Technical SEO is the most important part of SEO and to which more resources are allocated.

In this survey of 240 SEOs conducted by seoClarity, technical SEO is the most important at 54% and the second most important at 22.9%.

In fact, only 10% said that technical SEO was the least important among the four aspects of SEO: content, traffic analysis, link building, and the aforementioned technical SEO.

That is why this complete guide on this essential part of SEO will be very useful for you.

I will teach you how to know in depth what technical SEO is, its importance, and everything you must do to influence it.

Let’s get started!

What is Technical SEO?

When we talk about the definition of technical SEO, we refer to the set of actions, processes, and improvements that are carried out at the level of crawling, indexing, and classification so that search engines find, index, and rank the URLs of a website.

It can be included within the SEO On Page, which is also in charge of the content part.

Both terms can often be confused and used as synonyms, however technical SEO is a discipline by itself.

In it, the most “technical and logical-mathematical” knowledge is mostly required.

A person dedicated to technical SEO must know everything about the internal processes of search engines, the crawl budget, indexing, the errors to correct, and a world of other things that I will tell you about throughout the post.

Why is it Vitally Important?

Imagine that you are very much in love and you spend 2 or 3 days writing an email (the old days were romantic) with the best poem you have written in your life, to declare your love to that person you love so much.

Upon finishing it and being proud of such a work of art, you write the email address that your friend had given you a few days ago.

You hit enter, more with the strength of your nerves than with that of your index finger and you sigh thinking that the job was well done and the ball is on the other side.

You enter the email after 20 minutes (if you’re anxious at 10) to see if he responded, and you have a p%# mail from Gmail that says that the email address does not exist and that it could not be delivered.

Tremendous garron!

Now imagine that your website is full of wonderful content.

One blog post is better than another.

A lot of value for your users…

And yet, you go to Google and see that there are almost none indexed, that is, not even the parrot reads them.

Your efforts have been pretty futile, but luckily, there are things that can be done.

Technical SEO is for that, to help you improve the indexing of your site and, ultimately, it’s positioning.

Why is it important then?

Because it is the cornerstone on which your website is established. 

If there is not a correct technical SEO, forget about being able to rank and generate income.

Everything that technical SEO does is in pursuit of improving tracking by search engines and thus increasing indexing and positioning indices.

First Steps of Technical SEO to Implement

There are some very simple first steps to implement to improve the technical SEO of your niches.

They are extremely easy to check and do, and they give a good start to the process of technical improvements.

1. SSL Certificate – HTTPS Version

The SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer) explained in a simple way, is a data file that allows safe navigation within your website.

This is thanks to the fact that it is capable of encrypting data traffic between a web browser and a website, or between two servers.

It is the famous padlock that you see in the address bar to the left of the domains (like the one you see to the left of wpsuggest.in).

The SSL certificate adds the “S” to the HTTP, making it a secure connection.

In fact, having this type of certificate is one of the most important technical SEO factors in terms of web positioning in the eyes of Google.

Keep it in mind and if there is not one in your niche, then install it.

2. Canonical Version of the Site

If you went without an SSL certificate for a long time before making the switch, you may have a lot of URLs indexed that are http:.

You must redirect them to the official version that has the https:, thus avoiding duplicate content and a decrease in web positioning.

In fact, maybe you have a version that is with www. and another without her.

Then you will have to choose the preferred version of the website and redirect the other versions to it.

3. Meta Robots and Code 200

Many times there are nichers who, when starting a niche, mark the option in WordPress to “Dissuade search engines” because they consider that they do not have the niche fairly well to be sent for indexing.

It is something that I do not do, but that is also valid.

The problem arises when days go by and they cannot find the reason why Google is not indexing anything for them.

And of course, they finally remember and deselect that option.

The same happens with content.

You are creating content and you leave it in noindex accidentally or wanting to.

Check that all the URLs you want to rank are in the index.

Basic and fundamental!

Also, note that all of them give code 200 (that is operational). 

Manually, with Screaming Frog or however you like.

For example, tools like SE Ranking show you the response codes of your website in a very visual way.

Easy and automated with All in One SEO.

The Fundamental parts of Technical SEO

It’s time for you to learn the fundamentals of technical SEO.

Later I will tell you the steps to improve this aspect of your niches or web pages.

1. Tracking

Tracking or crawling is called the action of search engine bots (software) (and others) to enter the bowels of your website and be able to read the data and follow the links.

This allows search engines to be “up to date” with new content and also with updates to existing content.

Crawling is not free and infinite but has a limit.

Bots, commonly called spiders, have a crawl budget for each website.

It is something that is defined by taking into account hundreds of variables that only Google and other search engines know (if at all).

