Technical SEO Optimization is the process of enhancing a website’s technical components in order to raise the ranking first in search results. The three pillars of technical optimization include making a website quicker, easier to crawl, and more intelligible for search engines.
While Google’s algorithms have substantially improved at recognizing bogus backlinks, grouping relevant topics, and interpreting context in the English language. The fundamental formula and many of the methods used by Google’s bots to read your website are still in use today as they were in 2010.
With items like your CSS files only truly affecting your load time—which is still a ranking criterion, but not a significant one—research Google is still primarily focused on HTML and XML.
Therefore, in order to “Master” technical SEO, you don’t have to be a senior developer with in-depth knowledge of nine different programming languages or a teenage whiz kid. You only need a few hours, rudimentary programming skills, familiarity with HTML, and the one and only, most crucial piece of information. This instruction is obvious.
keep reading this professional article provided by a professional SEO Agency.
An Overview of Technical SEO Optimization
While the goal of SEO as a whole is only to affect a site’s rankings in the SERPs. Technical SEO Optimization focuses on improving your website’s more complex features and external elements, such as improving server-level load times or correcting broken internal links and redirects.
This tutorial aims to demonstrate in detail the expert level of technical SEO audit analysis, audits, and execution that has enabled us to rank thousands of clients over the past ten years.
Let’s Start With Analysis
A smart SEO always starts by examining the website’s issues that are immediately fixable and that are fundamental, common knowledge to any SEO with their head screwed on. I’m referring to 404 errors, redirect chains, and too-long meta descriptions. The content that, after pushing “Go” on your preferred crawler, you can run a tool like Screaming Frog or SiteBulb on and begin digging into within 10 minutes.
Additionally, there are 2 main types of auditing that you should be knowledgeable about AND use in your Technical SEO optimization strategies:
Site-wide auditing does exactly what it seems like it will do: it uses software to scrape and examine the complete site in order to look for problems you can solve across pages.
With page-level audits, you can re-optimize the exact page that you’re trying to rank for, such as by changing the meta title, an H1/H2, or the page’s actual content and load speed.
Side White Auditing
You should use a scraping/auditing program that provides you with all the insights after you enter the site URL and press Go unless you’re dealing with a five-page local business website.
There are a ton of tools on the market, and it can be difficult to decide which one is best for you. Here is a simple list to help you make your choice:
1) Screaming Frog:
An all-around simple desktop application with everything you need for a low annual subscription charge, but with an outdated Windows user interface.
is a component of their Technical SEO Optimization toolkit and provides the majority of what you require, although it does not provide recommendations for content.
Similar to Ahrefs, but with a nicer user interface and a little longer auditing period.
4) SiteBulb
is a monthly, premium desktop program with fewer parameters than Screaming Frog but a better user interface. This tool is ideal if you’re just getting started with Technical SEO Optimization because it provides “Hint”-based recommendations and mini-lessons on what each one means and how to implement it.
Working with high-end enterprise clients who require cloud-based auditing? DeepCrawl Although it won’t be inexpensive,
5) DeepCrawl
provides THE premium solution for this.
Once you have your preferred tool, all that is left to do is start by confirming with the host that that degree of scanning is permitted (you may need to ask your host or put the scanning IP address to your own whitelist).
Later, we’ll go into each definition and how to put it into practice, but for now, we ran Web20Ranker.com through an Ahrefs site audit to give you some instances of what we could actually do to improve one of our own properties, at least in accordance with one of these tools.
We have a ton of information from Ahrefs, so I’ll try to format what we need to accomplish into some lists that are useful:
Site-Wide Issues
- Resolve 3 404 pages
- Verify that we want the NoIndex tag on each of the 142 pages that have been marked as NoIndex; in this case, we do.
- Look at the seven canonical links that lead to redirects.
- Check 25 pages that only have 1 or 0 internal links. This indicates that we may be missing internal links on pages that are really necessary for us to rank or pass internal topical authority.
- Verify that we want 102 301s and 102 302s to redirect to their intended destinations.
- Check 13 redirect chain links (and ideally fix them).
OnPage Issues
- 41 pages don’t have an H1 header
- There are 40 pages without any meta descriptions and 33 pages with excessively long ones.
- Meta titles on 92 pages were too short and on 2 pages they were too long.
- Content duplication on five pages (with no canonical tag)
- 269 sluggish pages
- 1 broken image and 289 images with no alternative text
Ahrefs also discovered that our sitemap contained 22 pages with the NoIndex tag and that one page lacked social media information like OpenGraph.
Before we even begin to optimize the various pages for their unique keywords, this provides us with a lot of things to start fixing on the website.
