Technical SEO

Visitor Analytics - Technical SEO  www.visitor-analytics.io
Technical SEO
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Before we begin, we need to split the subject of SEO into four main branches.
Technical SEO, which includes all aspects of website functionality, content optimization,
which refers to tags, meta tags and other similar things that refer to content in general,
authority building for the website, as well as rankings based on user interaction signals.
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Technical SEO has to do with the functionality of a website. The first precondition for a
good ranking is that the site works properly. Of course, nobody will rank a higher website if it
does not load properly, shows errors or broken links.
And the first technical element we are going to look at is load speed. Slow-loading websites
lead to unhappy users. This in turn, leads to SEO problems as search engines won't rank
higher side that people abandoned because of it being slow. If it takes more than three
seconds to load, especially on mobile devices, then you have a problem. There are several
tools to measure speed and find what is slowing down the website.
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There are several tools to measure speed and find what is slowing down the website. One of
them is the one displayed here, GT Metrics.
See here the general speed score and loading time. We know, there is a list of issues. Those
in green, don't require attention. Those in red and dark orange are things that are slowing
you down. This part can get a little technical and some things may not be under your
control. But there are a few things you can do to improve speed, regardless of the type of
website.
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First one, keep image size as low as possible. Smaller images load faster. Although, in some
cases you do need larger images, don't waste precious kilobytes and seconds by using
unnecessarily large images. In this example, this picture is displayed at a maximum width of
400 or 500 pixels on my website, even on wider screens. This is the space we have for it in
our design and we don't want it to be displayed any bigger. Then you don't need an image
that is natively 1200 pixels wide, which is larger, slower too low, that needs to be resized by
the browser every time the page loads.
So, for most images, you can keep the size down and you will gain extra speed, but be
careful on cover images and bigger images in your design. Don't resize them if they will be
displayed in larger size.
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Then, you should limit
the number of fonts you
use in a page. Each font
loads an external
resource, which slows
down the website. Using
fewer fonts will also
make things more
visually coherent, which
is not really the case in
the picture example, as
you can see.
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Use videos only below the fold. Above the fold is the first section of the painted that your
visitor see. It's also the first one to load, so we need to keep it clean. If you have a large
video right on top of the page, it will lead to slower loading times and less user satisfaction.
However, if it's further down, then there is time for it to load by the time user start to scroll
and general speed score will not be affected.
The same also goes for special effects, third-party apps and iframes. Although they might
make your website nicer, use too many and the website will take a lot more time to load.
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Then another issue is cache content and we're going to go to the screen immediately to see
a bit about that. Cashing is a process that uses high-speed data storage layers, in order to
access the content of a page more quickly. Your website content can be saved as static
content in a cache. This will also mean, depending on how the cache is set that users may
see the cached version of your page, instead of the live one if you make updates and edits
often to a page and overusing cash is risky, but especially for pages that don't change all
that often like a static home page, for example. The cache is a great speed booster. Here
you can see exactly how to use cache, if you own a Wix website.
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To enable caching go to your editor, click menus and pages, hover over the relevant page
and click the show more icon and click settings, then advanced settings and go to manually
control caching for this page and change the toggle to enable it. Now, the cache will be
enabled. Select how often you want to reset this page cache, then again, If you go back you
can disable it and your page will not be cashed at all.
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For other web builders, your
best bet is to install a
plug-in or an app that
solves caching other speed
issues for you. Here you can
see an extensive list of such
plugins for WordPress for
now. Pick one and follow
the instructions. It should
be relatively easy and the
plug-in will do the whole
caching thing for you.
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Responsiveness (mobile friendly)
The second important aspect of technical SEO is responsiveness. Responsiveness is the
ability to adapt content to all devices and display sizes. Always keep in mind, what the site
looks like on all displays. It will be accessed using laptops, desktops, tablets and
smartphones, all with different display sizes. You have to provide good UX on all of these.
Also, content should be the same for all types of displays. Don't hide elements on mobile
displays. Google now indexes websites based on what the site looks like on mobile, not on
desktop. So, if there is some content designed to show only on desktop, it will not be
indexed at all.
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Nowadays, all web builders provide automatic responsiveness, but you should still run a
test to make sure everything is mobile friendly and you can do it by using a Google service.
