Is your website optimized for search engines, but your content isn’t easily found online? Does your website take a long time to load? Then this sounds like a case for technical SEO. Technical search engine optimization specifically refers to the crawling and indexing phase (the process by which Google checks a website for new content), which is performed by so-called crawlers (Google bots). In order for search engines like Google to properly analyze and evaluate your website, access to it must be ensured. Terms like page speed, sitemap, indexability, and internal link structure are often used in this context.
Before you can begin improving your technical SEO, you first need to analyze the current state of your website. Which areas need optimization, and where is your website already performing well?
The Google Search Console plays a particularly central role in technical optimization. It provides valuable insights into Core Web Vitals, user-friendliness, and the general website structure, among other things.
Seybold would be happy to handle your technical search engine optimization for you. Contact us now and let’s talk.
Technical optimization for long-term success
To ensure your long-term online success, you need a fundamental technical optimization of your website. The foundations for this optimization are best laid right at the beginning of your website’s launch, but can also be done later. For example, choosing the right theme, clean code, and compressed images are essential steps for a technically optimized website. Furthermore, submitting a sitemap to Google is essential to ensure smooth crawling and thus indexing of your website.
If these technical optimizations are made early on, you can avoid future problems. This saves time and enables continuous growth. One example is the fact that choosing a lightweight theme helps optimize page speed right from the start. To keep track of your loading speed, the Pagespeed Insights tool is a great option. It allows you to determine your loading speed for free and identify areas with potential for optimization. Images that are too large or removing resources that are blocking rendering are just a few of the helpful options.
Technical SEO Agency Seybold: Your strong partner
Technical SEO offers one or two pitfalls and therefore often proves to be complex. Seybold specializes in technical search engine optimization and is your agency for questions about
- Indexing problems
- Page speed
- Internal link structure
- mobile user-friendliness
- Avoid duplicate content
- and much more.
With our years of experience, we are a strong partner at your side. Our qualified and experienced staff will support you and help you take your website to the next level.
Technical SEO requirements at a glance
As you can see, there are several requirements when it comes to technical SEO. In summary, you should ensure that Google crawlers can access your website without issues and thus index it regularly. Millions of websites are launched every day, and countless Google bots are tasked with indexing these websites.
Help Google with this and make your website search engine-friendly. By integrating a sitemap, you provide Google crawlers with a map that helps them quickly understand the structure of your website. This has a positive impact on your visibility. It’s also beneficial to use an SEO checklist for technical optimization to keep track of everything at all times.
Technical SEO also includes the security aspect of a website. Since a hack can not only cause reputational damage but also result in a loss of ranking, it’s important to ensure website security. Basics include using an SSL certificate, a secure password, and regularly updating plugins and third-party programs to close security gaps.
Why technical SEO is an important point for optimization
The term “technical SEO” encompasses all on-page optimization. Technical SEO ensures that a website’s content is easily understood by search engines and presented in a clean, structured manner. Optimization options include operating systems, server configurations, software, and source code. Page speed is a recognized ranking factor in technical SEO.
Technical SEO consists of the following key points:
- Indexability
- Internal link structure
- Meta title and meta description
- Mobile usability
- Page speed
- Avoiding duplicate content, both internally and externally
Internal URL structure
The internal URL structure, also known as internal linking, is used to link to subpages within a domain. This has the advantage of making content easier for search engines and users to find. Important: Content should be organized using SEO silo technology.
The SEO silo technique on a website simply means grouping related pages. Similar to how a farmer uses separate silos for his crops, webmasters can write a website in silos. Content topics can be more easily differentiated, and search engines can understand what the website is about.
Follow this link. Tips:
- Do not place internal links in the footer or sidebar.
- For a click on the respective link to occur, the reference should be placed at the beginning of the content.
- The anchor text of an internal link should consist of the main keyword of the target page, so that the user receives a clear indication of the link destination.
- Internal links should be relevant to the topic and expand on the theme of the page.
- Pay special attention to removing broken links with a 404 error.
General links
Pay attention to all the links on your website. Are there any error messages, broken links, or unauthorized page views? Check and remove them. This is important for technical SEO.
If a link from an external site ends on a 404 page, it’s very annoying for the user and embarrassing for the website owner, because this shouldn’t happen. In the worst case, the website will be removed from the index, as Google tends to remove pages with 404 error messages, broken links, and dead links as useless pages.
