Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website to ensure that it functions properly across all devices and browsers. A successful technical SEO strategy helps improve a business’s online presence and increase its overall conversion rate. While many websites may seem perfectly fine on the surface, there could actually be some issues underneath the hood that prevent them from performing optimally. While many business owners only focus on how to find seo keywords, technical seo enthusiasts create a well oiled machine.
Why Is Technical SEO Important?
A lot of companies overlook the importance of technical SEO, but it’s one of the most important aspects of any website. When a company has a technically sound website, it means that visitors can access it easily regardless if they’re using a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
Audit Your Website’s Technical SEO
To determine whether or not your website is technically optimized, there are three things you need to do:
- Identify the problems
- Fix them
- Test again
Technical SEO Checklist
Here are some of the key areas to focus on when performing a technical audit:
- Redirects, broken links, broken or missing images
- Mobile-friendliness
- Page speed
- Crawlability
Utilizing Sitemaps
A sitemap is a list of URLs that points to each individual page on your site. A good way to think of a sitemap is as a map of your entire site. When you add new pages to your site, you need to update your sitemap accordingly.
There are two types of sitemaps: XML and HTML. Both allow you to create lists of URLs that point to various sections of your site. An XML sitemap is easier to manage but requires a special tool to generate it. An HTML sitemap is generated automatically, but it doesn’t provide any additional functionality over just listing URLs directly on your site.
If you do not already have a sitemap, you’ll need to go ahead and build one. Once you’ve built your sitemap, you can submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. It’s important to note that sitemaps are only effective if you keep updating them regularly.
Finding and Fixing Redirects
Redirects occur when someone clicks on a URL that leads somewhere else on your site. For example, if you have a contact form on your site, someone might enter their email address into the form and then get redirected to a confirmation page.
When you set up your site, you should have included instructions telling visitors how to reach certain areas of your site. Unfortunately, sometimes mistakes happen during development, and these instructions won’t always be accurate. As a result, people who follow the incorrect directions may end up being redirected elsewhere.
To fix this problem, you need to check your site for any redirection errors. To do this, open your browser’s developer tools and head to the Network tab. Then, simply reload your site until you spot the error.
Once you’ve identified the issue, you can correct it. You can either remove the old URL entirely or change it to something more appropriate.
Updating Broken Links
Broken links are links that no longer lead anywhere. Since they no longer point to anything, they’re useless to anyone trying to navigate your site.
You should periodically review your site and make sure that none of your links are broken. You can do this manually by checking each page individually, or you can use a free online tool like Screaming Frog.
Screaming Frog allows you to crawl your entire site and find all the links that lead nowhere. After crawling your site, the program will show you exactly which ones are broken. From here, you can decide whether or not you want to delete them.
Removing Broken Images
Another common cause of broken links is missing or broken images. If you have images on your site, you should periodically review them and make sure that they still display properly.
While most of the time, a simple text replacement will suffice, you might occasionally run into cases where you need to replace an image with a different image. In this case, you’d need to use an image editor.
Benefits of Technical SEO For Businesses
When it comes to business websites, having a technically sound website is essential to great drug rehab search engine optimization. Not only does it provide a better experience for your customers, but it also increases your chances of getting found by potential clients. In conclusion, technical SEO is the process of ensuring that your site functions correctly. By doing this, you increase the likelihood that users will find your site when they perform a search.
