Technical SEO

By 

Chaitali,

So what does technical SEO refer to exactly? Does it somehow combine the on-page factors of SEO with the off-page factors of SEO? Well, partly indeed, partly not really…
Technical SEO is related to all the SEO activities excluding the content optimization and link building.
 In simple terms, technical SEO covers following search engine requirements in order to improve crawling of our website. These requirements are constantly changing and becoming more complex in order to keep up with the search engines,it is  getting more and more sophisticated each day. So basically we can say that technical SEO is in a state of constant refinement.
SEO needs to be optimized to make the necessary foundation which provides your content and links with the best marketing environment so that you can shine in the search engine results without any obstacles.
Well, Its a short definition of Technical SEO. 

If we think of Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is like building a house, then technical SEO is all about building a solid foundation. You can look at it as any work done to a site aside from the content itself.

  

  
Technical SEO elements are:

1. Website speed:
Amazon discovered that every 100 ms of page load time led to a one percent decrease in sales. This year, Brian Dean stated that page load speed –  is the time it takes to fully display the content on a page – it is included in the top 10 SEO ranking factors. He also described it in his killer case study which consists of analysing over one million Google search results.
But let’s refresh our memory by recalling the basics of website speed. How can we improve our website load speed and make our user experience smooth?

Keep your templates simple:
Limit the components of your website and make your templates minimalist. In the case of templates and designs, there is one necessary rule of thumb to remember: “less is more.”
The additional elements of your layouts — plugins, widgets, tracking codes — need the extra time to load. This also refers to the code which needs to be optimized.
The more elements on a page that need to load, the longer your users must wait. So you better not make them wait longer than 3 seconds

Optimize visuals:
To make your images sharp by adjusting their sizes correctly. However, limit the size to the necessary minimum because large images are very heavy and can strongly disturb your loading time.
Basically, use the jpg format for photographs (as they have more tones at their disposal) and png format for graphics.

Limit redirects:
The multiple redirects influence your page load speed negatively, too. The more redirects installed on one page, the longer your user must wait. This is why you should always try to reduce the number of redirects so make sure you only have a single redirect on a page.
In the case of 404 error page, when there is a “page not found” issue that can’t be avoided, so make sure that you come up with a custom one. Design it in a user-friendly and the humorous way to at least entertain your visitors and guide them back to your home page or any other important and popular part of your website.

 Browsers cache:
The browser cache starts to store website resources automatically the first time you visit a web page. This is because your browser “remembers” first web sites version cashed and then is able to load it much more quickly when you leave a particular page and return to it again. This significantly improves the page load speed for returning visitors.

2. Mobile friendliness:
Mobile friendliness is the second element of SEO, and it’s important for website speed.
So if you don’t know yet your website is mobile friendly or not – test it immediately by using Google’s mobile-friendly test tool, and see how much you have to optimize.

3. Site architecture:
The following super important element of technical Search Engine Optimization(SEO)  is shaping a savvy site architecture that is also SEO friendly.
Some site architecture for SEO:

HTTPS:
The right website architecture begins with choosing an appropriate hypertext transfer protocol(HTTP). In this case, there is only one SEO friendly choice. You should definitely use the secure protocol – HTTPS.
So having your website on HTTPS:// will give you a ranking boost automatically. Although it’s completely impossible to isolate what impact HTTPS has exclusively, it’s better to follow all search engine requirements to maximise your ranking chances.

Breadcrumbs:
Another vital part of technical SEO savvy site architecture are breadcrumbs.
A breadcrumb or, in other words, a “breadcrumb trail”.It is a type of navigation that reveals the location of a user.
Breadcrumbs are usually used by huge websites that have a comprehensive hierarchy and many different sections that demand a clear structure. They’re especially recommended for e-commerce websites that offer many different products.

URL structure:
Last but not least, a savvy website architecture also demands that you introduce a user-friendly, clear and consistent URL structure. The URL is basically a readable text that serves to replace IPs – the numbers that computers use to identify particular resources. URLs describe the page both for users and search engines.
If you optimize them well for technical SEO, they will also act as a ranking factor. So remember to make them descriptive and as brief as possible. Ideally, a user should be able to understand what is included under a particular link before he clicks on it, just by checking the URL.
Add a keyword targeted by a given page. If you implement the keyword into all the necessary on-page SEO “locations,” you will strengthen the relevancy of the whole page and help search engines classify it in the search ranking for that keyword.

   Internal links – Silo content:
Finally, it’s time to talk about silos content. Siloing content establishes a network of connections on your site and defines the hierarchy.
You should categorise the site content and always link to the pages within one category. Doing so will ensure that the user can dig in and flow between resources on your site and find out more about each aspect of the specific topic on different pages.
 
4. Structured data markup:
Another element of technical Search engine optimization to talk about is structured data – rich snippets.
That’s Obviously, Google search engine can identify the type of your resource by looking at its content and on-page optimisation SEO, but rich snippets will bring it to the next level and help search engines a ton!
What is rich snippets? You can see rich snippets in the search results when you type in a specific query. You will then see search results along with the beautiful rich snippets. Rich snippets provide you with information ranging from the star rating to the number of reviews for your website.

5. Duplicate Content:
SEO also refers to website errors and how to avoid them. Duplicate content is a serious SEO issue that can cause you a lot of trouble. Be aware of that!
To give you more background for duplicate content, I would like to remind you of the first Panda algorithm update in 2011. The first Panda update targeted low-quality content and duplicate content issues. Google search engine continuously controls the quality of resources on the web and doesn’t hesitate to punish spammy looking websites.
Stay on top of any duplicate content issue. Check your site in order to detect any problems by using Google Search Console. Go again into the Google Search Console dashboard,and then
If duplicate content is detected, get rid of it. You can accomplish this by removing duplicate content, but you can also rephrase it. This will be more time consuming, but it’s better to put in the effort and not lose the content.
Another idea is to add – to pages with the duplicate content – its canonical URL.
The canonical URL link shows search engines what the source of the published content is and completely resolves it.