technical characteristics get treated the differently by search engines. If you have a secure connection and the design of your website is responsive, if it loads fast and if it meets the guidelines of on page SEO, there is a higher chance for your website to rank on search engine results pages. We are going to discuss the technical checklist that you should know as an SEO executive.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer):- SSL is a technology that is implemented on websites for security. SSL creates an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. When the website begins with “https” instead of “http” it means that it has SSL implemented on it. The secure lock on the left of the URL of any website is also one way to identify if the website is secure with SSL.
Search engines give more priority to websites with an SSL certificate. This certificate can be obtained from your hosting service provider. Some hosting service providers charge you a yearly fee to own the certificate, however, there are several local hosting service providers that are less popular and offer this certificate for free.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages):- AMP refers to the process of optimizing your website for mobile phones and tablets. It means you are making your website more responsive so that it could load and information on mobile devices AMP also improves the navigation of your website and user experience.
When you implement AMP on your website Google loves your website. It becomes easier for Google to crawl through several pages and as the loading is really fast the ranking factor is preferable to the search engine algorithms indexing your content as well is faster with a AMP so it certainly makes sense to make your website fully responsible and implement AMP.
Canonical Element:- When you use the canonical element on your website, you are showing Google and other search engines that the pages with the canonical element are the main version of any content. In case you have multiple versions of your content on multiple pages, canonical link element helps search engines to know which page they should be indexing and ranking.
It is also called, “rel canonical” and the code looks like this (rel=”canonical”) in the HTML version of the page. It is necessary when you are performing technical SEO.
XML and HTML Sitemaps:- An XML sitemap is a fire that is implemented on our website at this file helps in understanding navigation while they are crawling and indexing it. It is more like a road map for search engines tell them exactly which page is under which category. This sitemap also gives certain information like when the page was last modified and about the priority of the page.
Like we use XML site maps for search engines, HTML sitemaps are something that is used on the website more for users and readers. This type map is usually found at the footer of the website. It is extremely easy to create XML HTML sitemaps. You can manually do it using certain tools or there are plugins such as the Yoast SEO tool, that generates these sitemaps automatically.
Structured Data:- In the process of your technical SEO activity going on website it is important that you add structured data markup to your website. The structured data markup is a code that helps search engines understand the content on your website in a better way.
The addition of ‘rich snippets’ is one of improving the structured data activity. For example if you have to add star rating do the reviews off your services or products on the website you can add it using rich snippets. They are more visually appealing and your website grabs the attention of the visitors immediately.
There are some structured data testing tools that you can try to check the data of your website. The best tool is Google’s structured Data Testing Tool.
Here’s a list of SEO courses on Udemy that you can take, to learn technical and non-technical SEO. Whether you have basic SEO knowledge or not, taking a few good courses would only improve you to be better at your business.
Also see, SEO, Digital Marketing and the Four Ps that Affects Them
The Benefits of Technical SEO
If you optimize your website technically for search engines, it is going to be fast in loading and excellent for mobile users. When you optimize your website typically it is not only good for search engines but also for your readers. It increases the traffic of your website, the navigation is improved and most importantly you get relevant traffic once you run on Google.
The second most important aspect of the people it makes more sense for other than for search engines question when you optimize your website and do on page SEO you create a great internal linking structure, you optimize the robots dot TXT file, do you have a site map for search engines to scroll through your website and index your website whenever you add a new page or make a make some changes and you are improving the overall performance of your website with technical SEO.
The third important thing to consider is that but when you optimize your website you also get rid of dead links. Getting rid of dead links means that you will have less 404 errors popping up on your website, And you also are fixing the content on your website. This means that search engines would not be confused with duplicate content, or irrelevant content, or dummy content present anywhere on your website.
With this blog you have understood everything that you need to know about implementing technical SEO is certainly extremely important in today’s date for every website. So yes you must certainly go for technical issue while also make sure that off page SEO is never off the table for better ranking and more organic traffic.