Technical SEO AN Indepth Guide - Nikh Online Digital Media

Technical SEO: An indepth guide 2024

Introduction

Ever wondered why some websites appear at the top of search results while others struggle to be seen? That’s where technical SEO comes in.  We will let you know the importance of technical seo via this article. It’s like building a bridge between your website and search engines. By ensuring your website is structurally sound, easy to navigate, and speaks the language of search engines, you improve its chances of ranking higher and attracting more organic traffic.

Think of it as giving your website technical seo a leg up in the search engine race!. Optimizing your website for search engines involves making sure it’s technically sound and easy for them to understand. This, in turn, helps your website rank higher in search results organically.

Importance of Technical Seo and list of technical seo?

Define technical seo with the greatest content, you can have the greatest website. However, if your technical SEO is flawed?. In that case, you won’t rank. Google and other search engines must, at the very least, be able to locate, crawl, render, and index the pages on your website. However, that is only the tip of the iceberg. You still have work to do even if Google DOES index every piece of material on your website. 

This is due to the fact that your website’s pages must be safe, responsive, devoid of duplicate content, load quickly, and adhere to a host of other technical SEO requirements in order for your site to be completely optimized for technical SEO. This does not imply that you must have flawless technical SEO in order to rank. It doesn’t. Nonetheless, your chances of ranking higher are higher because of techincal seo implementation and easier it is for Google to access your material. 

Technical SEO - importance of technical seo

Improves search engine crawling and indexing

For your website to be ranked in search results, search engines must be able to access and comprehend its content. Technical SEO makes sure that search engines can index and crawl your website.

Strengthens website foundation

A website that is well-optimized and has a solid technical base is more likely to be dependable and secure. Enhancing user trust and engagement might have a positive indirect effect on your search engine ranking.

Enhances the user experience:

Good web design practices and technical SEO techniques frequently intersect. You’re also building a website that is easy for users to navigate and enjoy when you concentrate on technical SEO.

How can we improve technical SEO?

  • Javascript
  • XML sitemaps
  • Site architecture
  • URL structure
  • Structured data
  • Thin content
  • Duplicate content
  • Hreflang
  • Canonical tags
  • 404 pages
  • 301 redirects
  • And many more I will update here….. 

Site Structure and Navigation

The foundation of any technical SEO effort is the website, even more so than crawling and indexing. First of all, a lot of problems with crawling and indexing are caused by poorly built site structures. Therefore, you won’t have to worry as much about Google indexing every page of your website if you follow this step correctly. 

Second, anything else you do to optimize your site is influenced by the structure of your website. from sitemaps to URLs to the use of robots.txt to prevent search engines from accessing specific pages. In the end, all other technical SEO tasks become MUCH easier with a solid structure in place. Let’s move on to the steps now.

Use Flat, organized site structure -

The arrangement of all the pages of your website is known as your site structure. Generally speaking, you want a “flat” structure. Stated differently, every page on your website should be just a few links away from every other page.Google and other search engines can easily crawl every page of your website with ease if it has a flat structure.

This is not a major issue for a blog or website for a neighborhood pizzeria. However, what about a 250K product page ecommerce site? Architectural flatness is very important. Additionally, you should have a very well-organized framework. 

What if not? 

Then messy structure usually creates “orphan pages” (pages without any internal links pointing to them. It also makes troubleshooting indexing problems more difficult.

To acquire a bird’s eye perspective of your site structure, use the leading”Site Audit” tool or ask a team of Experts at Nikh Online Digital Media. 

Consistent URL Structure

You don’t have to consider URL structure too much. particularly if you manage a tiny website (like a blog).

 Having said that, you do want a sensible and consistent structure for your URLs. In fact, this aids visitors in understanding “where” they are on your website.

Breadcrumbs Navigation

It’s no secret that navigation using breadcrumbs is very SEO-friendly.

This is because internal links to your site’s categories and subpages are automatically added by breadcrumbs which further help solidify your site structures. 

Not to mention that URLs in the SERPs now function as breadcrumb-style navigation thanks to Google.

Crawling, Rendering and Indexing

Making your entire website incredibly simple for search engines to locate and index.

I’ll walk you through identifying and correcting crawl issues in this chapter, as well as how to direct search engine crawlers to your website’s deep pages.

Spot Indexing Issues

 Identifying any pages on your website that search engine crawlers have difficulty accessing should be your first action.