Page-Level Inspection
Page-level auditing examines the particular important components that set you apart from being able to rank #1 in help with mastering Technical SEO optimization as well as where the page now stands if it does. This need not entail altering your design to resemble rival websites as every site has unique components that play a part in its operation. Even yet, studying your competitors’ websites might give you some useful information on how to improve your page’s Google optimization.
Application of Your Work
It’s time to actually start doing the work so you can start seeing results once you’ve audited the fundamental problems with your entire site and its pages.
Before getting started with page optimization, there are a few problems you’ll need to tackle, including how to alter your website and whether or not hard-coding causes problems.
Welche CMS?
About 20% of websites on the internet are powered by WordPress, but if you operate in the area of e-commerce, it may be powered by any one of a hundred different CMSs.
WordPress is simple because there is a ton of content available on the subject from websites like WPBeginner or plugins like Yoast & RankMath. If you’re using any other CMS, finding WordPress plugins, hardcoding what you can (or hiring a developer to do it for you), and coming up with the best answer for each problem you run into becomes a research game.
For WordPress, we advise the following configurations:
Hosting Companies:
1) WPX Hosting
Looking to host numerous small to medium-sized websites at a low monthly cost with exceptional support?
2) CloudWays
Looking to manage larger websites that demand VPSs and a lot more server-side configuration?
3) NameCheap WordPress Hosting
Looking for a less expensive option that offers annual or bi-annual subscriptions for $20–$40?
There is a heated argument going on in the Technical SEO Optimization community over which plugins you should use on your WordPress site. But we have a set of plugins that follow best practices:
- Whichever you chose, Yoast SEO is more reputable than RankMath, although RM is closing in on both.
- Many users prefer having greater control over their sitemaps, and this plugin allows you much more detailed settings than RM or Yoast. Google XML Sitemaps
- Checks your website for missing or broken graphics and links.
- Schema Snippets For All – Do you want to incorporate every kind of schema into your website? Most of them are in this plugin.
- The “Jump To” feature in the SERPs is made possible by Table of Contents Plus, a simple tool that builds a microdata table of contents in the Wikipedia style.
- You should also take a look at plugins for speed optimization like AutoOptimize, Smush, and W3 Total Cache.
Configuring a search engine
Linking Google’s search console to your website is one of the simplest ways to regularly check it for issues, assess organic traffic, and test things like site performance.
Metadata Optimization
Since Google ceased utilizing keyword optimization in meta descriptions as a ranking criterion, it is widely believed to be bad practice. Optimizing your meta titles can still significantly affect your rankings, though.
We have previously worked with local clients who have a website that is respectably established on the internet and has a ten-year-old domain, but every meta title on the website is just the name of the business. We re-optimize titles for 5 minutes, and the next month, they receive three times as many phone calls.
Depending on the various Technical SEO Optimization conditions we face, we employ one of two strategies to optimize our meta titles.
CRO Meta Headings
CRO stands for “Conversion Rate Optimization,” which refers to optimizing your titles to encourage as many people as possible to click through to them. SEOs have a history of enticing their users by using capital letters, symbols, emoticons, and exclamation points.
It’s quite difficult to provide you with a precise formula that will work in your niche because some niches don’t tolerate things like emojis. I seriously doubt that your client, a car accident attorney, will be pleased to use emojis instead of their multigenerational brand name.
Before committing to using symbol-based tactics site-wide or client-wide, you may want to conduct some testing. Google also actively works to filter out specific emojis and other symbols/characters (Things like the Swastika are plainly banned).
According to our tests, the following have performed admirably:
You can do this by including shortcodes in Yoast/RankMath or other WordPress plugins, such as “Best Technical SEO Optimization Tools in 2023” in an article.
Though it’s considered bad form to capitalize the entire title, you can capitalize the first letter or add an exclamation point to terms that you wish to call attention to.
Including pricing As well as having SEO benefits (for unique visitors seeking these additional keywords), phrases like “From $XX” and buyer intent terms like “Cheap”, “Sale,” and “Discount” may also have very high click-through rate potentials with users on a budget.
Meta tags for Technical SEO Optimization
This is the point where you want to maximize the number of elements working for your page, and optimizing your meta title for a particular keyword or collection of keywords might be a strong indicator.
You can utilize Ahrefs to find keywords for your page if you don’t already have any in mind.
Note from the editor: You may also utilize the keyword difficulty, position, and volume filters to locate ideal keywords for which you are not currently in the top three rankings.