Just search for a Google mobile-friendly test on Google, run a simple query, enter the URL
you want to check and get the diagnostics. Commoners, you may find refer to clickable
elements being too close together and fonts being unreadable, too small for mobile.
Try to fix these aspects in your designs by moving elements around and increasing the
font size.
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Friendly URLs
Next up are friendly URLs. You can see an example right here. The first one is friendly. The
other one, not so much. Both users and search engines crawl bots get some of the
information about the page content, also by looking at the URL. If it makes sense and follows
the logic and hierarchy, search engines will index it properly. If it's random or inconclusive
like the second one on this slide, there's a lower chance of SEO success for it.
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HTTPS
HTTPS encryption is a protocol that keeps the data of your visitors safer. It is a highly
important factor nowadays, but the implementation can be a bit technical. Many hosting
providers and web builder platforms provide it automatically for you, but just in case they
don't, you will notice that the lock near your URL is not green and that your address begins
with HTTP instead of HTTPS. S stands for secure. What you can do is contact your hosting
provider, can have it solved the problem. If that doesn't solve the problem, you can do a
search for SSL certificates yourself. There are many options to choose from, buy one and
have the seller install it for you. Remember that the certificate will need to be renewed
periodically.
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Creating an Account on Search Console
We mentioned the importance of having a Google Search Console account where you can
actively submit URLs with new content, so that they are indexed and show up in Google
searches faster, but there is a lot more than that that you can do with the search console
account. And in this section, we're going to show you exactly what that is.
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Let's start by creating an account and verifying it. Go to search.google.com/search-console.
If you already have a Google account, you can log in directly. Otherwise, the first step is to
create an account and then log in. You will be asked whether you want to track a domain or
a URL prefix. Backing a domain would be good, but you may not be able to verify the
account, as the procedure requires access to DNS. If you don't know what that is, don't
worry, you will just go with the second option which is to introduce the URL prefix here on
the right side of the screen.
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Type in the address of your homepage. I'll just paste it. Remember to choose the main
version of the site you want to track. This means including HTTP and "www" in the URL if
that is where your site is primarily displayed. As a best practice, you should redirect all other
versions of your URL to the preferred one. The search console sees these versions as
different websites altogether, even that if they have the same content. And if you don't
follow best practices, you might get inaccurate data.
After you paste the correct URL, click on "Continue". The next step is to verify the ownership
of the website. There are five main ways to do this. I will show you just one, which is most
likely the easiest to perform, regardless of your website platform. And that is the HTML tag.
If you choose to use this verification method, then you need to copy the meta tag given by
Google and add it to the head section of your website.
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Now, let's see where you can find that head section, if you're using some of the most
common builders like Wix and WordPress. For Wix, you need the website to be associated
with your own domain. This entire process will not work, unfortunately, if your URL ends in
wixsite.com, if you have a free version of the Wix platform. Leave the Google Search
Console opened and in a new tab go to "Settings" in your site's dashboard. Click the SEO
tab, go to Advanced SEO settings and click the link where it says "Click here to do this in the
editor". This will open up your SEO settings inside your editor.
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Now, paste the meta tag that you copied from Google Search Console under "Add header
code meta tags", you'll see there's a place for it right there. Alternatively, instead of
copy-pasting the tag yourself, you can use the Wix SEO Wiz tool, which will get things done
automatically for you. After you're done, you can close this window right here and click on
Publish. And now you can go back to the search console. In this box, click on Verify and if
everything is correct, you will see a message with a green checkmark reading Verified.
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For WordPress, I will need to add another property to my account. I'll just go back to the
search console and add it here, I'll just enter the website again. I'll go to the web site
dashboard to verify it. I need to go to Appearance. then Editor or Theme Editor and in a
column that shows up on the right, look for the header.php file. Once I find it and click on it
and I can look for the head section on this page. Make sure to paste the code right before
the end of the head section. Click on Update File, then go back to the search console again
and click Verify again, and you can see the green checkmark.
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Again, things are verified and everything is in order. This is similar to what has to be done for
an HTML website. If you use another type of web builder platform and have trouble finding
the head section where to paste, ask for support from the platform or do a quick Google
search, which would probably find a walkthrough just for you.
