Technical SEO Best Practices: A Complete Guide to Higher Rankings

We all know that technical SEO lays the foundation for your site’s visibility and crawlability, making it a very important aspect of search engine optimization. Its importance cannot be overstated, especially for the large sites with pages going beyond hundreds or thousands. If you are also handling such websites, you know that technical SEO can really make or break the entire user experience. That’s why it’s very crucial to follow the best technical SEO practices. It doesn’t matter whether you are an experienced SEO professional or just a newbie; the technical SEO given in this blog post will help you stay on the right track and improve the overall performance of your site. So, let’s get started!

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is all about improving your site in a way that it becomes easier for the search engine bots to easily access, understand and store your content. In essence, it is about making your site search engine-friendly, so they can efficiently access it and rank your pages. Most technical SEO practices are focused on improving the elements such as site speed, performance, mobile friendliness and site architecture. It also comprises maintaining the security of your site. 

When you work on all these technical aspects, you are building a solid foundation for your site, allowing search engines to easily understand your content with ease. This, in turn, can significantly boost the chances of your site’s ranking. 

Why Technical SEO matters?

Now that we’ve understood what technical SEO is and how it makes a difference to your site, let’s understand why it matters. Suppose you have a large ecommerce website with hundreds of products. You are making a lot of effort in creating HD product images, writing compelling and helpful content. And, despite your best efforts, you are not seeing the traffic and sales you had expected, then it’s technical SEO that you didn’t get strong. 

Technical SEO matters because if the technical aspects of your site as not optimized, search engines may struggle to find and index your pages. And this can result in lower rankings and reduced traffic.

A website that’s technically improved and consistently looked after is likely to provide a better user experience, with faster page loads and intuitive navigation. That means technical SEO paves the way for building an experience that brings higher engagement and conversions.

If you ignore technical SEO or don’t do it properly, performance bottlenecks can start forming, which will eventually start hurting your performance and ranking. Neglecting technical SEO means leaving room for a cascade of issues to develop. Regardless of how strong your keyword and content strategy are, you won’t be able to rank well on search engines if your core ranking factors are not optimized. 

Search engines prioritize sites that offer a smooth user experience. If your site is plagued by technical issues, it’s unlikely to be favoured by algorithms. 

Technical SEO Best Practices

Now, let’s move on to learn some of the best practices that can help you build a strong foundation for your online presence. These practices are crucial for optimizing your site’s overall performance.

Check Indexing

The first step in technical SEo is to ensure that the pages you want people to find can be indexed by Google. Indexing is the process by which Google adds your web pages to its massive database, making them visible to users who search for relevant keywords. By that means, if your pages are not indexed, they cannot be seen by the real search users.

To check indexing, you can use tools like Google Search Console’s indexability Report or Ahref’s Site Audit. These tools are commonly used to identify pages that can be indexed and highlight reasons why some are not included. Looking into them, you can address the issues and make sure all your important pages are indexed and visible to your target audience. By regularly monitoring indexing, you can catch and fix issues promptly.

Reclaim the lost links

Over time, you make a lot of changes to your site, like redesigning, updating the permalink format, etc. When you do this, the old URLs are no longer valid, but other sites might still be linking to them. These other sites generally link to your site because they referenced your work. They can be important for you because:

• They drive traffic to your site
• They tell search engines that your content is useful and relevant
• They improve your site authority

So, when you change URLs without redirecting, you lose these benefits. The links from other sites are still out there. But they are pointing to a non-existent page on your site. By redirecting the old URLs to the new ones, you can reclaim those lost links and recover the traffic and ranking benefits.

Add Internal Links

Internal links are links that connect one page on your site to another page. They act as a roadmap for both users and search engines to use your site. They make up an important part of technical SEO because they help search engines understand your site structure and hierarchy better. They improve crawlability and indexing of your pages. They also play a key role in distributing link equity and ranking power across the pages. 

So, using internal links, you can improve your site’s overall visibility and user engagement.

Add Schema Markup

Schema markup is a type of code that helps search engines like Google understand your site content better. It provides additional context about your page, like reviews, events or business hours, which can improve your search results and make them more attractive to users.

Do you know Google’s search gallery showcases various search features that schema markup can enable? By implementing schema markup, you can make your site eligible for these features and improve your online presence.

The rise of AI has also changed how content is discovered and displayed in search results. However, it is still crucial to have a solid foundation of crawlable and well-structured web pages. However, by paying attention to technical details like adding schema markup, you can surely stay visible and relevant in search results, even in an AI-driven era.

Optimize the Core Web Vitals

Core web vitals are a set of metrics that measure your site’s performance, including page load speed, responsiveness and visual stability. Now, to improve your core web vitals, there are a few things you can do:

• You can compress files and make them smaller so they load faster. Using techniques like Gzip and Brotli, you can reduce your file sizes and make them easily transferable over the internet.
• You can enable browser caching to store frequently used resources locally. This will reduce the need for repeat requests to your server, resulting in faster page reloads and improved overall performance.
• You can minify your code and optimize server configurations.

Fix Duplicate Content Issues 

As your site grows, you may encounter duplicate content issues. This happens when multiple pages on your site have similar or identical content. For example, let’s say you have an ecommerce site with product pages that have similar descriptions, or a blog with articles that are republished on other sites. 

Now, these types of pages can confuse search engines and users and dilute your page authority and lower your search rankings. One common case where a duplicate content issue arises is when you have multiple URLs pointing to the same page. To resolve these issues, you should use canonical URLs to specify the preferred version of a page. This way, you can tell the search engine that multiple pages with similar content are actually the same, and which one should be indexed.

Bottomline

With ongoing technical SEO support and maintenance, you can build a really strong foundation for your site’s online presence. Technical SEO might sound like a huge task to carry out, but honestly, it’s worth every effort. When you consistently work on your technical SEO, you are not just checking the boxes but creating an awesome experience for your visitors. You are making sure they are able to find what they need fast on your site. You make your site fast and make sure everything is just working fine. The best part is that you are setting yourself up for long-term success.

So, put these SEO tips into action and watch your online presence grow.