Seven Technical SEO Techniques to Optimize Your Website in 2023
SEO isn’t just about the creative elements that make your website visible to search engines - it’s about all of the technical behind-the-scenes practices that give your website the best chance of appearing high in search results. The better you understand these technical SEO techniques, the more likely you are to rank highly in search engines, bringing more traffic and more customers to your site.
1. On-page optimization
One of the most overlooked parts of SEO is on-page optimization. On-page optimization is the process of optimizing content and code on your site to rank better in search results. There are many different on-page optimizations that you can make, but here are also seven of the most common technical SEO techniques:
1) Create an XML sitemap;
2) Update broken links;
3) Use relevant keywords throughout your content;
4) Create descriptive URLs for pages;
5) Add social media sharing buttons to every page;
6) Add alt tags to images and videos when uploading them to your site;
7) Use schema markup.
If you’re looking for more information about technical SEO techniques, take a look at this blog post for digital marketing.
What are technical SEO techniques?
The following is part of a blog post from Marketing Maniacs. Digital marketing involves many facets including paid advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), online reputation management (ORM), internet marketing (IM), and more. Digital marketers have been among the highest-paid professionals in America for years now, with typical salaries ranging anywhere from $75k - $250k per year!
2. Web server optimization
Digital marketing encompasses a wide range of activities, including web server optimization. Web server optimization (WSO) is the process of improving your website’s performance by applying practices and techniques to increase your site’s speed, as well as its ability to render properly on all devices.
These improvements can be achieved through a variety of methods, such as setting up an effective caching strategy and ensuring that you are following best practices in HTML and CSS coding. You should also make sure that you are using content delivery networks (CDN) for video and image files. All of these measures will help boost your rankings in search engines like Google. They might seem complicated at first, but it’s worth investing time in them because they will pay off in the long run.
It may take some experimentation before you find what works best for your site, but with some patience and persistence, your efforts will yield positive results. In addition, you can learn more about other technical SEO techniques from this blog post. So, keep reading!
3. Content Delivery Networks
CDNs are a popular way of delivering your website content quickly and efficiently. CDNs help you distribute your content across servers around the world so that it's closer to the end user, which minimizes latency and reduces the load on your servers. You can find a great CDN at Cloudflare or Amazon Web Services, among others.
CDNs work well for static assets such as images, HTML files, CSS files, JS files, and PDFs. They also work well with sites that use HTTP/2 protocol (which is fast!). But if you have dynamic data like APIs that need to be delivered in real-time then this may not be an optimal solution for you. Remember, CDNs only work for static assets, so dynamic data will not benefit from being stored offsite.
4. Page speed optimization
When it comes to page speed optimization, you can't go wrong with Google's PageSpeed Insights. This tool will analyze your website's performance and provide a score (1-100) based on how fast your site loads. It also includes suggestions for improving the load time of your site. For example, if you have an image that's taking up too much space on the page, it may recommend resizing or compressing the image.
The more recommendations Google gives you, the better chance your site has at loading quickly and ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). If your goal is to rank higher in SERPs for queries related to images, then using a keyword in file names might be just what you need! Including keywords within your filename isn't as effective as choosing optimized image titles and alt text, but including them does help a little bit.
Be sure to keep filenames short, use common extensions like .jpg or .png instead of other formats like .jpeg or .gif, and don’t include unnecessary characters. Keep all of these tips in mind when working on creating good images for your website. Not only do they help visitors find what they're looking for faster, but they'll also increase the likelihood that Google picks up on those keywords.
5. XML sitemaps
A sitemap is a page on your website that lists the pages and posts of your site. It's an important tool for webmasters and site owners, as it lets search engines know what content is available on your site. The XML Sitemaps protocol provides a way for webmasters to submit their sitemaps in XML format. Google recommends creating a new XML file with its name beginning with a sitemap followed by the domain name.
If you're not sure how to create an XML file, there are plenty of guides online like this one from Squarespace or this one from Google Webmaster Tools. There are also tools such as Siteliner which allow you to generate them automatically. One caveat is that these files have to be periodically updated, so don't forget about them!
Another common technique is using robots.txt. Robots.txt can tell search engine crawlers which parts of your site they can index and access, blocking them from accessing any other part of your site (for example, private blog posts). You can set up your robots.txt by creating a text document with the word robots at the top and then adding directives telling spiders where they cannot go, like this: User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/
The third technical SEO strategy we are talking here about is setting up canonical URLs. Canonicalization means giving each URL on your site an identification number; if there are two versions of the same post title but slightly different URL strings, one will serve as the canonical version.