Here, you should redirect the respective link to a page with similar content.
Indexability
If you want your web pages to be found online, they must be indexable. Ensuring a website’s indexability is therefore an essential component of successful search engine optimization, and thus also of technical SEO. If search engines are to read and evaluate your web pages, they must be written in error-free HTML code. Having a simple internal URL structure and clear page navigation makes it easier for the search engine’s crawlers to index your entire website.
All relevant web pages must always be visible and readable for search engines.
XML sitemaps
XML sitemaps include all relevant pages in the sitemap. The XML format contains all the URLs of a website, thus providing a complete list of pages.
XML sitemaps can be uploaded to Google Search Console and provide the search engine with an overview of all available pages. They can only be read by bots and help quickly understand the structure and navigation. This allows the bot to gain an overview of the content.
Google uses XML sitemaps as a map to your web content.
OnPage – Technical SEO
On-page covers topics such as heading structure and duplicate content. Duplicate content is content that appears identically across multiple URLs. Search engines often react very allergically to duplicate content, as they don’t assign positions to identical content. Special attention is required here, as duplicate content can creep in very quickly and become a major problem for your website.
To resolve this issue, your content should be reworked. Using good online scanners, duplicate content on your site can be quickly identified and eliminated.
Security
Losing control of your website is every website owner’s nightmare. That’s why web security is important not only for your website, but also for its ranking. A hack or attempted hack could prevent Google’s bots from accessing your website. Your content and keywords will then not be ranked. This means that the communication between the server and the user’s web browser is secured.
Further security precautions include:
- Automated backups
- Secure passwords
- Good platform security (web host)
- Protect your input forms
- Use of a current SSL certificate
To protect yourself from hacking, make sure your web server is secure, as it’s always the first point of attack for attackers. This can be very easy for hackers due to a faulty or outdated configuration. Web applications such as WordPress and TYPO3 are the most common point of attack.
If you suspect this, please note the following points:
- Take all security precautions and check access data and authorizations
- Always keep your programs up to date
- Obtain updates only from authorized sources
- Check your website for hidden content and unknown scripts
- Regularly check the files on your server and change the access data if necessary
Page Speed - Especially important for technical SEO
Loading speed is not only important for Google rankings, but it is also becoming increasingly important for user experience. This is especially true because users expect extremely fast loading times.
To find out which page is loading slowly or has the highest bounce rate, you should use Google Analytics to find out what the cause might be.
After just one second, attention suffers…
- The mobile user’s attention can be held for up to one second.
- After one second, focus suffers, and the user may leave the tab or close it completely.
- Since the user’s frustration may be increased, he or she will definitely not return to the website again.
Prepare your pages so they display quickly, even on mobile devices. Make them usable and focus on user-friendliness, as more and more people are browsing on mobile devices than on desktops these days. Resources like images, CSS, and JavaScript should be displayed in a small format or loaded in a specific order so users don’t have to wait long to see what’s happening.
Structured data
As the name suggests, structured data provides structure to the content in the background of a website.
Structured data refers to information or content on a website that is specifically marked for search engines. This makes it easier for Google’s bots to classify the data. Structured data helps search engine crawlers better understand a website’s content.
With structured data, you can tell search engine bots, for example:
- that an embedded file is a video
- How long is the video?
- that the numbers on the contact page are your opening hours
- that the other numbers are your phone number
- that a text is a recipe
- What information does a product have
- How much a particular product costs
- When an event takes place
With structured data, you give Google more context to understand what your website is about. This can be particularly helpful for online shops, as their product descriptions tend to be rather short, which can be inaccurate for search engine indexing.
You’ll also get a better presentation in search results. Structured data can enable a range of additional content in rich snippets, such as displaying customer reviews in the form of stars. While this doesn’t provide a technical advantage, it does offer a visual advantage. The additional information helps your listings stand out in search results from those of your competitors who don’t have structured data, thus gaining you more attention.
Conclusion
Overall, the importance of technical SEO measures underscores the importance of careful website optimization for successful online rankings. Core aspects such as page speed, indexability, internal link structure, and security precautions form the foundation for effective search engine optimization. Close collaboration with specialized technical SEO agencies like Seybold not only ensures the implementation of these fundamental factors but also enables continuous improvement and long-term success in the digital space.