Technical SEO is a crucial aspect of website optimization that focuses on enhancing the technical elements of a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results. This article outlines key steps to optimize technical SEO, providing insights into their importance and practical tips for implementation.

1. Check and Optimize Your URL Structure

URLs are more than just web addresses; they are a powerful tool in SEO. A well-structured URL helps users and search engines understand what a page is about (How do you add domain property and URL prefix in Google Search Console?). To optimize your URL structure:

• Use Lowercase: Standardize your URLs in lowercase for consistency and readability​​.
• Use Hyphens, Not Underscores: Hyphens are preferred over underscores as they are more visible in bare links​​.
• Use Accurate Keywords: Choose category names that accurately describe the content​​.
• Avoid Superfluous Words: Keep URLs concise and relevant​​.
• Future-Proof Your URLs: Avoid using dates or temporary elements in URLs​​.
• Trailing Slash Decision: Be consistent with the use of trailing slashes, as they can differentiate web pages​​​​​​.

Read more: How to Create SEO-Friendly URLs

2. Revise Your Navigation and Website Structure

A well-organized site structure is essential for SEO. It guides Google and visitors to understand the importance and context of your content. To revise your website structure:

• Organize Content: Structure your content logically using categories and tags for easier navigation​​.
• Avoid Clutter: Regularly reorganize your site to prevent clutter, making it easier for users and Google to find content​​.
• Guide for Google: A clear structure helps Google understand your most important content​​.
• Enhance User Experience (UX): A well-structured site improves UX, encouraging visitors to explore more, which benefits SEO​​.

Learn How Website Structure is Implemented

3. Check and Optimize Your Robots.txt

Robots.txt is a file that tells search engines where they can and cannot crawl on your site. Optimizing robots.txt (Learn how to create) involves:

• Custom Instructions for User-Agents: Specify rules for different search engine bots​​.
• Use Allow and Disallow Directives: Control access to specific pages or directories​​.
• Include Sitemap Information: Direct search engines to your sitemap for better indexing​​.

Learn Why Should You Disallow Categories and Tags in Robots.txt?

4. Add Breadcrumb Menus to Your Posts and Pages

Breadcrumbs are navigation aids that show the path from the current page back to the homepage. They are beneficial for both users and search engines:

• Enable and Visible Breadcrumbs: Ensure breadcrumbs are active and visible on your website​​.
• Mobile-Friendly Breadcrumbs: Adapt breadcrumbs for mobile devices for better accessibility​​.
• Implement Breadcrumb Schema: Add structured data markup to your breadcrumbs for better display in search results​​​​.
• Use Tools for Easy Integration: Utilize tools like Yoast SEO plugin for easy implementation of breadcrumbs and their schema​​.

How to Add Breadcrumbs to Your WordPress Site

6. Adding Structured Data to Your Homepage

Importance

• Structured data markup is a standardized format that provides detailed information about your page to search engines.
• It improves your website’s search results and ranking.
• Enables search engines like Google to create rich results such as article previews, product previews, and FAQs for your page’s search results​​.

How to Add It

• Utilize tools like the markup generator tool or templates from Schema.org.
• Customize the markup to fit your content, including properties like author, publish date, and publisher for articles.
• Add the markup in JSON-LD format to your website’s pages through the site’s editor or SEO settings​​.

Boost your SEO by Adding Schema Markup 

7. Adding Structured Data to Your Posts

Importance

• Structured data for blog posts, or schema markup, helps search engines understand your content better, ensuring accurate information is presented in search results.
• Can enhance your search engine listings with additional features like review stars or jump links​​.

How to Add It

• Use plugins like Yoast SEO for WordPress to automatically add structured data.
• Alternatively, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can be used to manually mark up posts by highlighting and tagging elements such as the title, author, publish date, etc.
• The final schema in JSON-LD format should be added to the header of your blog page​​.

Read more about How to Add Structured Data

9. Checking Your Canonical URLs

Importance

• Canonical URLs prevent issues with duplicate content, helping search engines understand which version of a page is the main one.
• Helps avoid keyword cannibalization where multiple pages compete for the same rankings​​.

