Technical SEO is not an option. It is a must-do for every business with an online presence. Unlike other marketing channels, SEO has changed a lot over the past years. SEO has witnessed a consistent change in algorithms and thus, requires new skills and techniques to remain at the top.
Technical SEO is the foundation of a successful SEO strategy. In basic terms, technical SEO encompasses changes that will spur search engine bots to crawl and index your web pages. Its focus is on improving the website’s architecture, speed, mobile optimization, and so on.
Next, are the top 4 technical SEO audit checklists you shouldn’t abandon.
Crawlability
How often can search engines crawl your website with ease?
Crawlability is the potential of search engine bots to index your website.
Even with the best quality of content, your site will not display on SERP if Search engine bots cannot crawl and index your website pages. Search engine crawlers help to scan and index the pages on your website.
If your site is crawler-friendly, your web pages will be indexed for display on SERPs. However, here are some factors to help make your website crawlable.
- Make use of robots.txt.
- Create or Improve XML sitemap
- Update website codes
- Fix broken links.
Is Your Website Indexable?
Indexability allows crawlers to assess your webpages and add them to its database, known as the index.
Despite search engine bots being able to crawl your website, indexability challenges can prevent some pages from being indexed. Here is where SEO comes in.
Typically, search engine crawlers only scan texts on your website. Hence, they tend to ignore other types of content such as images, videos, or audio. But using keywords in this content will help crawlers identify and index them.
For your website to stand a chance of being indexed, consider:
- Submitting your sitemap to google
- Avoid duplicate content. It confuses the search engine spiders.
- Using Internal and Backlinks.
- Updating your data frequently.
Optimizing Your Sitemap
Sitemaps are assets in every technical SEO strategy. Sitemaps points search engine bots to your website to crawl and index the content on the website. It carries a list of URLs for search engines to crawl. This list makes it easier for crawlers to discover web pages easily.
For best results ensure that your sitemap is properly structured and that the most important pages are included.
Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly
Mobile-friendliness matters a lot in SEO. Currently, a huge chunk of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Thus, search engines are prioritizing mobile-friendly websites over non-mobile sites.
Research shows that over 70% of visitors are more likely to come back if your website is mobile-friendly. In other words, if your website is not optimized for mobile users, you are harming both your audience and SEO.
Taking The Step
Technical SEO is a crucial part of every SEO strategy. It helps in getting your web pages to rank in the top search results and show your content to the right people.
