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How to Apply Technical SEO to Your Websites

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be divided into three general segments: on-page, off-page, and technical. Giving each segment enough attention and care will ensure a site is visible and accessible to its audience.
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Technical SEO works in the background to ensure a site works properly. Technical SEO is a crucial element that greatly impacts a site’s performance through its various tools, codes, and programs.
This beginner-friendly guide details why technical SEO is important to your site’s success and ways to best implement it.

Understanding Technical SEO

A site cannot perform well without technical SEO. Imagine technical SEO as a reading guide, ensuring a book’s contents are properly organized. Without it, the book’s pages and context would be all over the place.
Optimizing your site with technical SEO ensures your content, design, and site elements work properly and reach your target audience.
Defining Technical SEO
Technical SEO broadly means optimizing your site to help search engines find, crawl, and index your pages in its database.
It‘s an integral part of any site’s SEO strategy. You may have high-quality, relevant content and beautiful website designs, but these won’t amount to much without technical SEO.
Technical SEO focuses on these elements:
  • Crawlability: Crawlability is measured by how well search engine web crawlers go through your code.
  • Indexability: Indexability refers to a website’s ability to be indexed or stored in a search engine’s database, allowing it to appear in search queries.
  • Accessibility: Accessibility measures how easily users navigate and interact with your site’s structure.
  • Rankability: Rankability is determined by how well a site performs on a search engine results page (SERP). Clickability: Clickability comes from how engaging, interesting, or relevant a link’s title tag is.
Technical SEO takes all these elements and ensures each one works well together. If any of these elements are not optimized, a site’s content, structure, and rankings can decrease in quality.
The Importance of Technical SEO
Technical SEO is important for any website to appear on SERPs. Search engines crawl through your site’s code to understand your content, the keywords it uses, and its relevance within search queries.
If your technical SEO is underbaked or unoptimized, web crawlers cannot access your site. The result? Your content goes unnoticed, risking your competitive edge.
Technical SEO makes your site more accessible, user-friendly, and easy to navigate, enhancing your audience’s experience and organic traffic.
Technical SEO vs. On-Page SEO vs. Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO optimizes a website’s content to gain organic traffic and higher SERP rankings. The process focuses on a “user-first” experience, meaning all content elements are relevant and beneficial to the site’s audience.
Off-page SEO boosts your site outside the website by gaining backlinks, applying social media marketing techniques, and other digital marketing tactics.
Technical SEO enhances the site’s performance so that on-page SEO content appears on SERPs. Without technical SEO, on-page SEO is invisible to users and search engines.
Since on-page SEO focuses directly on the site, technical SEO can be considered a subset of on-page SEO. On-page SEO relies on a structured website so that its optimized content functions as intended.

Off-page SEO needs technical SEO because the former needs to show an optimized website to gain traffic. If the site is unoptimized, backlinks and traffic from off-page SEO will not work properly.

The Role of Technical SEO

Technical SEO affects major aspects of how sites display code and content properly, plus it changes the way your site performs on SERPs and different platforms.
By enhancing the site’s inner structure, your audience’s user experience improves, increasing organic traffic and conversions.
Technical SEO and Website Performance
Technical SEO prioritizes fixing all aspects of website performance. This has led some SEO specialists to call it “website performance optimization” because it improves how any website works.
These are the website performance elements that technical SEO impacts:
  • Visibility: Technical SEO ensures the site works properly 24/7, follows search engine guidelines, and appears under related search queries.
  • Mobile Optimization: Technical SEO makes any site accessible and mobile-friendly to gain audiences.
  • Page Load Speed: Slow-loading sites will deter users from visiting your website. With technical SEO, you can ensure pages load quickly to retain user engagement.
  • URL Structure: Technical SEO ensures that URLs are properly written, have the main keyword, and match the page’s content.
  • Structured Data Markup: Structured data uses uniform code to include details as featured snippets in SERPs. Technical SEO checks that these details, like reviews or product details, appear properly.
  • Image Optimization: Good technical SEO uses tools and coding techniques to compress images without sacrificing quality, ensuring pages load fast.
  • Site Structure: Technical SEO keeps all site elements together and helps it look organized.
  • Security: Technical SEO strengthens a site’s security, removing hidden tracking or malicious content.
  • Crawl Errors: Broken links, 404 pages, or errors within the code will affect the way search engines crawl through your site. With technical SEO, you can address the errors before they affect your site.
If these elements work cohesively, your site will appear more consistently on SERPs, and your content will reach its audience.
Technical SEO's Impact on Search Engine Rankings
Any site wants to appear on search engines, but appearing on the front page is only the initial step.
With so many websites consistently publishing new content, you’ll need a way to boost your search ranking over your competitors.
Good technical SEO simultaneously affects your audience and search rankings. Search engines choose the most relevant links to rank high on SERPs.
If search engines crawl and index your site faster, they’ll recognize it as well-structured and authoritative. They reward your site with good rankings, and its pages will subsequently remain relevant.
Technical SEO and User Experience
Regardless of the industry, users want a good search experience. They want to find in-depth answers quickly and check relevant links that match their interests.
Technical SEO guarantees that relevant information is delivered. Users will quickly ignore slow-loading pages, unoptimized site structure, or broken pages.
User experience affecting SEO is a large part of why technical SEO exists. Prioritizing website performance is beneficial not only for your site’s visibility on search engines but also for the site’s audience.
By keeping the user experience in mind and viewing your site from their perspective, you can use technical SEO to improve their experience and increase their chances of returning.

