Search engine optimisation (SEO) is more important in digital marketing than ever. A well-optimised website can drive traffic and increase revenue for your business. However, SEO is not just about keywords and content. Technical SEO is an equally important aspect of your website’s ranking. Technical SEO involves optimising the technical aspects of your website to improve its visibility and ranking on search engines. In this post, we will share five technical SEO tactics that will help you boost your website’s ranking. We’ve got you covered, from optimising your website speed and mobile-friendliness to utilising structured data and fixing broken links. So, if you want to improve your website’s SEO and drive more traffic to your business, keep reading!
Introduction to technical SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a digital marketing technique that helps businesses get more traffic and visibility on search engines. Technical SEO is one of the essential components of SEO that focuses on the technical aspects of a website to improve its ranking on search engines.
Technical SEO involves optimising the website’s structure, speed, and performance to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index it.
In simpler terms, technical SEO is the foundation of your website’s SEO. It ensures your website is easily accessible, user-friendly, and search engine friendly. Technical SEO is not just for the search engines but also for the users. A technically sound website provides a better user experience that can lead to more engagement, conversions, and, ultimately, higher rankings on search engines.
Some critical elements of technical SEO include:
- website architecture,
- site speed,
- mobile responsiveness,
- URL structure,
- schema markup,
- sitemaps,
- and robots.txt files.
By optimising these technical elements, you can improve your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines.
In the following sections, we will discuss some of the technical SEO tactics you can use to boost your website’s ranking.
Optimise your website’s page speed
Page speed is a critical component of technical SEO that can significantly impact your website’s ranking. A slow website can lead to a poor user experience, causing visitors to leave and increasing bounce rates. Moreover, search engines like Google consider page speed as a ranking factor, making it imperative to optimise your website’s speed for better search engine visibility.
Tips for optimising page speed:
- Compressing your images.
One way to optimise your website’s page speed is by compressing your images. Large images can significantly slow down your website speed, so it’s crucial to compress them without losing their quality. You can use free online tools like TinyPNG or Squoosh to compress your images before uploading them to your website. - Minimising HTTP requests.
Another way to improve your website’s page speed is by minimising HTTP requests. Whenever a user loads a page, the browser requests each element to the server, such as images, scripts, and stylesheets. The more HTTP requests your website has, the longer it takes to load the page. You can minimise HTTP requests by combining and minifying your CSS and JavaScript files. - Enabling browser caching.
This is another effective tactic to boost your website’s page speed. Browser caching allows browsers to store the files that make up your website, such as images, stylesheets, and JavaScript so that when a user revisits your website, the browser doesn’t have to download the files again. This results in faster page load times and a better user experience.
Optimising your website’s page speed is a crucial aspect of technical SEO that can significantly impact your website’s ranking and user experience. By compressing your images, minimising HTTP requests, and enabling browser caching, you can improve your website’s page speed and boost your search engine visibility.
Optimise your website’s mobile-friendly design
In today’s world, optimising your website’s mobile-friendly design is crucial for ranking. With more than 50% of online traffic coming from mobile devices, a mobile-friendly website is necessary to improve your website’s ranking.
When optimising your website’s mobile design, there are a few things to consider.
Firstly, you should ensure your website has a responsive design that adjusts to different screen sizes, as this will ensure that your website looks great and is easy to navigate on any device, whether a phone, tablet or laptop.
Secondly, you should optimise your website’s load time for mobile devices. Mobile users tend to be on the go and have less patience when waiting for websites to load. So, it’s important to minimise the size of your images and videos and optimise your website’s code to ensure fast load times.
Lastly, you should ensure that your website’s fonts and buttons are optimised for mobile devices; this means using legible fonts that are easy to read on smaller screens and ensuring that buttons are large enough to be clicked on easily.
By optimising your website’s mobile-friendly design, you’ll not only improve your website’s ranking but also provide a better user experience for your visitors, resulting in increased traffic, engagement, and, ultimately, conversions.
Use structured data to enhance your website’s appearance in search results
Use structured data to enhance your website’s appearance in search results
Structured data is a powerful tool that can help improve your website’s appearance in search results. Structured data is a standardised format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content. By using structured data, you can provide more detailed information to search engines about the content on your website, which can help improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site.
One of the most popular structured data formats is schema.org. Google, Bing, and Yahoo support this vocabulary, as do other search engines. By implementing schema markup on your website, you can provide additional information about your business, products, services, and content to search engines.
For example, if you have an e-commerce website, you can use schema markup to provide information about your products, such as their price, availability, and customer reviews. Thus, Schema markup can help your products stand out in search results and make it easier for potential customers to find the information they need.
Implementing structured data on your website may require technical knowledge, so working with a developer or SEO specialist is recommended to ensure it’s done correctly. However, the benefits of using structured data can be significant, helping to improve your website’s appearance in search results and drive more traffic to your site.
Implement HTTPS to improve your website’s security.
