Table of contents
What is the technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the set of actions carried out on a website to help search engines to ensure the correct crawling, indexing, and understanding of the content published on your website in order to increase the chances of appearing in the first results of search pages.
That is, technical SEO is in charge of ironing out all the rough edges at the level of source code on the page, server response, and understanding how search engines and users interact with our page to correct any errors detected.
Why it is important
Without a correct implementation of the infrastructure at the server level, programming languages and web page content, search engines will not be able to access, read, understand and index your website and, therefore, your content will not appear in their results.
Keep in mind that web crawlers have limited resources and that the web is practically infinite.
This is why search engine managers allow limited time and resources to understand your project.
The easier we make your job, the better it is for us.
Fundamental pillars of technical SEO
But… What specific areas does this SEO discipline deal with?
1. Tracking
LCrawlers or web crawlers take the content of pages and use the links on those pages to find more pages. Controlling the crawling of your website is one of the functions of technical SEO.
Through the use of:
- Robots.txt
- Crawl Rate
- Log analysis
We will be able to prioritize those pages or parts of the website that we want the search engine to take into account, optimize the crawling budget allocated by the web crawlers and detect if the crawler is having difficulties on our website.
2. Indexation
An important part of technical SEO is ensuring that important pages are indexed by Google. Without indexing, there is no chance of appearing in the results.
The way to control or ensure the indexing of your site is to pay attention to:
All these well-coordinated points are what will make it easier for search engines to add your pages to their lists of results.
3. Languages: hreflang
Hreflang is an HTML attribute used to specify the language and geographic orientation of a web page.
If your website has several versions of the same page in different languages, you can use the ‘hreflang’ tag to inform search engines such as Google about these variations.
This helps them to serve the correct version to users based on where they are coming from.
4. Mobile Friendly
Since Google implemented “mobile-first indexing” this is a key point for any SEO analysis.
This is about checking whether the pages of your website are displayed correctly and are easy for people to use on mobile devices.
How can you tell if your site is mobile-friendly? There are two ways to find out:
- By consulting the “Mobile Usability” in the Google Search Console.
- Using the Google tool Mobile Friendly Test
Any errors will be reflected.
5. Duplicate content
The main thing at this point is to detect URLs with possible similar or duplicate content that could lead to algorithmic penalties due to an excess of redundant content of no value to the user.
6. Internal linking
Internal links are links from one page on your site to another page on your site. They help your pages to be found and also help the pages to rank better and in order of importance. Depending on the number of internal links a section of your website receives, it will be more or less important in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Structured data tagging
Schema markup is a code that helps search engines to better understand your content and powers many features that can help your website to stand out from the rest in search results. Google has a search gallery that shows the different search features and the schema needed to make your site eligible.
8. Images
These tend to be a very important and at the same time very forgotten element in almost all web projects. Having weight-optimized images that fit the size of the different versions of a website, with alt tags and accompanying content helps to keep loading times low and improve the user experience.
9. User experience signals
These are minor ranking factors, but they are still points to be taken into account for the sake of the users.
The most important aspects of the website that affect the user experience (UX) are:
- Core web vitals
- HTTPS protocol
- Safe browsing
- Intersticiales
Technical SEO takes care of all the above mentioned points in order to offer good response times and to ensure that the user’s navigation of the website is correct.
Main tools for technical SEO
These are some of the must-have tools in the technical SEO toolbox:
- Log Analyser
- Google Search Console
- Google mobile friendly test
- Pagespeed insights
All of them help to detect possible errors and to know where to go to correct them.
In conclusion:
All of this is just a small sample of what the surface of technical SEO entails. Here we have only shown you the basics of more technical SEO.
There are many other topics we have not covered that you can delve into. Just to mention a few:
Infrastructure-related:
- Status codes
- Redirections
- HTTP/2/3
- CDNs
- Load balancing
- HTTP Headers
Website-related:
- Page speed
- AMP
- PWAs
- Parameter handling
- Faceted navigation
- Pagination
- Site links
- Tracking budget
- Deletion of pages
- Website architecture / taxonomy
- URLs
Processes and procedures:
- Technical SEO audits
- Migrations
- Automation / python
- Log file analysis
- SEO testing
As you can see, the world of SEO is vast and involves a large number of tasks, tools and in-depth knowledge of how a search engine works.
Tools and recommended reading:
FAQs
Technical SEO deals with a very specific part of this discipline being one of the most relevant for any project or website. In our article, we develop this concept in-depth and tell you what the keys are.