Conducting a Technical SEO Audit

Analyzing individual parts of your site is a time-consuming process. A technical SEO audit saves time and effort by providing a comprehensive view of your site’s technical performance.
Performing a technical SEO audit shows you how your site scores in various ways. The following effective SEO audit strategies will make performance monitoring easier.
Audit Fundamentals
When you do a technical SEO audit, you’ll spot many terms and metrics appear. For now, you can focus on these three important fundamentals:
  • Preferred domain
  • SSL implementation
  • Page speed
These three fundamentals directly impact your site’s performance and user experience.
A major aspect of technical SEO is HTML tags. HTML tags are small snippets of code that instruct search engine web crawlers on how to read your site.
Preferred domain, SSL implementation, and page speed all require adjusting HTML elements for better SEO and improved results.
When done correctly, these fundamentals boost your site’s overall performance, SERP ranking, and user engagement.

Checking Preferred Domain

Have you ever noticed that some sites do not have a “www” within their URL?
That’s because these sites chose a preferred domain. A domain is a site’s URL that people type into search engines or click to access.
Domains impact how people search for a site. Domains can either have a “www” or none before the site’s name.
By selecting a preferred domain, you inform search engines to prioritize either a “www” or non-www version of your domain.
Previously, Google would let you choose your preferred version. If you don’t pick a preferred domain, Google will identify and choose a version for you.
Search engines may redirect users to your site’s “www” and non-www versions if you do not verify a domain type, splitting traffic and impacting SERP rankings.
Check your preferred domain through a technical SEO audit. If you go for a specific version, ensure all URLs have or do not have “www” in them. Maintain and apply this decision across your site.

Verifying SSL Implementation

The secure sockets layer (SSL) provides a strong layer of protection between a site’s web server and browser, strengthening a site’s security.
You can identify whether a site has SSL implementation by looking for a lock icon next to the URL and an “https://” tag.
While site security seems like a basic part of any site, some site owners make the mistake of not verifying that it is turned on.
In 2014, Google confirmed that security and SSL implementation were part of their SERP ranking metrics. More users want secured sites without hidden tracking or viruses.
Using a technical SEO audit, check if your site’s pages have SSL implementation by verifying the SSL option on your preferred domain.
By verifying SSL implementation, you can protect users and let search engines know your site is secured.