With hacking on the rise, cybersecurity is more important than ever. Implementing HTTPS is one of the best technical tips for SEO tactics to improve website security.
HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, which means that all data sent between the website and the user’s browser is encrypted. This encryption helps prevent hackers from intercepting sensitive information such as credit card details, usernames and passwords. Implementing HTTPS not only improves the security of your website, but it also has a positive impact on your search engine rankings.
Google has been using HTTPS as a ranking signal since 2014. Websites that implement HTTPS may rank higher than those that do not. The benefits of HTTPS are clear and well worth the investment in improving your website’s security and boosting your search engine rankings. Most of the hosting providers now offer SSL for free or as an add on, when we design sites for our clients we always ensure that it has a proper HTTPS.
Optimise your website’s internal linking structure.
Optimising your website’s internal linking structure is a vital technical SEO tactic that can significantly boost your website’s ranking.
What is ‘an internal link’? It is a hyperlink (URL) that points from one page on a website to another page on the same website. By having a well-structured internal linking strategy, you can guide search engines to understand the hierarchy and importance of your website’s pages. It also helps site users to navigate on your website.
One important factor to remember is to ensure that your website’s pages are linked logically and organised, which means each page should link to related pages. The most important ones should be prioritised and linked more frequently.
Another key factor to consider is the use of descriptive anchor text. Anchor text is the visible text you see in a hyperlink that directs you to another webpage. This text is what search engines use to understand the content and context of the linked page. It is important to use descriptive and relevant anchor text that accurately describes the linked page’s content. This helps search engines understand the context of the linked page and improves the overall relevancy of your website’s content.
Properly optimised internal links enhance the user experience and improve the crawlability of your website by search engine bots. This can result in higher organic search rankings, more traffic, and ultimately increased business growth. Therefore, it is essential to regularly review and optimise your website’s internal linking structure to ensure that it is fully optimised for search engines.
Use XML sitemap to help search engines crawl your website more effectively.
An XML sitemap is a great way to help search engines crawl your website more effectively. This is especially important for larger websites with many pages, as search engines can sometimes miss pages or struggle to navigate the site.
An XML sitemap is essentially a list of all the pages on your website that you want search engines to crawl and index. By submitting this sitemap to search engines, you’re helping them understand your site’s structure and the relationship between different pages. This can help improve your website’s visibility in search results and ultimately drive more traffic.
Creating an XML sitemap can be easily done with various free tools and online plugins. Once you’ve created your sitemap, you can submit it to search engines like Google and Bing through their webmaster tools. This will ensure that your website is crawled and indexed more effectively, helping to boost your search engine ranking and drive more traffic to your site.
Monitor your website’s technical SEO performance regularly.
Monitoring your website’s technical SEO performance regularly is a must-do task for any website owner. Regular monitoring will help you identify potential technical issues affecting your website’s ranking in search engines. These issues could be anything from broken links, slow-loading pages, duplicate content, or even improper use of header tags.
Regularly monitoring your website’s technical SEO performance will help you stay on top of any issues that may arise and fix them before they cause any significant damage to your website’s ranking.
There are a number of tools available that you can use to monitor your website’s performance. Google’s Search Console is a great tool to start with. It provides a wealth of information about your website’s performance, including crawl errors, index status, and search queries. However, this can be daunting to use.
Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz can also monitor your website’s technical SEO performance. Beware, their paid services can be quite expensive for a small business, and thus it can be better to use a professional monitoring service such as ours.
These tools provide detailed insights into your website’s performance, including keyword rankings, backlinks, and technical issues.
Regularly monitoring your website’s technical SEO performance can help you identify any issues affecting your website’s ranking, and take corrective action to improve your website’s performance and ranking in search engines. So, monitor your website’s technical SEO performance regularly to ensure that your website is performing optimally and ranking well in search engines.
Conclusion and key takeaways
In conclusion, implementing these technical SEO tactics can significantly improve your business website’s ranking and overall online presence.
Optimising your website’s loading speed can improve user experience and reduce bounce rates. Secondly, ensuring your website is secure with HTTPS can improve user trust and boost your search engine ranking. Thirdly, implementing structured data can help search engines better understand your website’s content and improve your website’s visibility in search results. Fourthly, optimising your website’s mobile responsiveness is crucial in today’s mobile-first world. And finally, avoiding investing in SEO without proper keyword research can save you time and resources and ensure you’re targeting the right audience.
Implementing these technical SEO tactics gives your business website a competitive edge and attracts more visitors. Remember, SEO is an ongoing process and requires continuous monitoring and optimisation to ensure your website stays on top of search engine results.
We hope you found our article on technical SEO tactics helpful and informative. These tactics can be the difference between a website that ranks well and one that struggles to get traffic. By implementing these five strategies, you can improve the technical SEO of your website and increase its visibility in search engine results pages. Remember to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and changes in SEO to stay ahead of the game.
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