The truth is that you should try to make the way easier for crawlers so that they can go through your website without problems.

This will have an impact on the fact that you will be able to track more URLs and know the content of the new ones and the changes of the old ones.

2. Indexing

Once the bot has gone through all the corners of your website, or at least as far as it could or you have let it go, it is time for indexing.

The URLs that are in the crawl queue are analyzed and go through the indexing process.

In it, Google looks for relevant information that gives it signals of whether this content has to be in its index and displayed in the SERPs or not.

Some of the data that Google analyzes for each URL are the meta robots, the content that exists, determines if there are canonicals, page rank, etc.

Google, I have to tell you, does what it wants most (or at least a lot) of the time.

It indexes the ones that you indicate noindex, it puts the canonicals as it is sung, it positions URLs for keywords that are not, and a long, etc.

Even so, it is better that you help him as much as you can, otherwise, the madness can be even greater.

3. Classification, Ranking, and Clickability

Once the URLs of your site have been indexed, the time comes when Google begins to classify your content.

It begins to prioritize it taking into account many factors such as authority, popularity, geolocation, links, and a long, etc.

So, that’s where your content can start to rank.

Once on the first page, it is time to improve clickability.

This is achieved with good titles, descriptions, and schema markup.

17 Steps to Improve the Technical SEO of Your Site

Enough of theory, now I will show you what things you can do and what you can influence to improve the technical SEO of your website.

Come on!

1. Speed ​​of the Web

The speed of the web is of the utmost importance for Google to rank and prioritize your site.

In fact, it is estimated that if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, you will already lose half of the users who come to it.

After 10 seconds almost everyone will be gone.

The loading speed is essential since it is a positioning factor that is highly taken into account by Google.

In turn, a bad experience in this aspect makes users run away from your page.

To improve it, you can minify the codes of your website, optimize the images, and the number of plugins, use CDN, and many other things.

If you are interested, I leave you this post in which I tell you how to optimize the loading speed of your website.

Cache Plugin

One of the fastest ways to improve the speed of loading a WordPress website is to use caching plugins.

The best, although paid, is WP Rocket.

It will give you a much higher loading speed than any other plugin for the same purpose.

See the full review here.

2. Core Web Vitals

Another of the main web positioning factors is the Core Web Vitals, and they are closely related to the previous point of loading speed.

It is very important that the website is functional in the shortest possible time, that it is stable, and that its largest element does not take so long to load.

If you want to know more about the CWV and how to improve them, enter here.

3. Mobile Friendly

A long time ago, Google began to consider the value of a website much more from mobile devices than from desktops.

It makes sense since most searches these days are done from smartphones.

It is imperative that your website is Mobile Friendly and responsive.

4. Web Architecture

Good web architecture will make bots scroll through your site much more naturally, pleasant, and effective.

They will reach more places and connect with more URLs.

A tip is that you do not have important URLs beyond the 3rd level of depth.

In other words, to reach them you do not have to make more than 3 clicks from the home page.

It doesn’t matter that there are 4 levels either, but the closer to the root, the better.

Either for users or for Google.

5. Sitemaps

Sitemaps, whether they are XML or HTML, also benefit from crawling and indexing in search engines.

What they do is list the pages with the index attribute and leave them on a tray for the spiders so they can find everything as quickly as possible.

You will save tracking budget like Cristiano Ronaldo cars.

I leave you this very complete guide on the Sitemap.

6. Image Optimization

Correct image optimization will also help you improve the loading speed of your site.

But not only that but including the ALT will also help you position content and make it accessible to blind people (the ALT content will be read).

Make sure that there are no PNG images as they are too heavy.

7. Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is another reason why many times we don’t finish ranking content.

It is that there is another one just like it.

There may even be several versions of the web (with www., without www. with http:, with https:, etc.) or of a page that conflicts due to their content similarity.

With DinoRANK you can also quickly see the duplicate titles, descriptions, URLs, and H1 of your website.

8. Canonicals

One of the things we can do to avoid this duplicate content is to use canonical tags.

With it, we can tell Google which URL should be indexed and positioned and which one should not.

Although Google does as it pleases. 

Believe me.

9. Broken Links

Broken links are something that needs to be improved for technical SEO.

Simply because they do not lead to any valid URL of your site.

You may even be losing authority.

Many times you will have to redirect those URLs and other times do everything possible to remove the links that point to them.

10. Redirect Chains

Redirect chains are also very harmful to the health of a site.

A redirection loses a few moments in loading speed because it must follow a route that has a previous step.

The chains themselves are even more damaging since many times they loop or are very long.

To correct them, as well as to know the broken links.

11. Interstitial

Popups or pop-up windows often cause web content to be blocked in the eyes of the user and often interfere with GoogleBot.

