Technical SEO is the first pillar when it comes to optimising your website for visibility in search engines. It involves ensuring that all of the elements that search engine spiders use to crawl and index information are on your website.
Let’s discuss the first pillar of SEO success: Technical SEO! This crucial piece of the puzzle is about ensuring your website is optimised for search engines and functioning correctly. Make sure to keep an eye on your site’s technical aspects for maximum visibility and performance
The goal is to ensure that the spiders can find, crawl, and index your web pages without any issues.
The most important thing you need to do regarding technical SEO is to create a robots.txt file. This contains directives, or snippets of code, that tell the search engines which parts of the site should be excluded from crawling and indexing.
For example, you may want to exclude some confidential content like customer data from being indexed in search results.
Additionally, having a well-structured sitemap will help crawlers find all of your pages more accessible and quicker.
Finally, schema markup allows you to add details about what each page offers so that crawlers understand better what they’re looking at.
When taking care of technical SEO, consider the following factors:
- Crawlability
- Indexability
- Mobile-Friendliness
- Speed
- Website Structure
Crawlability
Crawlability is an important factor when trying to wield optimal SEO results. To facilitate the process of crawling, it is essential that all pages that are meant to be included in search results and crawled by bots need to be accessible and visible.
Allowing full access to these pages guarantees they are getting indexed and will eventually appear in search engine results. However, it is pertinent to point out that there might be pages that may not contribute positively in terms of content or ranking, a classic example being service pages or duplicated content.
Such pages can be excluded from crawlability using robots.txt files and serve as white lists for SEM crawlers enabling exclusion from indexing should the need arise.
On the other hand, for larger websites with more than 10K distinct web pages, care must be taken not to let their visibility overwhelm their performance resulting in overspending on resources without knowing what amount you actually need to achieve SERP success.
Thus, keeping an eye on the manageability of outgoing requests linked directly back to page performance necessities becomes ever more imperative when a plethora of web pages are connected within one domain name.
Indexability
A website’s indexability or findability is the ability of search engine bots to discover, crawl and index its pages. Having a well-crafted and optimised sitemap is an easy way to ensure that all the pages on your site are accessible to bots so that they can be indexed and appear in search results.
A sitemap is a list of URLs for each page within a website, as well as information about how many images that page contains when it was last modified, etc. It provides all the crucial information that bots need to do their job effectively.
For WordPress sites, there are a variety of plugins available which can automatically generate a sitemap, such as Yoast SEO – so you don’t have to add and update pages manually.
This adds convenience and eliminates the possibility of errors like typos or incorrect URLs being entered into the sitemap. Having a sitemap also makes it easier for website owners to track what’s on their website and quickly identify any changes.
Ultimately, it is an essential tool for improving your site’s visibility in search engine results by ensuring that crawlers index all your content correctly.
Mobile-Friendliness
In today’s digital world, the use of mobile devices is constantly increasing. In response to this, search engines such as Google have implemented mobile-first indexing, meaning they prioritise pages that look good on any size device.
Websites that are only optimised for desktops may not altogether drop out of the index, but they are unlikely to appear at the top of searches when people use a mobile device.
That’s why to maintain a good ranking and be seen first by your target audience – it is essential to make your website as mobile-friendly as possible.
Depending on your objectives and needs, you can take different approaches to ensure your website shows up properly on all devices. You can either invest in creating a dedicated mobile version of the site or apply responsive design principles so that content rearranges itself automatically depending on screen size.
There are also services available from certain CMS platforms designed to make websites look great across all devices without any changes or alterations needing to be made by coders and developers.
Whatever approach you decide on –focusing on making your website easily viewable and browsable via mobile devices, you’re sure to make sure searchers find what they need quickly and conveniently!
Speed
The importance of website speed optimisation cannot be overstated when it comes to creating a great user experience online. It affects many aspects of online activity, from search engine rankings to the success or failure of a website.
Speed is crucial when it comes to page experience signals and optimising core web vitals.
It has been extensively documented that slow-loading websites will often result in users quickly leaving the page and moving on to something else. This means that for any given link provided by Google’s algorithm, the faster option is likely to be favoured over the slower one.
It is, therefore, important for webmasters and developers to take measures that help improve website speed and overall performance. Such steps might involve minifying HTML code, reducing HTTP requests, leveraging browser caching, compressing resources with Gzip or Brotli compression and more.
All these will work together to reduce page load times significantly, leading to better user engagement and providing an ever-better chance of accomplishing SEO goals too.
Website Structure
Website structure is an essential element of a successful website. It is the blueprint that allows visitors to easily understand and navigate your website content while helping search engines like Google crawl and index pages. Good website structure leads to improved user experience and potentially higher search engine results pages (SERPs) rankings.
When designing a website structure, it’s important to keep it as simple as possible. This means having minimal hierarchy levels, with most top-level pages leading directly to second-level or even third-level subpages.
Having a clear navigation bar with links to all your website’s main sections or pages can help guide visitors towards certain content or areas they may be looking for.
When creating URLs for specific web pages, consider making them short and descriptive rather than long strings of random characters; this will make them easier for both users and bots alike to interact with.
Finally, always keep in mind the end goal of your website: what do you want people to do when they access it? Ensuring all necessary pathways are present on your website structure will ensure your visitors have everything they need at their fingertips.
Final Thought!
Technical SEO involves a range of tactics to help websites become optimised for search engines. Leveraging a combination of technical optimisation tactics and on-page elements, website owners can reap the benefits of increased visibility in search engine results pages (SERP).
Don’t know where to start with Technical SEO?
We are here to help. Getting your online presence noticed is fast and easy when you use our full-service SEO services! One of our core specialties is the technical audit – an important part of any successful SEO campaign.
Make sure your website avoids issues caused by outdated technology, and start optimising today.
Let us identify where you are today and create a roadmap for growth.
For a piece of in-depth information on the other three Pillars of SEO, read the following:
For a detailed overview of each pillar of SEO, read the following:
- Pillar 2 of The Four Pillars of SEO: On-site SEO Optimisation
- Pillar 3 of The Four Pillars of SEO: Content
- Pillar 4 of The Four Pillars of SEO: Off-Site Authority Building
