SEO, a broad term with uncountable techniques to accomplish one thing, High Rankings.
I know you already would have learned what is SEO and the best techniques. But the one thing that many SEOs and website owners generally miss is hitting the basics.
We all aim for high skyscrapers but how can that be done without reliable foundations?
Well, no more word games. It’s simple, you wanna hit the bullseye in the search rankings? Hit the big in basics first. And the basics start with “Technical SEO”.
Here enters the question “What is Technical SEO?” and “Why do you require it to gain higher rankings?”
In this blog, we will discuss it all. What is it? Why do you need it? and most importantly a “Technical SEO Checklist 2022”.
So, let’s get going!
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the practice of optimization of a website’s technical elements in order to rank higher in the search engines like Google.
Technical SEO’s most crucial pillars are
- Crawlability and Indexability
- Speed
- Understandable to Google and Users
Technical SEO marks the difference between the websites that rank well and the ones that do not rank at all.
Technical SEO is often considered as a part of On-Page SEO as all the optimization takes place on the website. But many SEOs consider it as an individual part alongside On-Page and Off-Page SEO.
Technical SEO can cost a great amount of deal if ain’t done properly. That’s why regular Technical SEO audits are often recommended.
Why Even Bother Performing Technical SEO Audit?
Google and every search engine out there wants to offer the best results to their users. And to make this possible Google crawler bots go through every possible website and evaluate the website considering a long list of ranking factors.
And they can only do that once your technical aspects are in line.
As technical elements are the first in line to get recognized by Google while the website’s getting evaluated. So clearly, if you fix the technical elements right, you have an upper hand in ranking higher.
Flipping the coin, not doing it correctly can also cost you a lot of fortune. A lot of people accidentally block their websites to get crawled by Google’s crawler bots by using the robots.txt file.
But do not think that you’re doing all this just to impress Google or any other search engine. Fixing technical elements can result in a better user experience. As every user wants the website to be fast, neat and easy to understand and use.
Hence, performing a technical SEO audit ensures that your website ain’t doing anything wrong that can result in blocking the crawlers, slowing down the speed or making the website hard to understand for both users and search engines.
Technical SEO Checklist 2022
Websites having certain technical characteristics gain an advantage in SERPs by search engines. These certain technical characteristics include:
- A secure connection
- A responsive design
- Fast loading speed and a few more
Technical SEO is the process to make sure that your website offers these elements to search engines and users.
Now, let’s move to the Technical SEO checklist that you can follow to align your website with the search engine’s technical requirements from a website.
Performing further mentioned techniques can make you look reliable to search engines and users and hence, you can gain extra benefits in SERPs.
1. SSL certificate
SSL or Secure Sockets Layer is a security technology that encrypts the link between the server and the user’s browser to offer safe browsing.
SSL encrypted websites can be easily identified by looking at the URL. The URL of such a website starts with ‘https://’ instead of ‘http://.’
Google announced in 2014 that they support HTTPS URLs and will prefer them over HTTP links.
So, an SSL certificate can be counted as a must-to-do element to add to your website. Though if you’ve hired a web development agency like ItsGeekynerd your website would already have an SSL certificate integrated.
2. Mobile-friendly site
With the release of the mobile-first indexing approach of Google, it’s pretty clear that your website must be mobile-friendly to gain an advantage from it.
Google has clearly stated that they will prefer mobile-friendly sites over the unresponsive websites in SERPs.
So, if your site remains unresponsive you would lose a huge amount of traffic and potential leads.
3. Speed
Page speed is considered a crucial factor in ranking signals.
The search engine and user both expect a site to be faster. If your site takes too much time to load, the users will surely leave your site to go to your competitor.
And this is one of the least things that you would want.
You can check your site’s speed at Google Pagespeed Insights. And if it’s low, you can learn how to increase that here: How to increase the page speed of your website.
4. Duplicate content
Duplicate content can confuse search engines and users, which is not a good thing. It is also used to manipulate rankings, so clearly, search engines don’t like them at all.
Search engines like Google and Bing suggest website owners and SEOs to fix all the duplicate content issues as fast as feasible.
Duplicate content problems can be resolved by:
- Preventing your CMS (Content Management System) to create and publish multiple versions of a web page.
- Using the canonical link element.
5. Sitemap
A sitemap is an XML file that is used to tell Google and other search engines what you have on your website while crawling.
An XML sitemap can be considered a ‘roadmap’ of the website.
A sitemap consists of useful information regarding each and every page on the website, including
- Where each page is
- When the page was modified latest
- What priority does the page have on the website
- The frequency it is updated with
6. Structured data
Structured data makeup or schema markup is a code that is added on the site to make search engines like Google better understand what the content is on the page.
Structured data helps search engines to index the page more effectively and rank on more relevant SERPs.
It also beautifies search results with the addition of ‘rich snippets. Rich snippets, enhance the view by adding star ratings, reviews, prices, products and also the reviewer’s information.
As they look better than usual results and also display useful information to the user, they can improve the website’s CTR.
And as these sites gain more clicks and users’ attention, they are preferred by search engines which is why you must focus on implementing schema markup on your website.
7. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
You must make use of Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. These are the tools offered by Google and Microsoft respectively that let you have many benefits like submitting your site for indexing, watching search analytics and more.
Google Search Console especially can come in very handy. One of the most useful features of it is that you can submit your sitemap to let Google know about your site and index it.
They also offer a number of services including keeping an eye on the performance of the website. Other services they offer counts
- Testing website’s mobile usability
- Getting search analytics
- Watching backlinks heading to your site
- Disavowing spammy links
And so much more.
The Bottom Line
Let’s ask the question once again, “What is Technical SEO”. But this time you answer the question to yourselves.
Technical SEO must be the very first element of your SEO strategy. Setting technical SEO upright sets a great start to your optimization journey. The above mentioned technical SEO checklist consists of the most important and effective techniques that keep you a step ahead of your competition.
SEO is a long journey and one can be easily sidetracked along the way. Make sure your steps stay on the right path. Follow our blog series on SEO to cover the giant with easy steps and guides.
To start you can read On-Page vs Off-Page SEO: difference and best techniques.
I hope you would have found all the answers you were looking for, if not then our comment box is wide open for you or you can mail us your query at [email protected]. We would be more than happy to help you.
Also, Thank You For Reading Along. It means a lot to us.