You have to make a correct selection of when, where, and how to place them so as not to make the user or Google angry.

12. Hreflang

If your website is in several languages, it is imperative that you correctly indicate the hreflang tag.

This will make Google and other engines understand which content and URL corresponds to each language.

13. Orphan Pages

This is the name given to URLs that do not receive incoming links, so they cannot be optimally reached by crawlers.

They may end their journey on pages of this type.

Orphaned pages will also not receive the authority of the linking URLs.

Control well that you do not have URLs without incoming links and avoid major problems.

14. Robots.txt

The robots.txt is also another of the ways that we SEOs have to control the indexing and the route of the Google bots in our niches.

In it, you can disable the entry to the search engine bots and tools that you want.

In fact, you can also prohibit them from entering certain areas of your website that you do not want spiders to pass through.

It is an essential tool to control the crawl budget and save Google time.

15. Add Schema Markup

The Schema or structured data is very useful to give Google more signals about what your content is about.

If you have a URL for recipes, a product, a book, a scientific article, or simply a blog post (among dozens of other types), you can configure the schema in question.

With it, you will not only help Google to classify your post, but you can also significantly increase the CTR of your results.

That translates into visits, and visits into earnings.

16. Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs or breadcrumbs are also great functionality for the user and crawlers.

With it, you will avoid orphaned URLs, and you will give a hierarchy to your main categories. 

You will help the user to know where he is and you will make him a path of roses through which to move to San Google.

Use them and then tell me.

17. Internal Linking

Finally, another element that you can touch and modify in your favor to favor crawling and indexing is the internal link.

With it you will be able to give priority to certain URLs and for Google to understand them that way.

You do this by sending a greater number of internal links to those pages that interest you the most.

In fact, with good interlinking, you can take the Google bot wherever you want it to go.

The internal links are the portals through which the crawlers move.

Another important point to check here is that the anchor text is adequate.

7 Technical SEO Tools That Will Help You

I will now tell you about the tools that will help you with the technical SEO of your website.

1. Google Search Console

Search Console (SC) is the most important Google tool together with Analytics to work on SEO.

You already know her, so I’m not going to delve too much into her.

But in the coverage part you will be able to see relevant information about the valid URLs, the excluded ones, the ones with errors, etc.

As for the excluded ones, it tells you which ones are tracked without indexing, discovered and without indexing, with noindex and a long, etc.

As if that were not enough, you can see the URLs one by one and see their status, their canonical, and much more information.

You can also include sitemaps in SC to facilitate tracking.

In the settings part you can see crawl statistics and the main crawler.

All this roughly. Gives a complete guide to Search Console.

2. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Another free and magnificent tool to improve the On Page and technical SEO of your site.

In an extremely simple way, you can audit your site and obtain a lot of information.

3. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog tool for advanced technical SEO, on par with Google Search Console.

Essential to know the status of all the URLs on your website.

The internal links, the broken links, the images, and a very long, very long etcetera.

Get to know everything it offers in the link above and brutally improve your knowledge of technical SEO.

4. PageSpeed ​​Insights

The classic Google tool to measure the loading speed of a website.

It also offers you a list of the improvements that you can make to improve this section.

Measure the loading speed of your website and what prevents it from flying like a rocket in this link.

You can also download the Google Lighthouse extension on your Chrome.

5. Mobile Optimization Test

This is also another simple tool from Google that will tell you if your website is mobile-friendly or not.

Test the home page and some of your main categories to see if it’s mobile-friendly or needs to be tweaked.

6. GTmetrix

It is a website similar to PageSpeed, however, it offers better results and much more complete visual data.

If you still don’t know this tool, you should try it as it will be useful for all your projects.

Enter here to measure the loading speed of your website.

7. Semrush

Finally, there is Semrush, a great all-in-one SEO tool, in which you can perform SEO audits and find all those errors that harm the crawling and indexing of your website.

Semrush is not a cheap tool, but it can be used for all phases of SEO and not just the technical part.

Take a look here.

Conclusions

Thank you for reaching the end of this post.

As you have seen, technical SEO is extremely important when it comes to positioning a website.

It is the initial part and the foundation that will make your website achieve the success that you want or not.

It is impossible for a website to reach and stay at the top of Google if its technical part is a complete disaster. 

I guarantee it.

We must make life as easy as possible for Google since the good readings it does will depend on whether we go up or down in the SERPs.

You do not need to be an expert in technical SEO to put into practice most of the tips that I tell you here.

However, the better you control all its facets, the easier it will be for Google to set its eyes on your niches, and the better technical SEO specialist you will become.

So far the post and I hope you have enjoyed this free technical SEO mini course.

Thanks for Reading.

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