Assessing Page Speed

Users and search engines prioritize sites with a fast page-loading speed. The bounce rate, or percentage of users who leave your site, will increase if the site takes too long to load.
A site audit shows how fast each page loads. Many factors affect page speed, like the following:
  • Slow-Loading Images: Large image sizes or multiple types of media impact page speed and take up space.
  • Page Redirects: When a site page is moved to another URL or removed entirely, it incurs a 301 redirect. This code signals search engines to move the users to another URL, but having too many redirects slows down page speeds.
  • Lengthy or Messy Code: If the site’s code is long or unorganized, web crawlers need more time to review it, lengthening page loading times.
  • No Content Distribution Network (CDN): A CDN stores copies of your website in various locations and delivers your site to users within those locations. No CDN means users living far from you cannot access the site.
  • Outdated or Too Many Plugins: Plugins can become vulnerable to hackers if they are not updated. Meanwhile, having too many plugins will slow down the page speed.
  • Cache: The cache stores data in a device so users can access a site faster. If the cache is not reduced, it slows down loading speeds and the device.
  • No Asynchronous Loading: Asynchronous loading lets resources load in the background while the rest of the site loads. Without it, sites take longer to load, reducing speed.
Here are ways to address these common page speed issues:
  • Compress image sizes, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to reduce page loading time.
  • Inspect redirect pages and audit them to fix overlapping redirects.
  • Shorten your code and make it more straightforward.
  • Use a CDN to reduce page loading times for faraway users.
  • Reduce unnecessary plugins and update existing ones.
  • Use cache plugins to store a static version of your site, helping it load faster.
  • Use asynchronous loading so the server can process the HTML and script code simultaneously.
Once you address all page speed issues, your audience and search engines will navigate your site faster, improving their experience.
Ensuring Crawlability
If users read your content to gain information, then search engines crawl through your site’s code to understand the site’s context and relevance.
Good crawlability is like illuminated steps in a dark area, helping web crawlers navigate your code.
If they get blocked in any way from crawling through your code, indexing your site and storing it within its database is compromised.
Here are elements to look out for when reviewing site crawlability:
1) XML Sitemap:
An XML sitemap is a file that informs web crawlers of the essential pages within a site so that they can crawl through all of them. Check that you’ve created an XML sitemap or update it so no site page gets ignored.
2) Crawl Budget:
Crawl budget in SEO refers to the number of pages and resources search bots crawl through. Maximize your crawl budget with these tips:
– Update your sitemap to add or remove pages.
– Remove duplicate pages.
– Fix or redirect any broken links.
– Remove unnecessary content within the pages.
– Check that your code is crawlable.
– If you don’t want a page to be crawled, check that its code ensures search bots cannot go through it.
– Monitor your crawl budget statistics.
– Check for dynamic URLs or generated URLs from a search engine’s database. These URLs create duplicate content, affecting the crawl budget.
3) Site Architecture:
Site architecture shows web crawlers which pages have more relevance than others. Organize your site’s structure properly.
4) URL Structure:
Keeping a uniform URL ensures web crawlers are not lost while going through your site’s pages.
5) Robot Exclusion Protocol:
This protocol, or robots.txt, allows or disallows web crawlers from crawling through a page. Since some malicious bots exist, check that you use robots.txt to block them.
6) Breadcrumb Menus:
Breadcrumb menus help users navigate a page by detailing the last page they viewed. Include them in your code to help web crawlers understand each page’s order.
7) Pagination:
Pagination tells search engines how specific pages relate to each other. This practice applies to pages with multiple parts. Using pagination helps web crawlers identify their chronological order.
8) SEO Log Files:
Web crawlers log when they crawl through your site and which pages they view. Check these log files to see how much crawl budget was spent and if crawl errors occurred.
Checking Indexability
After web crawlers navigate through your code, the next step is to index your site. Indexing lets your site appear on SERPs.
Like crawlability, improving search engine indexing is essential. These practices help guarantee indexability:
  • Unblocking Web Crawlers from Pages: Though using robots.txt helps block certain pages, check that you’ve used it correctly and that relevant pages are not blocked for web crawlers.
  • Mobile-Responsiveness: Google prioritizes mobile-friendly sites during indexing. Edit your site’s layout to be mobile-friendly to ensure your site gets indexed first.
  • Remove Duplicate Pages: Updating content or not setting a preferred domain may lead to duplicate pages. Use site audit tools to check for duplicate pages and remove them.
  • Fix Redirects: When redirect loops occur, users are not redirected to the correct page. Look for redirect loops or broken links and edit their code.
  • Address HTTP Errors: HTTP errors block web crawlers and users from accessing your site. Check for error codes like 404, 502, or 504.
Verifying Renderability
Renderability focuses on how quickly a site loads and performs on search engines.
When you do a renderability audit, check for these factors:
  • Load Time: Reduce bounce rates by compressing elements and making the code more comprehensive.
  • Page Size: Large web pages with many elements take up memory and cause slower load times. Check that your page sizes are streamlined and uniform.
  • HTTP Status: Renderability is affected if any page has an HTTP error code. Search for error codes and edit the code causing it.
  • Server Performance: If the site’s server has issues, pages won’t load properly. Monitor server performance regularly to address issues.
  • JavaScript: Google has a harder time processing JavaScript code, so server-side or static rendering helps Google process this code.
  • Page Depth: Page depth focuses on how far a page is within the site’s code. If a page is too far away, rendering is impacted. Keep the site structure short to reduce this.
  • Orphaned Pages: Orphaned pages are ignored as they are not linked to other pages. Check that all pages link to one another.
  • Redirect Loops: Constant redirects will slow down crawlability and affect accessibility. Ensure that redirects are kept at a minimum.
Assessing Rankability
All the previous strategies focused on one major part of SEO: rankability. Making your site rankable is one of the key goals of SEO. High ranks mean higher relevancy, authority, and conversions.
These factors contribute to rankability:
  • Backlinks: Backlinks are links from other sites redirecting to you. They act like community votes, signaling that your content is relevant. By having more quality backlinks, your SERP rankings increase.
  • Content Quality: You need high-quality content to gain backlinks. Ensure your content is informational, relevant, and relatable to your audience.
  • Linking System: Internal and external links help web crawlers navigate your site. With a good linking system, web crawlers can go through the site faster, boosting rankability.
Focusing on these three elements improves your site’s chances of good SERP rankings.
Evaluating Clickability
Clickability is measured with Click-Through-Rate (CTR). CTR is the percentage of people visiting a website or page by clicking a link.
Sites with high CTR gain higher rankings since search engines recognize their authority.
These are ways to increase your site’s CTR:
  • Structured Data: Structured data or schema markup uses a set code highlighting key details for various article types. Check out the codes in schema.org to include your details and feature your site.
  • SERP Features: SERP features include “people also ask” or rich results, which show quotes from your content under specific queries. Sites using SERP features gain more visibility and engagement.
  • Featured Snippets: Featured snippets are part of structured data and show direct answers to search queries without directly visiting a site. Users appreciate the quick information and engage more with the site.
Exploring and practicing these methods throughout various content types helps your site stand out, increasing CTR.

