A Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO: Basics and Best Practices

Posted by Julian Aug 23, 2024

Technical SEO involves helping a website function optimally so that it is easily accessible by all users. When you search for something online, search engines like Google help you find the best and fastest website with accurate results according to your search. It helps your website be one of the top results for users.  

In this blog, we’ll help you understand the basics and best practices for making your website amazing for search engines. 

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO, a crucial aspect of SEO Services, focuses on improving the website to ensure that search engines can quickly locate, crawl, and index the site pages. It helps to enhance the load time and functionality of your site on mobile devices. Additionally, Technical SEO is essential for increasing the visibility and rankings of your website on search engine results pages.

Understanding the Basics of Technical SEO

Website Structure

In technical SEO, Website structure helps in arranging all the pages of your website so that it should be easy to find what you want. Think about your audience as visiting a large website that contains many pages of your website. Search engines need help understanding what and where to shift or display if things are scattered and difficult to locate. If the internal structure of the website is good and it’s logical to put similar things in the same place and give them the same name, search engines will know where to look and display them to the users.

Website Speed

In Technical SEO, website speed examines how long your pages load during a user’s visit to your site. If your website’s page load time is too slow, visitors may leave before viewing your content. Search engines also prefer fast websites, so improving your website speed can help you rank higher for search engine results. There are some ways to make your website faster: you can optimise images, use caching, and minimise the code. 

Essential Elements of Technical SEO

Below are some of the technical SEO factors that can help you understand the key elements that can improve your website’s performance:

Mobile-Friendliness

In Technical SEO, mobile-friendly web design means viewing a website correctly on mobile phones and tablets. Many people use their handsets to access the Internet. One of the most essential points is that the website to be developed has to be successfully adapted for use on a smaller screen size.

XML Sitemaps

In technical SEO, an XML Sitemap enables crawling all of a website’s essential pages. Suppose you do not submit an XML sitemap. In that case, a particular search engine might not index some of your website’s pages. Therefore, those pages will not feature in the search results. It helps your website rank well in search results, helping the users see the content of their preference.

Robots.txt

In Technical SEO, robots.txt is a list of instructions that inform search engines about which part of the site needs to crawl. This file is important because sometimes you want the search engine to crawl only some of your website. Using robots.txt can prevent those pages from being crawled and indexed.

HTTPS and Website Security

Website security and HTTPS are essential elements of Technical SEO that help ensure the safety of your website for users. HTTPS helps ensure that the information shared, such as passwords or personal details, is kept safe. With HTTPS and Website Security, you are protecting your website from being hacked and helping users access data easily.

Canonicalisation

In Technical SEO, Canonicalisation is the process of using a canonical tag to select the main version of a web page with multiple similar content.

Suppose your website has two or more pages containing the same content but classified under different URLs, such as pages with and without “www.” The search engine needs clarification and starts believing these are other pages, which can harm your SEO.

Using the Canonical tag, you can tell the search engine that this is the version of this page. Kindly focus on this. Canonicalisation is useful in avoiding duplicate content issues so that the site performs well in the search results. It is one of the best strategies that can be used to guide search engines, ensuring that they show the right content to users.

Best Practices for Using Technical SEO

Structured Data Markup

In Technical SEO, Structured data and schema markup define the content on the website to the search engines in a better way. When you include schema markup into your website’s content, you’re doing a service to your content that makes it easier for search engines to understand and appreciate, thus making your ranking higher.

Managing Crawl Budget

In Technical SEO, a crawl budget is the amount of time spent on pages or URLs during a Google crawl on your website. Google calculates the crawl budget based on the crawl limit and crawl demand. If your website contains many pages, make sure that search engines focus on valuable pages rather than less valuable ones. This way, the found pages can easily rank high and appear in search results. To control your crawl budget, performing activities such as removing or blocking unimportant pages, fixing broken links, and ensuring that your site loads quickly is essential.

Fix Broken Links

In Technical SEO, a broken link is a hyperlink that indicates a page that does not exist. These pages were either deleted or moved, due to which it shows an error while accessing the site. Fixing broken links is essential for maintaining good SEO rankings and user experience. You can fix these broken links with the help of three methods which are: 

• Updating the links 
• Redirecting the link 
• Removing the link.

Optimise Website Core Web Vitals

Intechnicall SEO, optimising core web vitals helps improve your website performance and provide a better user experience. Core web vitals contain three critical methods, and Google says they are the most important. They are:

• Largest Contentful Paint is used to analyse the loading speed of your page.
• Cumulative Layout Shift is used to measure the overall page shift in a particular website.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) helps measure the responsiveness of your pages accessed by the users.

Common Technical SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Mobile Device Optimisation

Mobile device optimisation is the process of making a website user-friendly and attractive for users who read content on small devices. It ensures that the website runs easily and smoothly on different devices.

Slow Page Speed

Slow page speed can be defined as the time the browser takes to process a page’s content after receiving the command from the user. It makes the user close the website and search for a site that can load quickly.

No HTTPS Security

No HTTPS Security means that your website is unsafe for users to access. A page containing the HTTP protocol shows a “Not Secure” warning while browsing. HTTP is an insecure protocol that doesn’t provide a secure connection. Due to this, websites are shifting to HTTPS, which provides Data protection and Login confirmation to protect users’ information.

No XML Sitemaps

XML Sitemap is a process that lists all the important pages of your website and helps Google search engines understand more about them. It also helps Google crawl every important page of your website.

Duplicate Content

In SEO, duplicate content shows how a particular piece of content is found on multiple web pages. This might confuse search engines when displaying the right content page to the user.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Technical SEO helps your website improve performance by making it easier for search engines to find, understand, and display to users searching on the internet. By optimising your site, speeding it up, and fixing the broken links, you ensure that your site’s security is optimal for both search engines and users. Implement suggested practices such as structured data and optimising for mobile devices to increase your site’s rankings.

Are you prepared to drastically increase your website’s traffic? A Beginner’s Guide about Technical SEO can help you get started. For expert advice on SEO services, contact us online or call +65 6909 9163 to speak with our experts.