What is Technical SEO? Technical SEO Checklists?

 

What is Technical SEO?

 

Technical SEO refers to improving search engine crawling and indexing of your website. It helps better website ranking on search engines.

 

Why is Technical SEO Important?

 

Technical SEO is important because Google and other search engines' first preference is a user. They want the best results for the users. Google bots crawl and index web pages on multiple factors.

If a search engine simply crawls, indexes, and renders your webpages correctly. You must be rewarded with higher rankings in search engines.

Technical SEO checklist-

 

Technical SEO

To improve your website technical part, you need to check it out-

 

ü  Robots.txt

ü  XML sitemap

ü  Duplicate Content

ü  Image Optimization

ü  Structured Data

ü  Canonical Tags

ü  IP Canonicalization

ü  Page Speed

ü  Mobile Friendliness

ü  404 Error

 

1. Robots.txt:- Robots.txt is a simple text file that tells search engines bots whether a page crawl or not. 

It must be placed on the root of the website host. The format of this file is very easy. I will show you here –

 

https:// Digitalmlearn.com/service

 

User-agent: Google bot

Disallow: /service {/ means particularly service page may not want to crawl}

 

Disallow: * {This means all search engines may not crawl the page}

 

Disallow: /blog {It means may not want to crawl the whole file}

 

2. XML Sitemap: - An XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) is a file. That is a list of all pages of your site. It is a particular pathway for the search engine to your site. An XML file lists all posts/pages available on your website. It is a guide for search engines when they crawl a website.

An XML sitemap is easy to create. Include those pages which you want to index. 

Make sure that your sitemap is automatically updated. When a new page is published or the page is updated.

In WordPress sites, you need to install Yoast SEO Plugin.

You can check a website sitemap by typing-

 

https://Give your domain name/sitemap.xml

 

3.404 Error: - 404 Errors mean when a website or a webpage is not found in the browsers. It happens when a webpage is deleted, the URL may be changed or mistyped the URL.

When it happens, you need to check it out. Sometimes when you do 301 redirections. It may happen you need to find the issue by taking help from Google Search Console. Then fix it.

 

For example- https://digitalmlearn.wordpress.com/workshop

 

4. Canonical Tags: - Canonical tags means when a webpage is open several different URL, which means your webpages index different URLs. It happens when 301 redirects are not properly made in place. It shows your site is duplicate content. Let's suppose you have a website-

For Example-https://www.example.com

The index page is accessed from all of the following URLs.

 

https://www.example.com

 

http://www.example.com

 

https://example.com

 

5. IP Canonicalization: - IP Canonicalization means when a website opens with the website IP as well as the domain name. It happens when a search engine indexes the website domain name and the IP address.

If you want to resolve the problem. You need to fix the 301 redirection process.

 

6. Structured Data: - Structured data is a code you can add to your web pages. It shows search engines crawlers and helps them understand what your content is?

You can add star ratings and reviews, price, products, and reviewer information. It is visually more appealing and highlights immediately useful information to searchers.

It enhances the presentation of your listings in the SERPs and also increases your CTR. (Click Through Rate).

There are many ways to use structured data. For example job postings, local businesses, recipes, events, and many more. 

 

7. Mobile Friendliness: - A mobile-friendly website helps you to rank on search engines.

Now everyone is using mobile phones. So, your website must be mobile-friendly.

So, you can check your website's mobile friendliness by using the Mobile-Friendly Test Tool. It shows you whether your website is mobile-friendly or not. 

If your website is not mobile-friendly, you can face these issues. Like, text that's too small to read and the incompatible plugins. You need to fix these problems, with the help of a developer.

Mobile Friendly Test Tool

8. Page Speed: - Page speed is an important metric in a website. Search engines prefer those sites which load quickly. It is an important part of rankings.

You can check your website page speed by using the Page Speed Insight Tool and GT Metric. If there are issues and take more time to load. Then solve those problems.

A website loading time must be 3 sec not more than that.

 

Page Speed Insight

GT Metric

9. Image Optimization: - Image optimization ensure a better user experience. It delivers a high-quality image in the right format, dimension, size, and resolution while at the same time keeping the size as small as possible. Image optimization reduces the website loading time. Always try to use JPG, PNG, or GIF format. Image optimization also helps you in ranking. 

You can use GZIP, SEMrush for image optimization.

 

10. Duplicate Content: - Duplicate content means content that appears on the internet more than once. It can affect search engine rankings. 

Sometimes it happens when you do not properly make 301 redirections {HTTP to HTTPS or WWW to NON-WWW Pages}.

You can check duplicate content by using Plagiarism Checker and Copyspace.

Plagiarism Checker

 

I hope now you get an idea about Technical SEO and Technical SEO recommendation.

 

Now you have a Technical SEO checklist and apply it to your website for better results.