How to Implement

• Add the rel=”canonical” tag in the HTML header section or through CMS plugins like Yoast SEO for WordPress.

Read more about How To Use One Canonical Link Tag in Your Website

10. Optimize Your 404 Page

Importance

• An optimized 404 page can increase SEO and boost conversions. It’s essential to guide visitors effectively when they encounter a 404 error​​.

How to Optimize

• Redirect Strategies: Consider redirecting to the homepage, the most relevant page, or setting up 301 redirects for moved or renamed content​​.
• Track and Analyze 404 Errors: Use tools like Google Analytics to monitor 404 errors, identify issues, and fix broken links or update redirects​​.
• Create a Custom 404 Page: Ensure it matches your website’s branding, provides clear information, and includes contact or support information if needed​
• Keep It Simple: Provide a straightforward apology with useful site links.
• Leverage Keywords: Incorporate popular keywords with relevant links​​.

How to Optimize Your 404 Error Page for SEO

11. Optimize and Submit Your XML Sitemap to Google and Bing

Importance

• A sitemap helps search engines understand your site’s structure, improving their ability to crawl and index your site​​.

How to Optimize and Submit:

• Create an XML Sitemap: For static websites, create it manually or use a tool like XML-Sitemaps.com. For dynamic sites (e.g., WordPress), use a plugin like Google XML Sitemaps​​​​.
• Upload and Test Your Sitemap: Place it in the root directory of your website and ensure it’s working​​.
• Verify Your Website with Google and Bing Webmaster Tools: This step is crucial for submitting your sitemap to these search engines​​​​​​.
• Submit Your Sitemap to Google and Bing: Follow the steps in their respective Webmaster Tools to submit your sitemap​​​​.
• Include Your Sitemap Location in a robots.txt File: This assists search engines in discovering your sitemap and thus, your website pages​​.

Learn How to Create and Add Sitemap

12. Enable HTTPS

Importance

• HTTPS encrypts data to protect against Man In The Middle attacks.
• It’s required for many new browser features like Service Workers.
• HTTPS impacts SEO positively.

How to Do It

• Get a Valid SSL Certificate: Use services like Cloudflare to secure a free SSL certificate.
• Choose the Right SSL Implementation: Options include Flexible SSL, Full SSL, and Full (Strict) SSL, depending on your need for encryption.
• Strengthen SSL Configuration: Use tools like Qualys SSL Labs to test and improve your SSL setup.
• Redirect HTTP to HTTPS: Ensure all traffic is redirected to HTTPS for security.
• Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS): This tells browsers not to make insecure requests to your website.
• Fix Insecure Scheme References: Use features like Cloudflare’s Automatic HTTPS Rewrites to secure embedded content​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.

13. Check Your Loading Speed and Try to Make Your Website Faster

Importance

• Fast loading speeds improve user experience and SEO rankings.

How to Do It

• Choose a Performance-Optimized Hosting Solution: Your hosting provider significantly impacts site speed.
• Compress and Optimize Images: Large images slow down loading times.
• Reduce Redirects: Too many redirects increase loading time.
• Cache Web Pages: Store copies of your site’s files to minimize server work.
• Enable Browser Caching: Lets browsers store information like images to reduce loading times.
• Asynchronous and Defer Loading: Load CSS and JavaScript files more efficiently.
• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML: Remove unnecessary elements to reduce file sizes.
• Leverage a Content Delivery Network (CDN): Use a network of servers to improve page loading speeds​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.

14. Check the Mobile-Friendliness of Your Website

Importance

• Mobile-friendliness is crucial for user experience and SEO, especially with mobile-first indexing.

How to Do It

• Adopt a Mobile-First Approach: Design for mobile before desktop.
• Convert or Recreate for Mobile: Use website builders or CMS plugins for an existing site.
• Use a Responsive Theme: Ensures your site adapts automatically to any device.
• Avoid Flash: Use modern standards like HTML5.
• Optimize Site Speed: Choose fast and reliable web hosting.
• Ensure Appealing Design: Test mobile-friendliness using tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
• Enable Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): Speeds up load times on mobile.
• Use Media Queries: Tailor stylesheets for different devices.
• Optimize Images and Use Percentages Instead of Pixels: Ensures images load quickly and fit different screen sizes​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.