6. Responsive web design
A responsive website is a site that automatically adjusts the content to fit any screen size. This includes desktop, tablet, and smartphone screens. These sites are now commonplace on the web, as the majority of internet users use these devices for browsing.
Your site needs to be mobile-friendly because you're likely missing out on a large percentage of traffic from people using smartphones or tablets. There are many ways you can make your site responsive, but some popular methods include adding an adaptive design with jQuery Mobile and incorporating fluid grid layouts with CSS3 media queries.
If you have a WordPress site, then try to upgrade it to the latest version of WordPress which has some options that can help with responsiveness. Alternatively, if you don't have access to WordPress then there are plugins like WP Mobile Pack which can give your site a more modern look and feel while making it more compatible with mobile devices.
You may also want to think about switching up your layout depending on whether you want a full-width site, a one-column layout, or even two columns. Whatever you decide will depend largely on what type of website you want to create and how you want it to function.
7. Mobile usability
Today, more than 69% of web traffic is coming from mobile devices. That number has been increasing every year as the trend becomes increasingly popular. It's always a good idea to make sure your site works well on any type of device by testing its compatibility across platforms - it'll save you time later when issues arise. Here are some things to keep in mind when optimizing for mobile performance.
It's a good idea to test how your site looks and performs on different devices so that you can make adjustments before they become a problem. There are many tools available that allow you to do this, like Google Mobile-Friendly Test or the Bing Toolbox.
When you're optimizing for mobile performance, make sure your code is responsive, which means it will look right no matter what screen size it is viewed on. For example, if someone visits with an iPhone 13 in portrait orientation (vertically), they should see all content below the fold. If they view it in landscape orientation (horizontally), then all content should be visible without having to scroll left and right.
And if they have a tablet, they should be able to zoom in and out, depending on what's comfortable for them. If there are links at the top of your website that visitors need to scroll down to get to them, consider removing those links or changing them into buttons instead.
Why Technical SEO Techniques are used to Boost Your Search Rankings?
The first step in any optimization strategy is to analyze your website. This includes evaluating its content, layout, navigation, and other characteristics. One common misconception is that a site’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) is solely based on keyword density; however, Google and other search engines also take into account factors such as the speed of your site’s loading time and how many external links you have pointing to it.
There are many technical aspects of a website that can be analyzed using tools like Screaming Frog or WebSite Auditor, which will show you things like page load times, broken links, internal linking structures, etc. You should then make changes accordingly to optimize your site for better performance in SERPS.
Below is a list of some of the most important technical SEO techniques to consider when optimizing your site:
● Improve Site Loading Time
● Check HTTP Status Codes and Page Load Times
● Validate HTML Code
● Use HTTPS Protocol with SSL Certificate
● Perform Mobile Responsive Design Analysis
● Fix Broken Links
● Optimize Image Compression
● Create Internal Link Structures
● Add Robots Meta Tag to Prevent Search Engine Crawlers from Indexing Unwanted Pages
● Clean Up Crawl Errors from Search Engines' Indexes
● Minify CSS and JavaScript Files
● Reduce the Number of Requests to Load Static Content
● Enable Gzip Compression
● Decrease TTFB (Time To First Byte)
Bonus Points:
1. Server Cache:
Caching is another common practice in technical SEO because it helps you to save resources and minimize downtime in case there is an issue with one of your web server nodes. A typical caching system consists of two layers - the first layer stores frequently requested pages locally and delivers them to users; the second layer requests frequently requested pages from upstream caches if they're not stored locally by the first layer.
2. Non-relational Database:
Non-relational databases, such as MongoDB, offer some advantages over traditional relational databases like MySQL. For example, non-relational databases do not require JOINs for fetching data. Instead, MongoDB queries allow for selecting a subset of data without needing JOINs or complex SQL queries. One downside of this type of database is that querying data requires more bandwidth than with a relational database.
3. Latency:
Latency refers to how long it takes for information sent from one location to reach another location via a network connection. The time required varies depending on various factors such as the distance between sender and receiver and the capacity of networks connecting them. Typically, the lower the latency, the better your site performs.
Conclusion:
Technical SEO describes all of the behind-the-scenes techniques that will improve your website’s performance in search engines. While technical SEO may seem difficult to understand at first, it’s quite simple when broken down into manageable chunks and with the proper technical understanding of how search engines like Google function under the hood. In this guide, we have mentioned all that you need to know about technical SEO. Go through it carefully!
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