What is technical seo?

Technical SEO focuses on the behind-the-scenes elements of your website that affect how search engines crawl, index, and render your content. It's about ensuring your site's foundation is solid, allowing search engines like Google to easily access, interpret, and display your pages to users.

Unlike on-page SEO, which deals with content and keywords, or off-page SEO, which involves backlinks and social signals, technical SEO is all about the website's technical health. It covers aspects from site speed to structured data, ensuring that your website meets the technical requirements of modern search engines and provides a seamless user experience.

For experienced marketers, mastering technical SEO means understanding how to diagnose and fix issues that could be silently holding back your site's organic performance. It's a critical layer that supports all other SEO efforts, ensuring your valuable content and marketing campaigns actually get seen by your target audience.

Why it matters

Technical SEO is the bedrock of a successful online presence. Without a technically sound website, even the best content and most effective link-building strategies might struggle to gain traction in search results. Here's why it's so important:

• Improved search engine visibility: A technically optimized site is easier for search engine bots to crawl and index. This means your pages are more likely to appear in search results.
• Enhanced user experience: Fast loading times, mobile-friendliness, and a secure connection (HTTPS) directly contribute to a better user experience. Search engines prioritize sites that offer a good experience, which can lead to higher rankings.
• Better resource allocation: Understanding crawl budget and how search engines interact with your site allows you to direct crawler attention to your most important pages, ensuring they are indexed efficiently.
• Foundation for advanced strategies: Implementing structured data, international SEO, and JavaScript SEO requires a strong technical base. Neglecting this foundation can undermine complex marketing initiatives.

Core components and how to improve them

Site speed and core web vitals

Google uses Core Web Vitals (CWV) as key ranking signals. These metrics measure user experience aspects like loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. Aim for under 2.5 seconds. Optimize images, use a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and ensure efficient server response times.
• First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. Aim for under 100 milliseconds. Minimize JavaScript execution, especially during initial page load.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. Aim for under 0.1. Reserve space for images and ads, and avoid injecting content above existing content.

Mobile-friendliness

With mobile-first indexing, Google primarily uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking. Ensure your site is responsive, meaning it adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes. Test your site using Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

Crawlability and indexability

These refer to a search engine's ability to discover and add your pages to its index.

• XML sitemaps: Submit an up-to-date XML sitemap to Google Search Console to help search engines discover all your important pages.
• Robots.txt: Use this file to tell search engine bots which pages or sections of your site they should or shouldn't crawl. Be careful not to block important content.
• Canonicalization: Use canonical tags to tell search engines which version of a page is the preferred one when you have duplicate or very similar content.
• Structured data (schema markup): Implement schema markup to provide search engines with explicit information about the meaning of your content. This can lead to rich snippets and enhanced search results.

Site architecture and internal linking

A logical site structure helps both users and search engines navigate your site. Use a hierarchical structure and ensure internal links are well-distributed, passing authority to important pages. Use descriptive anchor text for internal links.

HTTPS

Secure your website with an SSL certificate (HTTPS). This encrypts data between the user's browser and your server, which is a minor ranking factor and builds user trust.

Advanced strategies and key metrics

International SEO

If you target multiple regions or languages, use hreflang tags. These tags tell search engines which language and geographical targeting a specific page is for, helping them serve the correct version of your page to users in different locations.

JavaScript SEO

Modern websites often rely heavily on JavaScript. Ensure your JavaScript content is crawlable and indexable. This might involve server-side rendering (SSR), client-side rendering (CSR) with proper hydration, or dynamic rendering to ensure search engines can properly process your content.

Log file analysis

Analyzing your server log files provides direct insight into how search engine bots are interacting with your site. You can see which pages are crawled most often, identify crawl errors, and understand how your crawl budget is being spent.

Key metrics to track

Regularly monitor these metrics to gauge your technical SEO health:

• Core Web Vitals scores: Track LCP, FID, and CLS in Google Search Console.
• Crawl budget utilization: Observe crawl stats in Search Console and analyze log files.
• Index coverage report: Identify indexed pages, errors, and warnings in Search Console.
• Server response time: Monitor this through tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or your hosting provider's metrics.
• Mobile usability report: Check for any mobile-specific issues in Search Console.

By consistently monitoring and improving these technical aspects, marketing teams can ensure their website is not only discoverable but also provides an optimal experience for users and search engines alike. Regular technical audits are essential to stay ahead of algorithm changes and maintain a strong online presence.