Setting up WordPress for AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages

15. Check Your Pagination and Multilingual Settings

Importance

Pagination helps distribute a large amount of content across multiple pages, improving user experience and making navigation smoother. It’s crucial for websites with extensive content, like e-commerce sites or those with many articles. Pagination helps users easily find and access relevant content, enhances SEO by presenting organized results on search engines, and makes large chunks of information more digestible​​.

How to Implement

Key practices for effective pagination include:

• Testing the current pagination of your site using the “Inspect Element” feature.
• Creating unique content for each paginated page.
• Smart use of target keywords across pages.
• Arranging items based on priority.
• Using canonical URLs for paginated pages.
• Improving the link structure for better SEO​​.

Importance of Multilingual Website Settings

A multilingual website caters to a global audience, improving the user experience for non-English speakers and enhancing SEO by enabling the site to rank in searches in different languages. It’s particularly important in a diverse linguistic landscape, as many users prefer browsing in their native languages and may not visit a site otherwise. Multilingual settings also increase the shareability of your content on social media in various languages​​.

How to Implement It

To set up a multilingual website

• Choose a flexible platform like WordPress for better multilingual support.
• Use plugins like TranslatePress for easy translation and control over multilingual aspects.
• Optimize for multilingual SEO, including structured content and translated SEO details.
• Translate content manually or use automatic translation services like Google Translate or DeepL for efficiency.
• Set up a language switcher on your website to allow users to select their preferred language easily​​.

How to Build a Multilingual Website to Reach a Wider Audience

16. Register Your Website with Google Search Console

Why It’s Important

Google Search Console is a free tool from Google designed for website owners, SEO consultants, and marketers. It helps monitor important information like keyword usage, web traffic, and URL indexing. Unlike Google Analytics, it focuses solely on traffic from web searches.

Key Benefits

• Sitemap Submission: Submitting your website’s sitemap to Google Search Console accelerates the crawling process by Google’s bots, ensuring faster indexing and visibility in search results.
• Performance Reports: Performance reports provide insights into web traffic and activities, including impressions (how often your site appears in search results) and user interactions.
• Site Health Monitoring: Google Search Console alerts you to any non-compliance with webmaster quality guidelines, helping you avoid penalties that affect search visibility.
• Mobile Usability: Assess the mobile-friendliness of your website, crucial for ranking in mobile search results.
• Loading Speed Analysis: Determine your website’s loading speed on both desktop and mobile, an important factor in user experience and SEO.
• URL Inspection: Inspect and fix harmful URLs on your site and request re-indexing to reflect changes​​​​​​.

How to add your website to Google Search Console

17. Register Your Website with Bing Webmaster Tools

Why It’s Important

Bing Webmaster Tools is a free service from Microsoft similar to Google Search Console but for the Bing search engine. It’s beneficial for all website stakeholders, including owners, administrators, marketers, and developers.

Key Benefits

• Diverse Audience Reach: Bing is the second-largest search engine in the US, with significant global and US-based search volumes, making it a critical platform for reaching a diverse audience.
• Site Performance and Health Monitoring: Monitor your website’s overall health, check keywords driving traffic, track impressions and clicks, and resolve potential malware or spam issues.
• Enhanced Site Management: Submit new pages for crawling, remove unwanted content from indexing, and disavow harmful links. These tools help maintain and improve your website’s visibility and ranking on Bing​

How to add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools

Technical SEO is an integral part of modern website optimization, focusing on improving the technical elements of a website to enhance visibility and rankings in search engine results. This article has outlined a comprehensive blueprint, covering various aspects from URL structure optimization to registering with Bing Webmaster Tools. By implementing these strategies, website owners can significantly boost their site’s performance, user experience, and search engine rankings. These steps are essential for anyone looking to improve their website’s technical SEO foundation and ensure their content reaches the intended audience effectively.