In this innovating time, search engine optimization (SEO) is considered as one of the most important parts of digital marketing because its algorithms are constantly changing. Adapting to these changes is the key to optimizing your website for higher ranking and visibility in terms of organic search results.

There are two types of SEO, first is the on-page SEO and second is the off-page SEO. The former deals with content and website page optimization — while the latter’s concern is establishing a relationship between websites.

However, there’s another topic that encompasses SEO which is technical SEO — this is another big topic that business owners and marketers should talk about.

What is a technical SEO?

Technical SEO improves your website’s code structure, content, and design which help search engines find, crawl, and index your website pages leading to a higher ranking. The effective and successful implementation of your technical SEO strategies optimizes your website’s page performance and user experience (UI) for your visitors browsing across your site with the use of different devices.

Technical SEO relates to all your marketing plans and activities excluding link building and content optimization. It follows search engine requirements to help engines improve its crawling. It is important to keep in mind that these requirements are constantly changing and are getting more complex that’s why effective and sophisticated strategies are needed.

Here are 5 technical SEO elements to consider

1. Website speed

According to a report from Think with Google, websites that load in five seconds have about 70% longer average sessions compared to those that load in 19 seconds. Search engines prefer websites that load faster and it is considered as one of the most important factors in ranking.

There are ways to help you speed up your website such as:

• The use of fast website hosting
• The use of fast domain name system (DNS) provider
• Minimizing hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) requests by keeping the use of scripts and plugins to a minimum
• Using a single Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) instead of using multiple CSS
• Compressing your website pages
• Making sure that your image files are as small as possible, but pixelated images are a no-no

2. Mobile-friendliness

Responsive website design is able to automatically adjust itself for easy navigation. Google has made it clear that a website’s responsiveness is one of the most significant factors in their ranking algorithm — and looking through Google’s introduction of the mobile-first approach to indexing content, the significance of your website’s responsiveness is more important than ever.

Conducting a test will let you know if your website is mobile-friendly and you can use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool by simply providing entering your website’s Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

3. Structured data markup

Another technical SEO element is structured data markup. Simply, this is about rich snippets — these snippets provide you with information that shows star rating to the number of reviews that can be seen in the search results whenever you type in a specific query.

The information provided is known as the structured data markup which you can add to your website. There are various ways to add this depending on what kind of content management system (CMS) you are using.

4. Check for duplicated content

Technical SEO is also about checking your website for errors, fixing them, and how to avoid them. Duplicated content is considered a critical issue that can cause you, your website, and your business a lot of trouble.

If you see duplicated content on your website, it is wise to get rid of it and you can do this by either removing the duplicate or rephrasing it. Another solution to a duplicated content is to add the canonical URL — this will show search engines the source of the published content and that you have already resolved the issue.

5. Website structure and navigation

Again, website structure is another essential factor to technical SEO because visitors and users are more likely to stay on a website longer to find out what they need and want — search engines can understand this and will index your website easier.

Most of the time, business owners, website developers, and digital marketers often forget about website structure and navigation and only focus their efforts on optimizing their website. In addition to this, according to Google’s guidelines, an excellently designed website structure helps search engines understand what kind of content the webmaster considers important.

Conclusion

Technical SEO, just like other strategies consists of different elements that you should consider to help search engines crawl and index your website easily and efficiently. If you get your technical SEO right, you won’t have to worry about the other SEO-related issues other than performing periodical SEO audits.

If you want to know more information about technical SEO, you can download our Web Development ebook.

Are you looking for help in planning your website’s technical SEO strategies? Talk to one of our SEO specialists now!