Discovering Following Keywords
- GMB SEO: #2 Rank, 23 Keyword Difficulty, 150 US Monthly Searches
- Google My Business Optimization Service: 9th Place Currently, 47 Keyword Difficulty, 50 US Monthly Searches
- Google My Business SEO is Currently Ranked Number 22 with a 48 Keyword Difficulty and 300 US Monthly Searches.
- local maps optimization – 150 US Monthly Searches, 7 Keyword Difficulty, and Currently Ranked #28
With the aforementioned terms in mind, There is a correlation between the present positions, the monthly search potential, the possibility for sales, and the keyword difficulty.
The optimal keywords to target for the page’s best growth can be determined by a Technical SEO optimization expert.
Then, we may create a meta title that is optimized along these lines:
Web 2.0 Ranker: Google My Business Optimization Service (GMB SEO)
This uses every term we’re trying to target but shifts the relevance away from the most generic keyword, “GMB SEO,” and toward the keywords relating to “service” and “optimization,” which are considerably more pertinent to the user.
Note: You can see why it’s really quite difficult to develop software that can automatically generate titles that are as effective as an SEO that can pick up on this.
Improvement of URL Structure
Now, changing the URL structure is not advised unless it may significantly harm the website’s rankings, such as:
- URLs with inappropriate subjects or phrases that might consume the page.
- URLs that are overly long and may contain a random number or character sequences that do nothing to help Google understand the content of the page.
- URL architectures that send users and bots to 404 errors, incorrect redirection, and similar problems – When websites construct additional name directories that don’t actually exist only to organize material, like example.com/doesnt-exist/seo/technical-SEO/ with the first folder never actually being a genuine page, that is a wonderful illustration of this.
The best URL structure will group subjects with as few words as possible to succinctly represent the page under discussion.
If we ran a plumbing-related firm in New York City and wanted a specific page on the neighborhood of Harlem, we might have a URL structure like: johnnydoeplumbing.com/washington-city/harlem/
You might be wondering why we didn’t include the word “plumbing” in the URL structure. The answer is that even though it’s in the domain, plumbing’s topical relevance should be included in your on-page optimization and content SEO. (Technical SEO Optimization)
Internal Linking
While excessively tweaking your anchor text for backlinks might have negative effects, doing so with internal links is much more difficult. However, we still do not advise employing automated internal linking software or plugins without any human involvement to prevent it from going berserk.
Note: Link Whisper is a WordPress plugin that enables automated content suggestions and lets you adjust anchor text and URLs at will.
Anchor text techniques
Regarding the anchor text techniques we use for Technical SEO Optimization of our own websites, we do it page by page as follows:
Make a list of the target keywords you want to rank for on the page, or on each page, you want to optimize.
To locate pages on your website that are pertinent to the main topic you’re trying to internal link your page for, use Google’s command site operator. For instance, I could use the following Google search to link to our Web20Ranker’s Guest Post page:
Now, all we need to do is right-click each page and select “View Page Source,” then copy the URL of the page we want to target and enter it in the search box on Windows by pressing Cntrl+F. Be careful because the page might be in the navigation menu, but you’re only searching for instances when the page has been linked to inappropriately.
If there is already an instance, you can exit the page or change the link so that it contains one of your keyword targets.
Simply use each target term on your list one at a time, avoiding using the one immediately before it until you’ve finished with the list.
This should just take a few minutes to complete for each page and offers you a thorough list of pertinent pages with internal links to your target pages.
Data Structures & Schemas
Using structured code, like schema and microdata, is one of the simplest ways to inform Google about your website and its pages. Every year, more schema components are added to the SERPs, so if you aren’t using it, you’re probably losing out.
For our benefit, Google offers a service called the Structured Data Testing Tool that is completely free and doesn’t even require registration. You can enter a URL into this tool, and it will return all the structured data on the page (along with any necessary code repair warnings).
For example, the structured data for your about page should be considerably different from the ones used for your blog entries. Editor’s Note: You’ll need to run each page you’re wishing to test the data on independently.
There is no “limit” to the amount of structured data you may use on your pages; just be selective and strategic about which ones you use and where you place them. Google has actively taken steps to stop schema spam.
You should use the following forms of structured data the most frequently:
SiteNavigationElement
This schema element enables you to inform Google about the format of your navigation menu, which might produce significantly better results for branded queries.
Article, blog post, or news report For three different kinds of websites
For Technical SEO Optimization, these are essentially three identical bits of schema.
Rating Stars
This is how you obtain the five-star box that you may have noticed in the SERPs. Although it takes a lot of effort to even get this schema to appear, Google tends to remove them the most frequently.
Then there is structured data for employment, podcasts, movies, apps, events, courses, fact-checking, recipes, and a ton more.
