If you’re interested in digital marketing and you want to succeed online in the relentless competition that is rampant in today’s digital world, a strong SEO strategy is indispensable.

Dividing Search Engine Optimization into different buckets, technical SEO is one of the most fundamental aspects of SEO. Often people like to ignore this component of SEO completely, even though it is so important. And its importance is growing every year.

Let’s take a closer look at the technical aspects of SEO.

Descriptive SEO definition

Simply put, technical SEO is improving the technical aspects of your website to improve crawling, indexing and performance in order to rank higher in search engines.

A website usually consists of two aspects: a front end with visual elements such as images, videos or text, and a back end with code and scripts that require expert expertise to complicate things. Technical SEO covers the back end. It refers to behind-the-scenes elements such as site architecture, navigation, mobile optimization, page speed, and more.

You should implement strong security measures to improve the basic structure, optimize loading speed, and prepare your website for search engines to identify it. The goal is to make it easy for search engines to crawl, index, and render web pages.

The importance of Technical SEO for your website

Using technical SEO can benefit your website in countless ways. Here are just a few.

Maximize reach and visibility across all channels

An intrinsic benefit of technical SEO is broadening your reach and visibility. Implementing technical SEO can help ensure that your website is indexed correctly by generating and submitting a sitemap, fine-tuning your robots.txt file, and incorporating canonical tags.

In addition, optimizing your website structure, implementing structured data and schema markup, and minimizing duplicate content will improve your website’s crawlability and relevance, making it easier to find, index, and display in search engines. This is why increasing your reach can help you acquire new leads that can be converted into new customers.

Improve search engine rankings

Technical SEO makes it easier for search engines to understand your content, so it’s much more likely to appear higher up, including “position ZERO” on search engine results pages. A higher ranking eventually translates into more traffic, leads, and conversions for your business. After all, users rarely click on the second page of search results.

An organized web structure allows search engines to understand the nature of your website and
decide where and when to display it in their results.

Find problems and gaps

Technical SEO helps you identify and fix obstacles that can nick your search engine rankings and prevent users from navigating your site. Regular technical audits can eliminate all kinds of errors like broken links, missing image fallback tags, duplicate content, slow load times or page not found errors. All of these issues can negatively affect the crawlability and indexability of your website. And if you identify it before Google or others find it, the task of fixing the problem is much easier.

Improve user experience

Page speed

Page speed is considered an important ranking factor by Google. Therefore, websites with fast loading speeds are more likely to get better search rankings, while websites with slower page speeds have higher bounce rates and lower engagement. Technical SEO addresses factors such as image size, use of plugins and widgets, or website caching to improve page speed.

Mobile optimization

By implementing technical SEO, you can make your website mobile-friendly by using responsive design to minimize the number of pop-ups or ads, or by maintaining image and video optimizations for mobile.

Easy navigation

Navigation menus should be clear, easy to use, and organized in a logical and intuitive way. Technical SEO with clear labels, logical organization and intuitive menus allow users to easily navigate the site and find the information they need. This will result in a positive user experience.

Improve website security

Technical SEO can help protect your website. Technical SEO uses Secure Socket Lockets (SSL) to protect your website from potential hacks. Make sure your site is encrypted with HTTPS. It also prevents unwanted pop-up ads from appearing on your pages.

Every visitor wants to feel safe and secure when browsing a website, so search engines prioritize safe websites in terms of ranking. So, a secure website not only protects your visitors’ information, but also helps search engines rank your site better.

Simple website structure

Technical SEO is important for optimizing your website structure, including URL structure and internal links. Make sure your URLs are clear, concise, descriptive, and accurately reflect the page content. It also uses descriptive anchor text for internal links that point to related content, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your content. This has a positive impact on rankings as it helps search engines understand the hierarchy of your site.

A few technical SEO best practices to consider

Technical SEO covers a wide range of SEO topics. The list below includes some best practices you can consider for conducting a technical SEO audit.

Make sure your website is mobile friendly

This is one of the most basic technical SEO tips. The mobile website should have the same context as the desktop site. Make sure it loads faster and don’t use popups.

XML sitemap creation and optimization

Optimizing XML sitemaps is one of the most important aspects of technical SEO. If you’re a WordPress user, you can easily create an XML sitemap using a free plugin. The optimization process is also straightforward. Include only sitemaps for pages that are important to your website and have original content.

Internal link optimization

You can do this by optimizing your site’s internal links by using descriptive keywords in anchor text, or by sending a link value from the top page of your site to a new blog post. Using structured data

Structured data, also known as “schema markup”, is popular in Google search results. Therefore, you should add structured data to your homepage, posts, and other pages. Structured data is an important asset that your website should have.

Fix errors with site audit

To troubleshoot on-page SEO issues, you should run a routine technical SEO audit. Use a tool to scan your website for errors, warnings or issues and improve your website’s overall technical health.

SSL and HTTPS

Websites must have SSL installed so they can be accessed using HTTPS rather than HTTP. This will encrypt all information transmitted between the website and its servers (such as your username, password or banking details).

Not only that, technical SEO consists of a few checks and settings. It’s a vast topic. However, it is technical SEO that can make a difference to your top rankings in the SERPs. When set up correctly, technical SEO can boost your search engine rankings while driving more targeted traffic and increasing conversions.