A Complete Guide To Technical SEO Tactics

You’d need more than high-quality content to boost your online visibility. SEO has several facets, each aiming to improve website ranking in search engine result pages (SERP).

Technical SEO is one of the core facets of search engine optimization. This aspect of SEO deals with website technicalities and how it impacts SEO. The technical SEO umbrella covers a staggering amount of elements, including meta robots tags, site speed, XML sitemaps, hosting, etc. Although technical SEO is quite complex, it’s indispensable. 

This article explores the importance of technical SEO and the essential technical SEO tactics that boosts organic growth.

What Is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is quite tricky. It’s the underground elements and optimization that drive business growth.

Technical SEO is any optimization action that makes your website crawlable and indexable for search engines. This SEO component works hand-in-hand with on-page and off-site SEO to boost a website’s rank for a specific keyword. 

Technical SEO elements incle:

• Sitemap optimization 
• Crawlability configuration 
• XML sitemaps
• Robots.txt files
• Canonicalization 
• Indexation 
• HTTPS implementation
• URL structure optimization
• Image and content optimization
• Content Delivery Networks (CDN) setup -AMP implementation
• Mobile optimization 
• Hreflang attributes
• Structured data markup

Why Is Technical SEO Important?

Due to the complexity of this SEO component, you may consider ignoring it entirely. Unfortunately, that’s not an option–except you are willing to risk your ranking in SERPs. Your content visibility is hinged on getting your technical SEO right. 

The truth is, you can write the most mind-blowing and informative content only to have it stuck at the backends of the internet. If Google can’t crawl or index your page, no one– or only a fraction of your audience will read it. 

Technical SEO is a fundamental element that makes your website recognizable to search engines. That’s how important technical SEO is!

Why You Should Run A Website Audit

The first step to a technical SEO strategy is conducting a technical SEO audit. The main goal of a website audit is to detect digital clogs or errors and note the tactics that are working for you. Correcting website errors will definitely increase your leads and sales remarkably. 

How do you run a site audit?

You can use analysis tools like Screamingfrog and SEMrush to highlight technical SEO issues that need fixing on your website. Running a site audit is fundamental to optimizing your website for technical SEO.

Plus, it saves you time by streamlining all necessary tasks and achieving better results in record time. Now, we’ll explore some technical SEO tactics.

Top 7 Technical SEO Tactics

The basic SEO tactics are as follows: 

Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

Since 2015, Google has established its preference for mobile-friendly websites. Fast forward to 2023, mobile optimization is still one of the major contributors to organic growth. 

With the majority of web traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s crucial to ensure your website provides a great user experience on all devices. 

This means all your pages should load quickly and easily read on smaller screens. 

You can start by creating a responsive design that automatically adjusts its layout based on the device’s size. 

Use SSL

SSL (secure socket layers), also known as HTTPS encryption, is a standard technology that secures an internet connection. It protects sensitive data exchange between two systems. 

In 2014, google announced that SSL certificates had become a major website ranking factor, understandably so. A safe website offers a much-needed layer of protection to users. As a result, it’s a critical tactic to improve your technical SEO.

Although several web hosting services provide SSL certificates, it’s best to research and opt for the best SSL providers. SSL certificates are available at an affordable rate from many providers

Having one installed on your website gives visitors more confidence in information safety; this can lead to increased conversions and sales. 

Optimized Site Speed

Have you ever left a site because it was incredibly slow? Yea, that’s a norm. 

Slow sites are a massive turn-off for search engines and customers. It goes without saying that this is a vital ranking factor on Google. 

So, if your content is a gold mine in your niche, you may still struggle to rank if your site loads slowly. 

You can optimize your website for speed in the following ways:

• Minify your website code
• Utilize a fast DNS provider 
• Employ fast hosting 
• Adopt one CSS stylesheet as opposed to inline CSS or multiple stylesheets
• Reduce the use of scripts and plug-ins
• Make your image files small 
• Ensure your web pages are compact. 

Create and Optimize XML Sitemap

Sitemap is an invaluable element in technical SEO. It makes your website easily accessible and indexable by Google. 

How do you create an XML sitemap? 

Thankfully, generating an XML sitemap is relatively straightforward. You can use online tools such as XML-Sitemaps.com or ScreamingFrogs’ free Sitemap Generator to generate one for your site. 

After creating a sitemap, submit it to Google Search Console (login to the Google Search Console, click Sitemap and input your URL to submit). 

The information on a sitemap includes:

• The last modification date of a page
• How often you update the page
• And the page’s priority on your website.

Best practices for an optimized sitemap are: 

• Prioritize pages with the best quality 
• Generate a dynamic XML sitemap for a website with up to 50 000 URLs.

Note that you don’t need to index all your sitemaps. It’s perfectly understandable to leave out pages that aren’t a priority on your website. You may also exclude pages with broken links.

Eliminate Broken links Or 404s.

Besides being terrible for technical SEO, broken links affect user experience on a website. 

404 errors would discourage any user. That’s why you should focus on auditing your website often and eliminating such pages. 

You can find broken links with tools like Screamingfrog or Google Search Console. These tools analyze your website and inform you of any broken links. So you can fix them immediately.

Fix Crawl Errors On Google Search Console

Crawl errors are like ranking pests; they affect your ranking and trump your SEO efforts. Therefore, you must check Google Search Console frequently for any errors and correct them immediately. 

Fix Duplicate Content Issues By Using Canonical URLs

Google isn’t a big fan of duplicate content. It confuses google and your audience and alters your website ranking. It’s advisable to fix any duplicate content issues. 

One main solution to duplicate content is canonical URLs. This tells Google which of the pages should pop up in searches. 

Simply put, canonical URLs differentiate the main page from the duplicate, offering more clarity to Google.

Final Words

Undoubtedly, SEO is like the oxygen of any online business. If you run an online business, you can’t neglect search engine optimization. 

While keyword optimization, backlinks, and internal linking are essential, they work better when implemented alongside technical SEO tactics.

This guide has covered core aspects of technical SEO, from understanding crawling and indexing to improving page speed and mobile optimization. With these tips, you can optimize your website technically to build organic growth.