Technical SEO refers to the optimization of a website's technical aspects to improve its search engine visibility and enhance crawling, indexing, and ranking by search engines. The main work of a technical SEO involves tweaking elements that are not content-related but influence a site's performance in search results.
Why is Technical SEO Important?
Technical SEO is as important as on-page and off-page SEO strategies. It lays the foundation for a website's discovery success in the search engine. Search engines use bots (or crawlers) to explore and discover content on the web. These bots "crawl" your website, following links to gather information about pages.
Improving technical SEO ensures that your website is structured for better crawlability by these bots due to clear site structure, optimized XML sitemaps, and the elimination of errors like broken links.
If your website isn't accessible by search engines, it won't appear in search results. This can lead to a loss of traffic and decreased revenue for your business. Improper technical SEO can also cause issues such as slow sites, non-friendly mobile site versions, and many other issues. It can create frustration for users, which prompts them to leave your site faster. This can be a signal of a poor user experience and will eventually impact your ranking.
What Are the Best Practices for Technical SEO?
Evaluate Robots.txt File
The robots.txt file is a text file on a website that instructs search engine crawlers which pages or sections of the site should or shouldn’t be crawled or indexed. It helps manage how search engines interact with your site, controlling access to certain parts to avoid indexing irrelevant or sensitive content. For example, you can access the Cardinal Digital site’s robots.txt through https://www.cardinaldigital.com/robots.txt.
What Can You Do?
- Review the robots.txt file of your website regularly
- Use proper syntax to ensure each directive is clear and specific. For example, use Disallow to block folders or pages you don’t want to be crawled, and Allow to permit access where needed.
- Use the robots.txt Tester in GSC to verify that your directives work well.
- Avoid unnecessary rules that can complicate crawler behavior.
- Use Screaming Frog or Google Search Console Crawl Stats to see if bots are accessing unintended areas on your site.
With proper implementation of this, you can ensure crawl efficiency and increase site visibility.
Use Schema Markup
Schema markup is structured data added to your website’s code to help search engines better understand the content on your pages. It can enhance your site's appearance in search results with rich snippets, such as star ratings, event dates, FAQs, or product details. This can improve click-through rates and user engagement.
What Can You Do?
- Implement schema markup using tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.
- Test schema with Google’s Rich Results Test to ensure it’s implemented correctly.
- Keep schema updated whenever you add new content, products, or services.
Make Sure Only One Version of Website Accessible to Users and Crawlers
If multiple versions of your site (e.g. http://, https://, www, non-www) are all accessible, it can cause duplicate content issues, confuse search engines, and eventually dilute your site’s ranking potential. To prevent this from happening, ensure that only one version is accessible to provide a clear signal to search engines.
What Can You Do?
- Choose a preferred version of your domain and set it in Google Search Console.
- Implement 301 redirects from other versions of the site to the preferred version.
- Use canonical tags on pages to indicate the original URL to search engines.
- Ensure SSL certificates are properly installed to force all traffic to the HTTPS version.
- Regularly audit your site to identify and fix any accessibility issues using tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs.
Creating Sitemaps
XML sitemaps are files that list all the URLs of a website, helping search engines understand the site's structure and find content that might be otherwise hard to discover. They can improve the indexing process and ensure that all pages intended for search engine discovery are included. To conclude, XML sitemaps can help search engines understand the site structure, thus ensuring better crawling.
For reference to how sitemaps files look, you can access Cardinal Digital’s sitemaps at https://www.cardinaldigital.com/sitemap.xml.
What Can You Do?
- Use tools to general XML sitemaps, and only include relevant pages.
- Submit your sitemap via Google Search Console.
- Regularly update the sitemap to reflect changes in the site structure.
Prioritize SSL Certificates
HTTPS and SSL certificates can help to ensure secure and trusted browsing experiences for users. SSL helps certificates encrypt data transmitted between a user's browser and the web server, ensuring secure and encrypted connections. On the other hand, HTTPS more known as the secure version of HTTP, not only helps to secure data but also improves trust and SEO rankings.
What Can You Do?
- Purchase and install an SSL certificate.
- Redirect all traffic from HTTP to HTTPS using 301 redirect.
- Update internal links to use HTTPS.
URL Structure
A clear and descriptive URL structure makes it easier for both users and search engines to understand the content of a page.
What Can You Do?
- Use descriptive and readable URLs and target keywords where relevant.
- Use hyphens (-) to separate words and avoid underscores.
- Maintain consistency in your URL format across the site.
Utilize Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) can help to improve your technical SEO strategy as it can help to provide insights into how Google sees your site, highlighting indexing issues, keyword performance, and other vital information. It helps monitor website performance in Google's search results and offers tools for optimization.
What Can You Do?
- Verifying and regularly monitoring site performance.
- Reviewing the site search analytics to get insight.
Below is how GSC looks when you want to review a site's performance.
Improve Page Speed
Page speed significantly impacts user experience and SEO. Improving page speed can also help to make a website page rank higher in search results.
What Can You Do?
- Compress the size of images used in the site.
- Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Files.
- Use Google’s PageSpeed Insight tool to identify and fix speed issues.
- Implement browser caching and a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Create a Mobile Friendly Site
Mobile optimization impacts SEO rankings, as search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their results. This happens because nowadays, many people prefer to utilize a mobile phone to search for things online. When creating a mobile version of your site, be sure to communicate openly with your website developer about your needs, preferences, and worries.
What Can You Do?
- Optimize touch elements for easy navigation.
- Avoid pop-ups or elements that interfere with mobile navigation.
- Use responsive design to ensure your website adjusts to all screen sizes.
Find & Fix Duplicate Content
Duplicate content across a website can confuse search engines, and potentially harm SEO rankings. Thus, it is a must for you to create proper strategies to help identify and resolve duplicate content inside your site. To do this, you should do a regular audit to resolve any duplicate content issues. This can help improve site credibility and search engine visibility.
What Can You Do?
- Use tools to identify duplicate content.
- Implement canonical tags on duplicate or similar pages to point to the original content.
- Consolidate duplicate pages by merging or redirecting them with 301 redirects.
Find & Fix Error Pages
Error pages like the 404 "Page Not Found" message can negatively impact user experience and SEO if not handled correctly. Properly managing error pages by redirecting or providing helpful guidance can retain visitors and improve user experience.
What Can You Do?
- Regularly audit your site using tools like Google Search Console to detect error pages.
- Set up custom 404 pages with helpful navigation links to improve user retention.
- Fix broken links by updating internal and external links to valid URLs.
- Use 301 redirects to guide users and bots from removed pages to relevant ones.
Final Thoughts
If you want to achieve SEO success in 2025, you can get a comprehensive technical audit for your website at an affordable rate with Cardinal Digital.
Our audit will help you uncover all issues on your site, and provide you with detailed explanations and key recommendations on how to fix them. Elevate your business strategy, and reach out to our team today!
