If you’ve built a website to grow and promote your business, you likely already have an SEO strategy in place. Despite the evolving landscape of digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) continues to the Holy Grail for marketers and entrepreneurs alike.
A well-defined and conversion-focused SEO strategy doesn’t just help amplify organic website traffic. It also goes a long way to increase brand awareness and online visibility. Moreover, it strengthens your reputation and positions your brand as an industry authority in the long run.
It’s important to understand that SEO is made up of three components, namely:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
On-page SEO deals with optimizing the content and experience of individual web pages. Off-page SEO focus on building an impressive inbound link profile by attracting authoritative and high-quality backlinks to your website.
If you’re a business owner, chances are you’re familiar with the basics of on-page and off-page SEO. You might even be managing these aspects in-house by publishing high-quality content on your website and guest blogs.
But amidst this rigmarole, most webmasters and entrepreneurs often end up ignoring the crucial aspect of technical SEO. Even if you hire an SEO agency to increase your website’s search engine ranking, you must develop a thorough understanding of technical SEO best practices.
Technical SEO: A Closer Look
Unlike on-page and off-page SEO, technical SEO involves making your website crawlable and indexable. In other words, it focuses on ensuring that search engine spiders can effectively navigate your website and index crucial web pages.
Even if you implement an excellent content marketing and guest posting strategy, your efforts will fail to yield the desired results if you don’t work on technical SEO. A powerful technical SEO strategy creates a rock-solid foundation for your on-page and off-page SEO strategies to thrive.
Technical SEO Best Practices
Whether you’re planning to outsource technical SEO to a digital marketing agency or do it in-house, it’s essential to have a firm grasp of the concept. In this blog, we’ll discuss a few useful technical SEO strategies and tips. Let’s get started.
1. Focus on the Fundamentals
Even if you’re remotely familiar with SEO, you’ll know that technical aspects, such as site speed, responsiveness, and security, play a crucial role in search engine ranking. If you don’t get these basics right, even the most advanced technical SEO tactics will be futile.
So, the first step is to improve your website’s steps using the following techniques:
- Choose a fast and reliable web hosting service that offers advanced features, such as CDN compatibility and server-side caching.
- Optimize the source code by removing unnecessary characters and blank spaces
- Use an image optimization plugin to compress images files
- Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights for more useful suggestions to boost site speed
Use a responsive website theme, as well as ample blank spaces and large font sizes on every web page. It’ll ensure that users can browse your website on any device. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to better understand how you can modify the layout.
It’s just as essential to reinforce website security by installing an SSL certificate. Also, check whether your web hosting provider offers advanced security features, such as DDoS and malware protection.
2. Optimize for Core Web Vitals
The Google Page Experience Update, which is expected to launch in May 2021, further emphasizes the importance of page experience as a ranking factor. This, in turn, has made it mandatory for website owners to focus on improving Core Web Vitals, such as:
- First Input Delay (FID)
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
You can easily monitor these metrics and identify potential issues using Google Search Console. Focus on improving site speed and performance to optimize each of these parameters.
3. Create an XML Sitemap
If you’ve tried your hands on implementing technical SEO, you’d already know that an XML sitemap is essential for helping search engine spiders navigate your website and index the right web pages. Also, it helps the crawlers find new content and web pages.
That’s why it is essential to generate an XML sitemap for your website. If you’ve built your website on WordPress, you can easily create the sitemap using a plugin, such as Yoast SEO. Also, make sure you upload it on your Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools dashboards.
4. Use a Robots.txt File
A Robots.txt file guides search engine spiders through your website and tells them what web pages are to be crawled. You can use it to prevent certain web pages, such as those containing 4xx and 5xx redirects or duplicated content, from being crawled and indexed. Also, it can help search engines find the XML sitemap.
You’ll find easy-to-use online tools that can generate a Robots.txt file for your website in a jiffy. You can also use Google Search Console for this purpose.
What technical SEO strategies are you using in 2021?