What Does Technical SEO Entail

Marketing Advice - Published on Updated on

We know a lot about on-page and off-page SEO factors that affect your rankings when it comes to search engines such as Google, Bing etc. These include inbound links, keywords, content and much more… but what does technical SEO consider when ranking your website?

Website Speed and Core Web Vitals

This element is probably in the top 5 items that affect your site’s ranking. No one likes a slow website! It’s as simple as that. In 2016, Google pointed out that its aim is for a website to load in 0.5 seconds. Google tend to be ambitious when it comes to its expectations, so ideally your site shouldn’t take longer than 2 seconds to load. If it does, we have a problem. This becomes even more critical with Google's Core Web Vitals framework.

Core Web Vitals focus on three key metrics:

  1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how quickly the largest piece of content loads.

  2. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Tracks how stable your page layout is as it loads.

  3. First Input Delay (FID): Captures how responsive your page is to user interaction.

To optimise these, ensure that your templates are simple, images are optimised, and the number of redirects is limited. Tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix, and Lighthouse will help assess your performance and identify issues.

Mobile Friendliness and Mobile-First Indexing

This is equally as important as website speed. It’s no secret that Google already prefers and prioritises mobile-friendly websites when crawling and ranking your pages. Read Google's statement here.

Ensure your site has a responsive design and optimised mobile UX to enhance user experience. As AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) loses some of its significance, focus more on providing an intuitive mobile experience that keeps users engaged.

Site Architecture

Clear site architecture is important, not only for search engine rankings but also for your users. So you must do it right from the start! There are a few things to consider when it comes to this: 

  • HTTPS - This is the secure protocol to use when it comes to your website. Sites without HTTPS are now flagged as unsafe by Google, which directly impacts rankings and user trust. Implement SSL certificates to ensure security. We recently wrote a blog about HTTPS if you'd like to know more about it.

  • URL Structure - Your site URLs should be clear, descriptive and, for best SEO practices, include relevant keywords. Keyword inclusion in the page URL will strengthen the relevancy of the page and give that extra boost to your rankings.

  • Internal Links - You should link the content internally on your site. Also, make sure to categorise your website’s subject matter. This way you’ll ensure that the users can browse between sections and that older content can be easily accessed.

Structured Data

Structured data is a standardised format for providing information about a web page and its content. It is a more efficient way for Google and other search engines to crawl sites and identify the content on the page more precisely and augment Search Engine Result Pages with additional search features. JSON-LD is now the preferred format for structured data markup, making it easier to implement.

Using structured data for items like FAQ schema, How-to schema, and Product schema can enhance your site's visibility with rich results in the SERPs. For example, a product page with structured data can display reviews, pricing, and availability directly in Google’s search results, increasing click-through rates.

Structured data can also improve your authority by clearly communicating business information, articles, reviews, events, and more. The Google Developer website provides extensive resources on how to implement structured data on your site.

Technical SEO Auditing and Tools

Regular audits are essential to maintaining a well-optimised website. Tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console are invaluable for analysing your site's technical health. These tools will help you identify issues such as:

  • Slow-loading pages

  • Broken links

  • Duplicate content

  • Unstructured data

  • Out-of-date XML sitemaps

By resolving these issues, you can ensure that search engine spiders crawl your site more efficiently and rank your pages higher.

At Together Digital, our team of SEO experts is ready to help you implement these best practices and keep your website performing at its best. Get in touch with us today to stay ahead of the curve!

The advantage of using structured data is to make your website’s presence on SERPs more attractive to searchers and to increase clickthroughs to your site, ultimately increasing conversions.

In terms of what’s involved in implementing structured data, your web developers would code and markup your website using the code suggested by search engines such as Google. The Google Developer website provides a comprehensive gallery of what’s available and a relatively easy-to-follow implementation guide for each feature on their developer website.

We hope you’ve learnt all you need to know about technical SEO features but if you’re still unsure or are looking to implement some of these technical SEO features on your website, why not get in touch with Together Digital today and one of our highly-trained experts can advise you on best practices. 

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