The addition of the FAQ, Q&A, and How To structured data formats, which may be used for additional SERP features surrounding your site, was also revealed by Google last year.
404s and redirects
It may be a real pain in the ass to deal with malicious 404 sites, multi-level redirect chains, and pages that aren’t supposed to be there. especially when dealing with websites that contain tens of thousands or even millions of pages.
Although there may always be room for improvement, tools like Google’s Search Console and the majority of the site scanning technologies we discussed above make it easy to analyze the present state of your site’s URLs.
Managing Chain Redirects
According to Google, you lose 20 to 70 percent of the link juice with each redirect hop. Therefore, you will be losing the majority of the link juice that the original page had if your internal redirects are bouncing between 5 distinct pages before reaching the intended destination.
The simplest technique to ensure you’re using as much link juice as possible is to simply remove a few links from the chain and ensure each redirect is getting to its designated page.
When to use a 301, 404, or alternative
Sometimes a service is discontinued, a product runs out of supply, or a blog post needs to be taken down because of politics inside the organization.
The Technical SEO Optimization will determine what happens to these pages.
- If the page has links and is sufficiently relevant, you should 301 redirect it to the most pertinent page you’re attempting to rank for in Google.
- Use a 410 HTTP code if the page has nowhere to point to, won’t ever exist again, or will never be routed to someplace else.
- You should 404 the page and keep the link juice for future use if it needs to be erased but might have a new page or a redirected home in the future.
Robots.txt & .htaccess
Googlebot on the front end is instructed by your robots.txt file where and what it can access. Your.htaccess file accomplishes the same task, but it works invisibly and without directly informing Google.
Generally speaking, you merely want to utilize your robots.txt file to filter out any pages or regions of your website that you don’t want to be indexed — the obvious ones to disallow are your admin login pages and tags pages.
We don’t recommend editing your.htaccess file unless you have considerable rewrite engine knowledge; it can only be used to stop spambots from excessively exploring your website.
Code Validation
One of the most significant challenges we encounter with client websites is the presence of a broken schema, messed-up CSS, responsive spaghetti code, and other significant code-based errors that can seriously affect SEO.
checking HTML tags
Most of the time, your website will have some HTML code issues. For example, broken links, poorly designed headers, and other issues can seriously harm your Technical SEO Optimization. A free tool provided by Freeformatter enables you to check each website for broken HTML code.
A SSL certificate’s validity
There is a really straightforward way to determine whether your SSL is fully functional: Why There Is No Lock You can get the precise causes and solutions by entering the URL of the particular page for which your SSL certificate isn’t displaying the green padlock.
Website Acceleration
Google first made the announcement that site speed will be a ranking factor about three years ago, and since then, there have been numerous instances of sites with slow load times performing poorly in the SERPs. We often view this as a solid benchmark to constantly strive to surpass because Google has configured its own Search Console tools to flag sluggish load speeds of anything over 3 seconds.
If you’re using Shopify, for example, you’re restricted to a small number of plugins that will only be able to optimize theme code and images, which are just a few large cogs in the much larger machine. This makes it extremely difficult to optimize your site speed. It also heavily depends on your hosting provider, the CMS your site is running on, and the level of access you have to make changes.
Fundamental guidelines for improving site speed
- Improving the speed of your connection and server load (Generally has to be done on a host level)
- Code optimization is typically accomplished by deleting extra lines and words from HTML and CSS code.
- Image optimization is typically accomplished by first compressing the images and then providing them via a CDN.
- Caching your website – By storing assets in the visitor’s memory, you can significantly speed up page loads and return visits.
All of these tasks may seem difficult, but if you’re using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, you can accomplish them with a few plugins.
Awaiting Your outcomes
How long will it take for the results of my Technical SEO Optimization effort to become apparent? is one of the most frequent queries we receive from both the SEO community and clients. Fortunately for you, OnPage SEO works differently from the typical link building techniques we discuss in that you may typically see ranking results the next day as long as you ping the changed pages and sitemaps using Google’s search panel.
To see a jump the very following day, we spent a whole day upgrading internal linking, reworking load times, and optimizing metadata and alt tags for every single keyword we were targeting.
Conclusion
Although technical SEO is not rocket science, it is difficult to understand and takes a lot of effort to learn the numerous tools, CMSs, and languages that are required to optimize sites you come across.
This book should have given you a thorough understanding of how to conduct SEO analysis, auditing, and implementation work that can produce tangible results for both your own websites and those of your clients. Please leave a comment below if you have any further questions about this post or about any subjects we didn’t touch.
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