Best Practices in Technical SEO

While checking that these elements are working properly is important in technical SEO, ensuring every part of your site performs as intended is equally important.
From using HTTPS to using multiple languages, here are some great technical SEO practices to consider.
Adopting HTTPS
Sites that do not use HTTPS rank lower than other sites since search engines don’t consider them to be safe. Users knowledgeable about site security are less likely to engage with such sites, lowering SERP rankings.
Check that all URLs within your site use HTTPS by using SSL or installing a transport layer security (TLS) certificate.
Through this, your users will be redirected to a secured version of your pages, improving their browsing experience.
Ensuring Website Accessibility
Part of website accessibility is choosing your preferred domain. Look through your site’s URLs to see whether the preferred domain reflects on them.
If any page is redirected to the wrong URL, that will affect accessibility.
Improving Page Speed
Regularly monitor page speeds across your site. Using tools like PageSpeed Insights, you can check your site’s current speed from 0-100.
The tool highlights your site’s overall performance ranking and the metrics used to determine it. Study the metrics with lower scores to understand which areas could use some improvement.
Prioritizing Mobile-Friendliness
Though you may edit your site’s layout to be mobile-friendly, code errors or new pages may affect the site’s mobile structure.
Check how mobile-friendly your site is using the PageSpeed Insights tool. Review the “Passed Audits” section and check mobile-specific features, like font sizes and element spacing.
Implementing Structured Data
Implementing schema markup for SEO gives a big competitive advantage. You stand out and boost your SERP rankings by specifying important details about your site to answer search queries.
Users would rather view sites that have already answered their search query without viewing other sites.
Structured data benefits their needs while showing search engines that your content has the most relevant information about specific topics.
Addressing Duplicate Content Issues
If users spot pages with the same content but different URLs, their browsing experience is negatively affected.
Review your URLs to see that no page shares the same content, and correctly categorize your pages to ensure each link redirects to the correct page.
Fixing Broken Pages
Broken pages affect a user’s experience and your site’s loading speed, as servers spend unnecessary resources to load them.
If you find broken pages with error codes in a site audit, there are two ways to fix them:
  • Update the content and links within a broken page
  • Redirect the broken page to another page
If you decide to update and redirect the broken links, review that you properly edited the code and used the correct URL format.
Optimizing Core Web Vitals
Mastering core web vitals is an important skill for technical SEO. Core Web Vitals are measured in seconds and are used by Google to determine user experience.
These are the metrics included in core web vitals:
  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – LCP determines the time it takes for a web page to load its largest element.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – CLS checks the time before an unexpected shift occurs within webpage elements.
  • First Input Delay (FID) – FID reviews how long it takes for a user to interact with a site after loading.
When analyzing your site’s core web vitals, see if they meet these durations :
  • LCP – 2.5 seconds or less
  • CLS – 0.1 seconds or less
  • FID – 100 milliseconds or less
Shorter durations mean better accessibility. Review your site’s scores within a Core Web Vitals report from a site audit.
Implementing Hreflang for Multilingual Content
If your site has a larger audience with multilingual content, check that the right audience finds the correct content.
Hreflang tags are HTML attributes specifying a webpage’s language and target audience. By adding the hreflang tag for multilanguage content, your page will correctly reach an audience that uses the language.
This practice makes your site more relevant across different locations, improving SERP rankings.