Here are three approaches to that:-

1. Coverage Report

The “Coverage Report” in the Google Search Console should be your first port of call. If Google is unable to properly index or render the pages you want indexed, you can find out via this report.

2. Screaming Frog

For good cause, Screaming Frog is the most well-known crawler in the world. Therefore, after resolving any flaws in the Coverage Report, I advise using Screaming Frog to perform a full crawl.

3. Semrush Site Audit

Semrush has a sneaky good SEO site audit tool.The element that I enjoy the most is the information it provides on the general technical SEO health of your website. Site performance report.

I really enjoy that this tool provides you with information about the overall technical SEO health of your website. 

These three instruments each have advantages and disadvantages.

Thus, I advise utilising all three of these strategies if you manage a sizable website with 10,000 or more pages. Nothing will slip between the cracks in this manner.

Use an XML Sitemap

Does Google still require an XML sitemap in the era of mobile-first indexing and AMP to determine the URLs on your website?

Answer is YES!!  – As per a recent statement from a Google representative, XML sitemaps are considered the “second most important source” for locating URLs.

Go to the “Sitemaps” section in the Search Console to confirm that everything on your sitemap is correct.This will display the sitemap that Google has for your website.

Google Search Console (GSC) Inspect

Is a URL on your site not getting indexed? Well, the GSC’s Inspect feature can help you get to the bottom of things. Not only will it tell you why a page isn’t getting indexed.

But for pages that ARE indexed, you can see how Google renders the pages by vising Google search console. 

In this manner, you can confirm that Google has successfully crawled and indexed every piece of content on the page.

Thin and Duplicate Content

Duplicate material shouldn’t be an issue if each page on your website has original, unique content written for it.

Technically, duplicate content can appear on any website. particularly if different URLs for the same page were produced by your CMS.

The same is true with thin content: most websites don’t have a problem with it. However, the rankings of your entire website may suffer. Thus, it is worthwhile to locate and correct.

Use an SEO Audit Tool to Find Duplicate Content:-

Technical seo tools like Semrush to Find Duplicate Content  – The “Content Quality” part of the Semrush site audit tool allows you to see if any pages on your website have the same content. This tool concentrates on redundant information on your own domain and help you solve many technical seo issues

Pages that replicate content from other websites are likewise considered to have “duplicate content.
I suggest using Copyscape’s “Batch Search” function to confirm that the information on your website is original.

No Index Pages

The majority of websites will contain some duplicate material on their pages.

That’s alright, too.

When those pages with duplicate content are indexed, this becomes an issue. The answer? To those pages, add the “noindex” tag. Google and other search engines are instructed not to index the page via the noindex tag. 

To apply No Index Tag below is the Code:-

<meta name = “robots” content= “noindex,follow”/>

You can use the GSC’s “Inspect URL feature” to confirm that your noindex tag is configured appropriately.

Enter your URL here and select “Test Live URL.”

A notice stating that the “URL is available to Google” will appear if Google is still indexing the website. indicating that the noindex tag on your page isn’t configured properly.

But the noindex tag is working if you get a notice saying “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag.”

Use Canonical URLs

A no index tag should be added to the majority of pages that contain duplicate material. Alternately, have original content added to replace the duplicates.

Canonical URLs represent a third alternative, though.

When there are only a few minor variations in the content of several pages, canonical URLs are ideal.

Example:-

Let’s take the scenario where you manage an online store selling hats.

Additionally, you have a product page dedicated to cowboy hats.

Say you created multiple pages 

https:///www/westernappearal.com/hat/cowbow-hat-brown 

https:///www/westernappearal.com/hat/cowbow-hat-tan 

https:///www/westernappearal.com/hat/cowbow-hat-black

Bad.

Thankfully, you can inform Google that the “main” version of your product page is the vanilla version by using the canonical tag. The others are all variations.

Page Speed

One of the few technical SEO tactics that can actually affect your site’s rankings is increasing pagespeed.

That being said, a quickly loaded website won’t guarantee that it will rank you well on Google’s first page.

(Backlinks are necessary for that.)

On the other hand, increasing your site’s loading speed can significantly reduce your organic visitors.

Furthermore, I’ll walk you through three easy strategies to speed up the loading of your website.

Reduce Web Page Size

You have the ability to compress photos and optimize your website’s cache.

After reading this technical seo complete guide on Technical SEO even if you feel that you need help to solve your website technical seo issues. You can reach Nikh Online Digital Media technical seo specialists.