Technical SEO tasks that are important for organic success

Success in organic search results just does not depend upon keywords and content only, your website needs to be technically sound too. Therefore technical SEO is also a must. The technical aspects of your website also play a role in how well your content performs.

You can lose traffic and revenue if in the technical SEO your website is not optimised for page speed, indexing and more.

There are the four main technical SEO tasks that can help you increase your visibility:

1. Your website structure should be optimised for search performance. Otherwise, the individual pages on your website will not get crawled and not appear in the search results.

Your website structure should have a logical flow with a hierarchy of pages. This will help the crawlers and the users to understand your website.

Website structure and navigation

Your structure should help the search engine find and index all your pages, pass authority throughout the web pages through internal links and help the users find what they are looking for.

Website navigation refers to the links on your website that connect the pages. Your navigation should help the users easily find the content on your website.

An HTML sitemap is for the users and provides links to the pages on your website. They help the users to navigate easily through your website.

2. The pages on your website should be available to the search engines and the user through valid status codes. You should make sure during SEO that the pages that are to be indexed have a 200 HTTP status code. The robots.txt file should not block any of the pages that have to be indexed.

You should check for any misplaced disallow directive which could prevent the pages to be viewed by the crawler.

3. If your website can be crawled does not mean that it can also be indexed. You should make sure the robots tags allow for indexing. If a page does not get indexed then it will not appear in the search results.

Crawling and indexing

Crawling is the process through which search engine bots or spiders discover content. You should make sure that the search engine can effectively crawl your website.

A sitemap is an XML file that contains a list of important pages on your website. You should create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console. The robots.txt file can be used to tell the search engines which URLs they can access on your website.

You can use multiple versions of the same page. You can use the ‘rel=canonical’ tag to tell the search engine which one should be indexed and shown in the search results.

A 301 redirect is an HTTP status code that redirects users from one page to another. It indicates that a page has moved permanently. 

Sometimes the URL parameter can cause duplicate content because the same page is available through multiple URLs. Therefore you should remove the unnecessary URL parameters.

4. People will abandon the sites that perform poorly. Google encourages the site owners to optimise their site’s technical structures so that their content shines in the search results. It will also make sure that your website offers a good page experience.

Website performance optimisation

Your web pages should load fast because people do not want to wait for the page to load. You should use tools to test the speed of your website and improve upon it. 

Server response time is the time taken to load the required HTML to begin rendering the page from your server. You should try to reduce this time to under 200ms.

Browser caching allows a web browser to store files on your computer and if you request the same files next time it loads from there. This eliminates the need for redownloading these assets. 

Images are the biggest files on your web page and you should optimise them to improve your loading speed. You can compress your images to reduce their file size. You can minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript to remove the unwanted spaces to reduce the file size.

Your website should be compatible with mobile devices and therefore you should make your website mobile-friendly. You should use a responsive web design for your website.

Accelerated mobile pages (AMP) are being used therefore you should make sure your website keeps up with the trends.

You should keep your URLs short, use keywords in them if possible, use lowercase only, use hyphens in them and make them readable. You should avoid using dynamic URLs as they can create duplicate content issues. Dynamic URLs contain parameters that can request data from the database.

To optimise your website and improve its performance you can hire technical SEO services.

Technical on-page optimisation

A title tag provides the topical subject matter of the page it is on. Your title tags should be unique, direct, concise and include the main keywords. If your title tags are more than 70 characters long they will be truncated by Google. 

Meta descriptions give the searchers an understanding of what your page is about. It can lead to more click-throughs. The length of the meta descriptions should be 156 - 160 characters long. Each meta description should be unique and include keywords and CTAs.

Header tags are used to tell the search engine what styling should be used to display the page. The H tag is used for the main topic, H2 and H3 for subheadings and H4, H5 and H6 are used for subsections. Each header should give an idea of the information provided in the paragraph following it and include keywords. 

Technical markup and structured data

Structured data helps search engines to better understand the content of a page. By using structured data markup code your pages can appear in rich snippets. Rich snippets provide additional information and can make your pages stand out in the search results.

Website security and HTTPS

HTTPS helps to protect sensitive user information from being compromised. You should implement HTTPS on your website to make it secure. It helps to save your data from any third-party attackers by adding a layer of protection.   

Technical SEO audit and monitoring

Website audits help you to find any malfunctions before they become a problem. It helps you to get the full report on the state of your website. This will help to understand how to improve your website to offer the best user experience.

You should regularly monitor the performance of your website to find any issues and improve the technical aspect of your website. Use tools like Google Search Console, Chrome DevTools, Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, PageSpeed Insights and more.   

If the technical foundation of your website is not right then your keyword and content investment will not give you the expected results. You should pay attention to the technical quality of your website for SEO success.

Conclusion

Technical SEO helps you to optimise your website for search engines and improve the user experience.