Technical SEO for Ecommerce

While technical SEO can benefit websites regardless of industry, it’s especially important for e-commerce websites.
Over the years, e-commerce has been steadily growing. As more people shop online, various e-commerce websites compete for the top spots on SERPs.
Technical SEO can give an e-commerce site a competitive edge.
The Role of Site Speed in Ecommerce Success
Google and most search engines prioritize fast-loading e-commerce sites. Users and potential customers are more likely to use a website whose code loads faster.
When search engines see these speed metrics, they’ll boost the site’s SERP ranking accordingly.
These are ways to boost your site’s loading speed :
  • Use Fast Hosting: Fast hosts give browsers a computing boost to speed up page loading.
  • Lessen Scripts and Plugins: Streamline scripts and plugins and keep only the necessary parts.
  • Natively Resize Images: Edit the size of your images directly with a photo editor. Compressed images speed up page loading.
Grow your audience by checking that your site loads quickly during high and low traffic periods.
Mobile Design and the Customer Journey
Since customers heavily rely on online shopping apps and websites, it’s best to make your site’s mobile design eye-catching and optimized.
Focus on providing direct navigation throughout product categories. Keep all elements, especially those that facilitate payment methods or add items to carts, functional with clear code.
Familiarize yourself with different mobile screen sizes and verify that your site’s layout adapts to multiple formats.
Importance of Solid Website Architecture
Part of what makes e-commerce websites successful is site organization. By providing detailed product categories and site pages, users will spend more time on the site, increasing relevancy.
These are site structure elements to prioritize:
  • Breadcrumb Navigation: Placing a clear link path within your site helps users navigate different product pages quickly.
  • Internal Linking: Adding internal links boosts the visibility of other product pages, even if they do not share the same category.
  • Descriptive URLs: These URLs can give users an idea of the product without waiting for the page to load.
An SEO-friendly site structure with proper coding benefits search engines and users alike.
Using Canonical Tags for Content Clarity
E-commerce sites will typically encounter duplicate content issues as some products fit under multiple categories.
If you have multiple product categories in different URLs, use a canonical URL within their code. Canonical URLs tell search engines this page is the primary version of duplicate pages.
When web crawlers see this tag, they prioritize it over duplicate pages. Canonical URL best practices will help you stay on top of multi-page products and ensure seamless navigation.
Sitemaps for Effective Marketing
A clear and accurate sitemap plays a large role in marketing your site. If users and search engines can understand your content’s organization, they will spend more time exploring the site.
Check that you include an XML and HTML sitemap, along with the proper use of the robots.txt file.
Structured Data in Ecommerce
Whenever users search for products, they prioritize e-commerce sites that show details about a product, like the following:
  • Review rating
  • Price
  • Sizing
  • Availability
Through structured data, any site owner can use uniform code formats to show these details immediately on SERPs.
Not only do these details help users quickly decide whether to get a product, but they also ease the crawling and indexing process for web crawlers.
SSL Certificates and Customer Trust
Since e-commerce sites require storing bank details, users need assurance that their details are safe.
Using SSL certificates and adding https:// to your URL eases security worries and encourages users to interact with your site.