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Using the Google Search Console
Once the account is verified, the next step is to make the most of it. The first thing I
recommend doing is to create and submit a sitemap of your website. A sitemap is like an
arborescent structure of all your pages. The Google bot will look for the sitemap and use it
to navigate your site better and understand the hierarchy and importance of your pages.
With Wix, there is no need to create a sitemap. Every Wix site contains a sitemap, which is
automatically generated by Wix and is always kept up to date with your site's information. If
you want to see it, just go to your website, add /sitemap.xml after it, and you will be able to
see it.
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Depending on the size and structure of the site, there may be more than one sitemap in
there. As you can see here, I have more than one for this particular example. Submitting it or
them is easy. Go to the search console, click on Sitemap and enter the last part of the
sitemap address, which in this case is sitemap-1.xml, in the available field, then click Submit.
It will be processed within moments by Google and this will automatically show them you
exist. They will soon crawl the site based on the sitemap and your content will be able to
show on Google. With WordPress, on the other hand, your best bet is to install a simple
plug-in like Sitemap Xml that will generate one or more sitemaps and provide you with the
URL locations for them. Add them to the search console using the same procedure.
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As you can see here, I already have a plug-in ready, I install it and activate it. And if I go to
Settings, I already get the address to my sitemap. If you use a web builder that does not
have a plug-in for this, or you have an HTML website, you can search for a site map
generator online. It will build a sitemap, but you will have to upload it to yourself to the
website file structure using FTP or cPanel. If you don't know how to do that or you don't
have access, ask for support from your hosting provider.
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After this important step, anytime you have new content, in order to avoid delays, because it
may take a while for the new URL to be part of the sitemap and to be crawled, you can just
go to the top of your search console account, paste the URL of the new content in the space
where it says "Inspect any URL" and click enter. The search console will retrieve the data it
has on the URL. If it tells you -most likely- that the URL is not indexed yet, click Request
indexing. This way, Google will learn about it faster and it will be able to show you in
searches. You can also do this after you make important edits to a page.
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Next, make sure to check some important stats. There won't be many impressions and clicks
during the first few weeks or even months if you're just starting out with your website, but
check the stats regularly. If you apply a SEO strategy, you will start seeing results. Here, on
the screen, you can see how for this particular website once SEO measures began to be
actively implemented beginning of 2020, the number of times that the website showed up in
Google searches increases dramatically, the number of clicks also reach new heights. You
can also check the search terms used to reach your site, over here as well as the country
where they came from, the CTR (which means click-through rate and it counts like for 100
impressions how many times is your result clicked in the SERP).
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Also, the average position of your pages and much more. You have several filtering and
Export options available. Use them to understand how users get from a Google search to
your site in all detail. Apart from this, the search console also tells you if it finds something
wrong after it crawls your site. You can check this by clicking Coverage. In this window, you
can click on any type of error to see more about it. The most common error you will see here
refers to 404 errors. When an index URL can no longer be found. This can happen if you
change the URL of a page or just delete some old pages. If that is the case, in order to solve
the errors, you can go to the Removal Tool and easily submit the URLs, which should no
longer be part of the index and should not show in the Google search.
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Before you remove it, if the URLs had some authority -which means a good history of
showing up in search results- we recommend you redirect them to another relevant page
on your site. This way, you pass on the authority of the old URL to another one and you
don't lose anything in terms of SEO. The page may be gone, but SEO value acquired in time
will be kept. Also, users might have bookmarked that particular URL in their browsers. Or
maybe it is linked somewhere on another website. Redirecting will ensure that users don't
run into a 404 Not Found error page and this will keep them happy.
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You should constantly check for these errors, either by using a specialized plugin or app or
an external service for auditing technical SEO. For this purpose, and for a lot more, we often
use audits from SEMRush.
This tool can scan your entire website and show you all kinds of errors and warnings,
including broken links. Fix the broken links you find by changing the destination URL or by
removing the link altogether, if there is no longer something relevant to link to. In the search
console, you have a removal tool that will do just that. You just enter the urls that have no
content anymore and submit for removal.
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Duplicate content is another warning you may get from SEMRush or other tools. Search
engines prefer original content and they might altogether drop pages that use text that is
already published somewhere else, whether that is on your own website or another. So
make sure to always have original content.
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Watch the full Technical
SEO Course here.
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Technical SEO

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