Technical SEO refers to the behind-the-scenes elements that power your organic growth, it can cover elements such as site architecture, mobile optimisation, and page speed. It encompasses anything you do to make your site easier for search engines to crawl and index. Technical SEO, content strategy, and link-building strategies all work in tandem to help your pages rank highly in search results.
Preferred Domain Selection
When you select a preferred domain, you’re telling search engines whether you prefer the www or non-www version of your site to be displayed in the search results. For example, you might select www.yourwebsite.com over yourwebsite.com. This tells search engines to prioritise the www version of your site and redirects all users to that URL. Otherwise, search engines will treat these two versions as separate sites, resulting in dispersed SEO value.
I also see companies buying the .co.uk and .com domain for their site. When this happens, I always advise to redirect one to the other and ensure you stick with that preference. Changing between them can impact SEO rankings and not redirecting correctly form one to the other will confuse search engines and cause duplicate content.
Site Speed
You don’t have one second to waste, so improving your site load time should be a priority. Site speed isn’t just important for user experience and conversion — it’s also a ranking factor. Use these tips to improve your average page load time:
Compress all of your files - Reducing the size of your files helps them load faster.
Trim down your code - Removing unnecessary characters and spaces in your code can significantly boost speed.
Consider a content distribution network (CDN) - A CDN distributes your site’s content across various servers around the world, speeding up load times.
Try not to go plugin happy - Too many plugins can slow down your site and cause security and maintenance issues. Only use essential ones.
Take advantage of cache plugins - These plugins store a version of your site, so it loads faster for repeat visitors. This is one of those essential ones!
Use asynchronous (async) loading - This allows multiple scripts to load simultaneously, rather than one after the other.
SSL Certificates
An SSL certificate is denoted by a domain that begins with “https://” as opposed to “http://” and a lock symbol in the URL bar. It's hard to believe that in 2024 there are still sites that don't have SSL. Search engines prioritise secure sites — in fact, Google announced as early as 2014 that SSL would be considered a ranking factor. Because of this, be sure to set the SSL variant of your homepage as your preferred domain.
After you set up SSL, you’ll need to migrate any non-SSL pages from http to https. It’s a tall order, but worth the effort in the name of improved ranking.
Crawlability Checklist
Ensuring your site is easily crawlable by search engines is crucial. Use this checklist to optimise your sites' crawlability:
Create an XML sitemap - An XML sitemap helps search engines find and index your content.
Maximise your crawl budget - This refers to the number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site. Optimise your site to ensure important pages are prioritised.
Optimise your site architecture - A well-structured site is easier for search engines to crawl.
Set a URL structure - Clear and descriptive URLs help search engines understand your content.
Utilise robots.txt - This file tells search engines which pages they can and cannot crawl.
Add breadcrumb menus - Breadcrumbs improve navigation and help search engines understand your site’s structure.
Use pagination - Proper pagination ensures search engines can navigate through pages of content effectively.
Using Google Search Console for Technical SEO
Google Search Console (GSC) is a powerful tool that provides various reports and features essential for identifying and resolving technical SEO issues on your site. One of its key features is the page indexing section, which indicates the number of pages indexed by Google and highlights any errors, warnings, or exclusions that need picking up. The URL inspection tool lets you check the indexing and rendering status of specific URLs on your site such as those that have warnings and errors.
The experience heading gives you page experience, core web vitals and HTTPS status. This data is broken down into mobile and desktop performance and gives you a breakdown of all URLs. It indicates any issues in a traffic light system giving you good URLs, those that need improving and poor URLs.
Technical SEO Summary
By leveraging these tools and following best practices, you can ensure your website is optimised for search engines, leading to better rankings and more organic traffic. Technical SEO may seem complex but breaking it down into manageable tasks can make a significant difference in your site's performance. If you work with a web developer to maintain your site, it's still always good to have an understanding and question these points with them.
Read the full guide on Building a rebost SEO Strategy to learn more about SEO, content and link building.
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