Tools for Effective Technical SEO

Effectively utilizing SEO analysis tools can provide a deeper perspective on your site’s performance.
Leveraging Google Search Console
Google Search Console is one of the easiest and most direct analysis tools any SEO specialist can master.
The tool shows the scores for multiple parts of a site, such as bounce rates, CTR, and total impressions.
Through graphs and reports, Google Search Console visually and directly informs site owners of how their site performs compared to others.
Using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test assesses how well a site performs on mobile devices. The tool runs through all of a site’s pages and checks which ones have the wrong formatting, layout, or coding.
This tool gives you a quick idea of how responsive your site is on mobile without manually testing the site.
Exploring Chrome DevTools
Developer tools, or devtools, let you inspect and test code on a browser. Devtools are editable by anyone; however, code changes appear only on your browser and disappear when you refresh the page.
Chrome DevTools help you directly edit a page’s code with these easy-to-use features :
  • Device Preview: Test the website’s design.
  • Javascript Debugger: Find, edit, and test bugs and bug fixes.
  • Network Panel: Track and analyze page requests.
  • Performance Panel: Check website performance metrics like page speed.
  • Inspector Tool: Change the page’s font, text color, spacing, and margins.
  • Console Feature: Identify page errors and warnings.
  • Toggle Device Toolbar: See how each page looks on different mobile screens.
These features make editing code simpler; however, to make the edits permanent, ensure changes are also reflected in the site’s main code.
Utilizing Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar
The Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension that shows SEO metrics, features, and analytics for any page or website you visit.
This toolbar complements competitor analysis as it gives you a comprehensive idea of the strengths and weaknesses of related sites.
These are the features included in the toolbar:
  • On-page SEO report
  • Outgoing links report
  • Redirect tracker
  • SERP positions
  • Keyword metrics
Through its comprehensive and detailed reports, you can gain more perspective on how exactly certain sites perform better and how to emulate them.
Applying PageSpeed Insights
Google’s PageSpeed Insights shows any site’s LCP, FID, and CLS. After inputting a URL, you’ll see an approximation of how a site performs under these metrics.
Though PageSpeed Insights does not show the exact seconds, its scores help identify which areas of the site need to load faster.
Crawling with Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a website crawler tool that identifies crawling issues. These are examples of issues it may find:
  • URL errors
  • Missing meta descriptions
  • Missing meta keywords
  • Missing page titles
  • Error codes
  • Canonical URL errors
Screaming Frog is an essential tool that makes web crawling easier for the program and the site owner.
By identifying errors and points of improvement, you can edit your code without waiting for Google’s web crawler.
Analyzing with Oncrawl
Oncrawl is another handy SEO crawling and logs tool that lets you analyze your site’s performance in various ways.
These are the key features of Oncrawl’s SEO Log Analyzer:
  • See which pages Google’s web crawlers went through or are currently going through.
  • Review past crawling data and compare it to current data.
  • Monitor your crawl budget and see which pages are not being crawled properly.
  • Monitor overall server and site performance.
Here are the ways their SEO Crawler tool helps your technical SEO strategy:
  • Schedule automatic crawl alerts to notify you if crawl errors occur.
  • Define how far a crawling program explores your site.
  • Flexible crawling settings for various coding languages and site types.
  • Extract on-page information to analyze further.
  • Crawl through complex websites.
Whether you use their Log Analyzer or Crawler tool, Oncrawl has many features that enhance crawlability.
Tracking with Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a comprehensive tool that performs site audits and helps you track SEO metrics all from the same dashboard.
After inputting your site into their site audit tool, you can view various metrics like the domain authority rating, keyword scores, organic and paid traffic, and competitor analysis.
With their visual and straightforward scores, anyone can quickly understand their site’s current performance and which areas to prioritize.
  • See which pages Google’s web crawlers went through or are currently going through.
  • Review past crawling data and compare it to current data.
  • Monitor your crawl budget and see which pages are not being crawled properly.
  • Monitor overall server and site performance.
Through its comprehensive and detailed reports, you can gain more perspective on how exactly certain sites perform better and how to emulate them.
Researching with Semrush
Using the right keywords improves SERP rankings, and Semrush provides many tools to make keyword research easier.
These are the benefits of their keyword research tools :
  • Use a general keyword to find related keywords within Semrush’s database.
  • Save keywords into lists.
  • Enter a URL to see its keyword ranking.
  • Compare your keyword rankings to your competitors.
  • Get metrics for up to 100 keywords.
  • Combine keyword data from Search Console, Analytics, and Semrush.
With their tools, you can research keywords without missing important details.
Validating with Schema.org Markup Validator
If you use schema markup, using the schema.org markup validator is a crucial step.
This tool analyzes schema markup code and identifies formatting or coding errors.
Checking for errors will save you time when fixing the schema markup and ensuring it appears properly on SERPs.
Testing with WebPageTest
WebPageTest is a popular tool that tests a site’s speed, accessibility, and overall performance on real browsers and geographical locations .
Unlike other tools, WebPageTest’s results come from a controlled, simulated environment, allowing you to focus on any technical changes you make in a page’s code.
WebPageTest is especially helpful if you have audiences or content in different countries.
Its advanced tools simulate how your pages appear to users, let you test page speeds in various cities, and pick any browser type.
Optimizing with Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights shows how fast your site loads on desktop or mobile devices.
Using this tool, check whether your site’s score falls within these ranges :
  • 90 and Above: Good
  • 50 – 89: Needs improvement
  • Less Than 50: Poor
PageSpeed Insights will also give suggestions and ideas for improvement. The tool provides core web vital reports and diagnoses performance issues.
Redirecting with Ayima Redirect Path
Ayima’s Redirect Path is a Chrome extension tool that checks HTTP errors and redirects. The tool highlights error codes like 301 and 404.
With Redirect Path, you are instantly alerted of redirect or broken links within your site.
Inspecting with META SEO Inspector
Meta SEO Inspector is another Chrome extension tool that inspects metadata within pages.
Metadata is a set of data providing information about other data. Web crawlers look for metadata while indexing your site.
Meta SEO Inspector has these helpful features :
  • See any site’s metadata to spot any missing details.
  • Copy meta tags into the clipboard.
  • Print or export a metadata report.
  • Multi-language friendly.
Through this tool, you can address metadata issues that affect your site’s performance .
Developing with Web Developer Toolbar
The Web Developer Toolbar extension adds developer tools directly onto a browser. Key features can be quickly used, from displaying link details to viewing meta tag information.
This extension lets you view any site’s inner workings and parts of its code. It’s also helpful for viewing your site and checking for minor errors.

