Technical SEO can be difficult, especially for those who don’t actually know much about it. It therefore becomes the task that people seem to ignore, and this is one of the worst things you can do. Ignoring the technical side of SEO for too long can result in some long term negative impacts on your site.
When you break it down, technical SEO isn’t actually that difficult. This type of SEO is only becoming more important to get right and when you do, you’ll see some positive ranking results.
To give you some sort of guide as to just how important technical SEO is for your website, take a look at this example. If you leave the technical side of your website untouched this could result in your website being unindexable and uncrawlable.
So no matter how good the other parts of your SEO are, search engine bots will not be able to find your site and give you the ranking you deserve. This is probably worst case scenario, so make sure you don’t find yourself in this type of situation!
To help you on your quest for technical SEO greatness, have a read below at some of the tweaks you can make to give your website a little boost:
1. Get Site Mobile Ready
It is not secret, Google is now indexing mobile versions of website before all others. This is due to the significant swing in the amount of mobile users compared to that of desktop users.
Now, this news may not even be a problem for you, if your technical SEO is sound and up to date. If not, this change could present a couple of different issues that will have a major impact on your rankings.
Firstly, if your website isn’t properly optimised for mobile your rankings will take a hit. Secondly, if you have a mobile version of your site and it isn’t optimised when comparing to desktop, your rankings will also take a hit.
To ensure you are ready for Google’s mobile first indexing, it is recommended you have one responsive website that works on all different devices. Trying to create two different versions of your site, one for mobile and another for desktop, can create a lot of issues with duplicate URLs and content, etc.
2. Don’t Forget About Your Sitemap
Most of the time your sitemap won’t be dynamic (i.e. every time you add or change a URL it won’t automatically update). Therefore, it is important that you remember to update your sitemap when you are making changes to the links on your site.
You sitemap should give search engine bots all the information they need about where they can find most of the links on your site. So, you can easily see how important it becomes to update your sitemap. You don’t want to be sending Google bots to the wrong place!
Taking a step back, if you don’t even have a sitemap to begin with, don’t worry! It isn’t that difficult to create one. There are a number of online free sitemap generator tools that can assist you in this area.
3. Ensure Your Website is HTTPS
This is all about security. No matter the type of website you have, be it an e-commerce site or a blogging platform, having it secure should be one of your top priorities. It helps to ensure users feel safer on your website and it gives you brownie points in the eyes of Google.
By installing an SSL certificate, you can transfer your site from “http” to “https”. What this does is encrypt all the information you have and gather on your website with an encryption key. So even if a hacker gets their hands on your information, it is useless to them without the key.
4. Allow Access To Google Search Console
While this action in itself isn’t particularly technical, Google Search Console does help you monitor the overall health of your website and brings your attention to any potential technical SEO factors that need to be fixed.
Aspects such as crawling issues and 404 errors will be shown up here and they all form part of technical SEO and will have an impact on your overall ranking. You should be checking back with Google Search Console on a regular basis. If you do nothing else in the realm of technical SEO, then make sure this is the one.
Technical SEO doesn’t actually have to be that scary or difficult. There are a number of different tools and a lot of information out there that can help guide you in the right direction. If you are still a bit hesitant, then it could be a good idea to get in touch with an SEO agency as they will have technical experience.