What is Technical SEO?
Technical search engine optimization is the act of making modifications to your website to ensure it conforms to search engines’ technical standards, which makes it easier for them to crawl and index your content.
Understanding of Platforms, Technologies, and Best Practices are essential skills
Technical search engine optimization is the act of making modifications to your website to ensure it conforms to search engines’ technical standards, which makes it easier for them to crawl and index your content.
The top 10 technical SEO Best Practices:
- Site architecture: This includes the organization of your website’s pages, the structure of your URLs, the use of breadcrumbs, and the use of sitemaps to help search engines understand the structure of your site.
- Site speed:
- Mobile optimization: It is key that your site is mobile-friendly since more people are using mobile devices to search the internet. The other features are responsive design, simple mobile navigation, and quick page loads.
- Mobile optimization: With more people using mobile devices to browse the web, it’s crucial that your site is mobile-friendly. This includes responsive design, easy-to-use mobile navigation, and fast page load times.
- Crawlability: Search engines use bots to crawl and index your site. Technical SEO includes ensuring that these bots can access and crawl all of your site’s pages, including any hidden or dynamically generated content.
- Site security: A secure website is not only important for user trust, but it’s also a ranking factor. Technical SEO includes implementing SSL certificates and other security measures to protect your site from hacking and malware.
- Structured data: Structured data is a way to help search engines understand the content on your site. Technical SEO includes implementing structured data markup to provide additional information about your content, such as reviews, recipes, and events.
- XML sitemaps: XML sitemaps are a way to provide search engines with a comprehensive list of all the pages on your site. Technical SEO includes creating and submitting an XML sitemap to search engines to help them index your site more efficiently.
- Canonicalization: Duplicate content can harm your site’s rankings. Technical SEO includes using canonical tags to tell search engines which version of a page to index.
- Robots.txt: The robots.txt file tells search engines which pages or sections of your site they should or should not crawl. Technical SEO includes optimizing this file to ensure search engines can crawl and index all of your site’s important content.
- Internal linking: Internal linking helps search engines understand the structure of your site and how pages relate to each other. Technical SEO includes optimizing your internal linking structure to improve navigation and help search engines crawl and index your site more efficiently.
Technical SEO has always been a part of search engine optimization (SEO) since the early days of the web. However, as search engines have become more sophisticated, the importance of technical SEO has increased. Google, in particular, has placed greater emphasis on technical SEO as a ranking factor in recent years.
The exact date when technical SEO became a ranking factor is not known, as search engines do not typically announce changes to their algorithms in advance. However, Google has been clear that technical SEO is an important part of the overall ranking algorithm, and that websites that do not follow best practices for technical SEO may be penalized.
Here are the top 7 technical SEO skills that are essential to become an expert.
- HTML and CSS: A strong understanding of HTML and CSS is essential for technical SEO, as these are the building blocks of web pages. Technical SEO experts need to be able to read and write clean HTML and CSS code, and to understand how these languages are used to create web pages.
- JavaScript: JavaScript is a powerful scripting language that is used to add interactivity and functionality to web pages. Technical SEO experts need to be able to understand and work with JavaScript code, as it can affect how search engines crawl and index web pages.
- Website architecture: Technical SEO experts need to have a strong understanding of website architecture, including how pages are organized and linked together. This includes understanding the importance of a clear site structure, and the use of internal linking to help search engines crawl and index pages.
- Server-side technologies: Technical SEO experts need to understand server-side technologies, including web servers, web hosting, and content management systems (CMS). This knowledge is essential for diagnosing and fixing technical issues that may affect a website’s performance in search engines.
- Data analysis: Technical SEO experts need to be able to analyze data, including web analytics, search engine rankings, and crawl data, to identify technical issues and opportunities for optimization.
- SEO tools: Technical SEO experts need to be familiar with a range of SEO tools, including Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and third-party tools such as Screaming Frog and SEMrush. These tools are essential for analyzing data and diagnosing technical issues.
- Continuous learning: Finally, technical SEO experts need to be committed to continuous learning, as the field of SEO is constantly evolving. They need to keep up with changes to search engine algorithms, new technologies, and emerging best practices in technical SEO.
Becoming a technical SEO expert requires a strong understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, website architecture, server-side technologies, data analysis, SEO tools, and a commitment to continuous learning. By developing these skills, technical SEO experts can help websites improve their performance in search engines and attract more organic search traffic.