Frequently Asked Questions

Read these questions for some quick info regarding technical SEO.
The main difference between SEO on-page techniques and technical SEO is one of visibility. With on-page SEO, you’ll optimize content to increase SERP rankings, while technical SEO focuses on coding elements that make your site more accessible to users and web crawlers. Think of on-page SEO like a restaurant’s customer-facing staff or front of house, while technical SEO is the kitchen and any deliveries.
Technical SEO enhances website performance by optimizing backend aspects like page loading speeds and broken links and reducing file sizes. By fixing these elements, users will have a better browsing experience, reducing bounce rates and increasing rankings.
The following are the best practices that enhance technical SEO:
  • Using HTTPS
  • Ensuring website accessibility
  • Enhancing page speed
  • Prioritizing mobile-friendly layouts
  • Using structured data
  • Fixing duplicate content issues
  • Optimizing core web vitals
  • Using hreflang for multi-language content
Technical SEO increases e-commerce success through these practices:
  • Improves visibility
  • Increases page speed
  • Creates a mobile-friendly interface
  • Enhances the site’s architecture
  • Uses canonical tags to note primary content
  • Creating sitemaps to detail essential pages for crawling
  • Utilizes structured data to highlight key product details
  • Uses SSL certificates to enhance site security
The following technical SEO tools can help a site owner monitor their site:
  • Google Search Console
  • Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
  • Chrome DevTools
  • Ahrefs SEO Toolbar
  • PageSpeed Insights
  • Screaming Frog
  • Oncrawl
  • Ahrefs
  • Semrush
  • Schema.org Markup Validator
  • WebPageTest
  • Ayima Redirect Path
  • Meta SEO Inspector
  • Web Developer Toolbar

Conclusion

Technical SEO is an integral part of any site’s foundation. Without technical SEO, a site will fall behind its peers.
To implement technical SEO, remember to do regular site audits. Ensure all URLs are secured, duplicate content is removed, and core web vitals are enhanced.
With practice, top analysis tools, and monitoring, you can take your site to new heights with technical SEO.